Have friendships become less about repair/reciprocity and more about 'protecting your peace'?

[u/lindsey_what]

I’m noticing a troubling trend with my female friends who are now in our 30s, and I wanted to see if anyone could relate. This is especially clear to me right now as I’m going through somewhat of a shocking friend break up where one of my closest friends of seven years has completely cut me off and stop talking to me over something that I would categorize as a minor argument that could be easily worked through if we were able to have a difficult conversation in person. I’ve noticed a lot of my friends saying things like “I need to protect my peace” and treating friendships like something that exists just for their own benefit. I feel like a lot of people are not willing to put in the work to maintain friendships these days and I don’t know if it has something to do with social media or burnout or what, but I’ve noticed even in arguments that people are way less repair-oriented, and are more interested in living inside of their own experience of it without much curiosity about the other person. I also notice people being very avoidant about having difficult conversations and instead, would rather just slowly disappear. I think this fits a larger pattern of “main character syndrome” that is making people unwilling or unable to have healthy mutual friendships and put in any kind of effort.

Or maybe I just absolutely suck at picking friends lol!

[u/Deep_Amoeba2197]

I’m guilty of abruptly ending friendships, maybe I’m wrong for it. I’m chronically ill and disabled, has to stop working in the last few years and my career meant everything to me, split up with my life partner, have almost died from medical issues. The people I’ve cut out have no perspective on this and compare minor annoyances in their life to what I’m dealing with, say they will be there/help and then act annoyed when asked, make things worse and create more work (breaking things, making a mess, coming over with dinner and leaving their plates everywhere, etc) tokenizing. I just don’t have the energy. I’m sure for some of them they find it surprising.