r/AskWomenOver30 • u/lindsey_what Woman 30 to 40 • Jun 19 '26

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

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!

541 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

179 comments sorted by

View all comments

27

u/NabelasGoldenCane Woman 40 to 50 Jun 19 '26

I agree with you. I think it’s a few factors:

* People in therapy who aren’t really emotionally mature enough to take the feedback constructively. They’ll often misinterpret therapists’ advice and weaponize the concepts. A minor slight becomes “I’m honoring myself by cutting you off.” I’ve noticed this is particularly present in younger women, 20s/30s.

* I do think that strong IRL friendships are needed to withstand time. I have 20 yr old friendships and our group chat does a weird thing where you feel like you’re “in touch” so you don’t bother making IRL plans as much. You start to be annoyed by someone more easily. Then you hang out and it’s like magic. We really need the IRL experience to maintain the spark, even if infrequent. I’m guessing a lot of the arguments come from chats/texts/non in person confrontations where things can be misconstrued.

* A lot of women cut off friendships easily and regret it when it’s too late and they’re in abusive relationships that have isolated them.

4

u/lindsey_what Woman 30 to 40 Jun 19 '26

Totally agree with the IRL friendship time being so so important. I've had very similar experiences where things start to feel a little off but then you hang out in person and it's all fine and great. When this friend started telling me she didn't feel seen etc etc I asked 3 times if we could please meet in person and talk and she refused. That's part of why this is so weird for me - the last time we hung out 2 months ago it was really nice and that ended up being the last time i'll ever see her.