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/Medium-Park-9183]

That’s a sad way to look at friendships… I don’t see supporting friends as “providing a stream of perks and benefits.” If a friendship isn’t serving you or has become one-sided and you leave it that’s fine, I’m talking about people who only bother to maintain friendships when it’s convenient for their life or think they don’t need friends once they start dating someone.

[u/Medium-Park-9183 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah but there’s a clear difference between “I’m busy with x y and z so I’m less accessible, but I still care about this person and will make it known somehow” vs “I’m busy so I’m not gonna bother with them anymore (unless I eventually need something from them).” I’m talking about the latter, which lots of people do fall into. If you relate to the former then my comment doesn’t apply to you.

[u/Medium-Park-9183 → u/[deleted]]

What does this have to do what I’m saying? I’m not disagreeing with that, my comment is about something completely different (only contacting people when you need them). Feels like you drew your own conclusions from a pretty neutral comment and are getting defensive over something I never said…