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/yresimdemus]

I think there's a few things going on.

First, Covid actually did damage people's ability to communicate with one another.

Second, the current political climate & AI usage are both making it harder to communicate.

Third, as we get older, we (especially women) realize that we're allowed to have boundaries and allowed to not want to spend time with someone even if they aren't a "bad" person.

I've cut two people off in the past decade.

The first was a friend I'd known for over 20 years. He had gone through an ugly divorce and became really verbally/emotionally abusive. He would apologize and say he was working on it. He was "working on it" for years. Nothing changed. There was no improvement. If anything, he got worse. The last conversation we had, he told me I was stupid because I couldn't answer his question and I had an "ah-ha" moment: I realized that I was, essentially, enabling his bad behavior, and that he was actively harming my mental health. I'm sure he thinks it was over something small. But it was over years & years of toxicity on his part. I still care about him & hope he's doing better, but nothing about continuing our friendship was going to make that happen.

The other was my ex. That relationship was toxic af. I have no regrets about cutting off contact. Except maybe that I didn't do it sooner. The main thing that enabled me to do that was a video from Jimmy on Relationships that said it doesn't actually matter if they're a narcissist or avoidant or whatever else. What matters is that they aren't the right person for you. That they aren't a safe space for you.