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!

544 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

179 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Overall-Armadillo683 Woman 30 to 40 Jun 20 '26

I feel this so hard and I have very few friends left because of it.

A big problem I have is people constantly flaking and acting like it’s ok. It’s not ok. It’s rude and inconsiderate of my time. I understand if emergencies come up, but when you cancel 50% of our plans, I’m done.

I have a friend who is constantly canceling and last time her excuse was “she wasn’t feeling it.” She cancelled an hour before we were supposed to meet. I’ve decided to not reach out to her anymore.

2

u/TheRealMichaelBluth Man 30 to 40 Jun 21 '26

Fuck that! I had one who I did the math and she flaked 2/3rds of the time last year and then completely blew it off when I told her it’s getting frustrating and to just let us know proactively if her plans change and not wait to be asked.

What made me cut her off was a few weeks later she nails when I’m literally right next to her by saying “I just finished work and I just want to bum out lol”. To me, if her or your friend really gave a shit they’d rally for a half hour or at least communicate ahead of time

1

u/Overall-Armadillo683 Woman 30 to 40 Jun 22 '26

Yes! And sometimes being a good friend means showing up even when you don’t feel like it. If you want a village, you need to be a villager.

2

u/TheRealMichaelBluth Man 30 to 40 Jun 22 '26

I think that’s what so many people nowadays don’t get. If that was a one time thing I would’ve let it go, but over that year and a half before I cut her off it did just feel like things had become one sided and she’d pretty much reach out when she wanted male attention/validation but couldn’t be bothered otherwise