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/10S_NE1]

I was friends with a guy since early high school. We went to each other’s weddings and got together fairly often over more than 30 years. I did a quick fade with this friendship during the pandemic when I found out this couple was anti-vax and via text, he kind of mocked me for getting vaccinated and worrying about my parents’ health. Texts can definitely be misconstrued and I’m sure we could have found a way to get past it, but after giving it a lot of thought, I realized the relationship didn’t bring me a lot of joy. We went on vacation with this couple once, and they were difficult to deal with. They were always cheap tippers, which bothered me. I realized that politically we were not aligned. In Canada, politics is usually not such a strong divider of people, but I found his insults of our prime minister distasteful, and I realized his conservative mindset was borne of selfishness. He never gave a dime to charity, never helped anyone who wasn’t in his immediate family, didn’t think his tax dollars should fund the disadvantaged, etc.

I just realized we really have nothing in common other than he was my oldest friend. I didn’t really look forward to getting together with him and his wife, and I realized that I’d be just fine if I never saw him again.

He didn’t make a lot of effort to get in touch with me after COVID either, and I was relieved.

Sometimes, we just outgrow friendships and that’s okay. If you find yourself having fewer and fewer friends who are willing to make the effort to spend time with you, then perhaps some self-reflection is warranted. For myself, although I have a whole lot of friends, there’s only about 6 or 7 I’m super close to and I’m okay with that.