I’m a 43–year-old man. Well-educated, with a healthy social skill level. I’ve always been surrounded by friends. Always invited to parties and events, both happy and sad, without effort on my part. Last year I moved from the city to a country farm and I came to the realisation that I had been the one maintaining contact. I was the one initiating every time, and when I stopped, they all went away. We’re not talking just one friend either. I’m talking full-on loss of an entire social circle.
It’s been a rough year, socially and emotionally speaking. My partner has borne the brunt of it, being my only contact and social outlet. I just don’t understand it. If I had been an atrocious person then people wouldn’t have interacted with me like they did, seemingly voluntarily and happily. I was invited to every wedding, engagement, birthday, hiking trip, you name it. I was made to feel welcome and wanted. As long as, it turns out, I was the one sending the first message, making the first call.
Am I a crap person in need of extensive therapy, or am I missing something?
Eleanor says: A dear friend of mine busted his leg a while ago. Got cleaned up by a motorcyclist while he was riding his bike. Boot on the foot, needed a scooter to get around, the whole thing. Early on after his surgery he sent a spreadsheet around to his friends: I’m going to need some help, thanks so much for being someone I can ask, if you could pop yourself down for a day and a time we’ll make sure the trash gets taken out and the cats’ litter gets changed.
I have no idea how much we would have gone over to help if he hadn’t asked. I like to think it’s a lot, but empirics suggest I’m overestimating. All of us have wondered why our friends aren’t coming through like we expected after a big life change or a crisis, so we probably overestimate how much we’d do when we’re the friend.
My point is, if my injured friend had measured our care by how much we independently and spontaneously came over to help, he might have sat home sore and lonely wondering why nobody cared. By reaching out first, he made the metric how many people actually did help: how many people care and want to do things for you, not how many people proactively made plans to show that’s how they felt.
Yes – yes – in an ideal world those things don’t come apart. Ideally, anyone who likes you is also someone who takes the time to show you that by initiating, following up, calling, keeping in touch. Ideally, there’d be no gaps between what we value and what we find time for in our weeks.
But there just are gaps. Most people, most of the time, are doing an imperfect job of finding time for the things and people they value. Sometimes it’s being harried. Sometimes it’s neurodivergence. Sometimes it’s shyness about overstepping, being responsible for the plans, deciding we should talk now.
Sometimes, granted, it’s full-on emotional neglect. At the extremes this can be unjust as well as annoying, and you’d rather burn the friendship altogether than abide the asymmetry any longer.
But a lot of the time we are just being suboptimal friends. Given the gap between what we really do value and what we reliably make time for, you can’t infer people never liked you from the fact they haven’t reached out. All you can infer is that you’re the one who reaches out more. People have different virtues. Yours is that you make more time for the people you care about; you do a better job of showing that you like someone.
The question then is whether you’re prepared to tolerate that asymmetry in order to keep your friendships. The answer might well be “no”. But it might help first to ask what else they bring to your friendship, if not proactive reaching out. Are they enthusiastic about the plans, once you make them? Are they kind and attentive, once you’re together? You might be learning that you just don’t want these relationships any more. But perhaps, instead, their sloppiness about initiating might be made up for in other ways.
Part of friendship is seeing each other in our virtues and our vices. You’ve been given a painful lesson about one particular vice these people share. What of their virtues?
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