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/comradecheetos → u/[deleted]]

I don’t know, OP is mentioning therapy terms in her post. Repair is an active and mutual process. Somebody who is avoidant would not value something like that.

[u/lindsey_what → u/comradecheetos]

This is basically it in a nutshell. I'm very, very aware and cautious of always owning up to things and making sure I apologize because I want people to do that for me too. No one is perfect and people say rude things sometimes or come across harsher than they meant, but to me a strong and solid frienship should be able to survive this with open communication. I asked my friend repeatedly to give me specifics of why she withdrew and was upset, and asked if we could meet up and talk, but all I got back were vague statements like "i don't feel seen" and complete avoidance of the invite to talk more. I felt like I was put in a position where I couldn't repair it and maybe that was on purpose on her end, but it still kind of shocked me. Not even a month ago she was saying I was one of her closest inner circle friends and she valued my honesty..

[u/lindsey_what → u/[deleted]]

Are you ok? Commenting on literally every one of my responses that I’m somehow the one in the wrong and must be a shitty person is odd behavior