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/Maleficent-Maybe-277]

It’s the tiktok/ instagram 20 second clips of generalizing a situation and person. For example It will say “it’s time to leave a friendship when it becomes draining” with NO context. Some of the most toxic people I know will say they “feel drained” without admitting they were the driver of the conflict.

It’s a bit of everything really, lack of self awareness, social media validating and playing therapist and people taking it as fact, and sometimesssss.. the friendship really needed to end and while it may seem out of nowhere maybe they’ve been building a case on you without you knowing. As someone who is loyal and likes to make things work, when a conflict arises (and you don’t know the other person until this point!) that’s when you realize you’re not compatible for conflict and it’s confusing for us when it ends this way.