This is the fucking truth. I've seen so many friend groups fall apart when that one person who was making all the effort checks out.
It's a shame that we all expect friendships to be deep, immediate, and effortless. We'd all be a lot less lonely if we tried to show up for each other. If we didn't make excuses for ourselves but not for our friends
My friend group has one person who usually hosts because his place is bigger, but I recently moved into a new place that has a lovely big living room and I'm so excited to take some of that effort off his plate!
When I was growing up, my dad had a coworker who would often host cookouts and barbecues, and he and his wife would provide meats and a grill, everyone else would bring drinks and other dishes. I think potluck style is underrated as a way to take at least a LITTLE of the pressure off.
This is such a good way to go about it though! If a friend is hosting I always say that I can bring the food and drinks, because I know how much it can be to do everything when hosting.
I got roped into doing this for a "Women in Business" event. About 40 people came; I did all the grilling, my ex did some potato and pasta salads, everyone else brought sides, wine or a big dessert of some kind. I was eating leftover cake, cheesecake and pies for like 10 days. It topped up the drinks cabinet,too.
This family I knew would always say "bring your leftovers home with you," they did NOT want their 6 kids all hyped up on sugar for more than one single day 😂
We've all claimed major events. I always do a house party for my birthday to kick off the summer season, another friend always does Diwali. We had a friend that did friendsgiving for a while, etc.
Do check in with them about how you feel like you would be helping out. Some people might genuinely get offended when you a) intrude on a thing they think is theirs like being the host b) take it as a insult that their place is shit and now that you have a new one you think you don't need it anymore
I don’t think that’s a fair assumption. I don’t like hosting at my house because my home isn’t a good space for a group of people that’s 5+. Also, and more importantly, my (clinically diagnosed) OCD that involves intrusive thoughts about my house not being tidy enough would have me feeling disconnected from whatever is going on. However, I ALWAYS arrive first to help whoever’s hosting with whatever they need & leave last to make sure their place is back to normal after all the other guests are gone.
I’m embarrassed that my mental health creates a barrier for hosting at my own place, but I try to make up for it the best way I can.
I hosted a friend for a movie night and needed her help to drag the furniture around and then she had to watch as I moved my pc set up to the living room. She then wanted a drink but I had basically nothing to offer.
Second time I hosted her I had that stuff set up in advance and bought drinks she likes.
Existing with friends can be easy but some friends want more than your company and won’t stay past that cringe first visit. Guess that’s a good marker of a true friend though
I was that friend making all the effort and man it fucking hurt. I had a really rough patch in college (and that's putting it lightly tbh) and really needed someone to just let me know that they actually gave a shit about me or even just realize that it'd been weeks since any of them had last seen me. Like not asking for a whole intervention or for them to drop everything to cater to my depression, just a text saying "hey, haven't heard from you in awhile, wanna hang out?"... But the minute I stopped scheduling stuff and being the first to reach out, they completely ghosted me. Like if it was the other way around, I absolutely would have reached out to check on a friend if we had been in regular contact and I just suddenly hadn't seen or heard from them in over a week.
The whole time the only thing I could think of was that I could be dead and I didn't think any of them would have noticed.
Yyyyyup. Going through this right now....again. I had already gone through this twice. Once in high school and again in college.
And now it's starting all over again. No calls or texts in months if not longer. Even scroling back, the selfish bastards couldn't even be bothered to text me back after I asked a question.
I really do think I'm over having friends now. Better off alone and putting that energy I have for people into myself. At least I know I'll appreciate it.
This has happened to me time and time again. I’m 38 now and my friendship group is much smaller, but also much stronger. Don’t give up on the idea of having friends! But also recognise your worth and wait for the people who actually give back as much as you put in.
This happened to me as the host and I found out everyone thought I was still having the events and just not inviting them. So they were hurt and didn't reach out because of it.
Wow! This could be me. I scheduled the friend events. Didn't even host, sometimes I was calling places asking if it was okay if 5-8 late teen/young adults [18-21]. One time I made a real life slender and murder mystery games. Mine bad patch was I went through a terrible breakup. (One of the highlights was he didn't even do it he made my grandma do it.)
I lost my home, car etc. Only people who showed up for me we my online friends. I ended up with two options: homelessness or move across the country. When I chose to move to where I had a support system no one checked up on me.
A little over a decade later I would return home and meet up with a person in that group who would go on to tell me that when I "just up and disappeared" everyone was very mad at me. He got my point when I pointed out that it was insane that everyone's reaction to the planner of the group who they supposedly cared about a lot very out of characterly disappearing off the face of the earth was anger instead of concern.
I gave the group (that did still exist, just in a new form with mostly new people) one last chance anyway. Then I found out people were still holding that grudge. And they still didn't actually ask me why I left. Everyone just avoided the conversation and danced around the why I was there of all the stories I told. That told me everything I needed to know: they were still 19 in their heads and partying every Friday night by calling it friend dinner where everyone is gossiping/dating in circles/being petty within the group. Oh, and still no one reaches out. Just post in the group chat.
I notice an attitude here on Reddit especially where people constantly talk about what they're 'obligated' to do in a friendship or relationship, like it's transactional. I see people going to Reddit for advice on, say, their partner asking them to go to visit their in-laws when they don't want to, and most of the comments aren't "Find a compromise", it's "You don't have to do that, you're not obligated".
It's an incredibly dense outlook that is very destructive to any relationship. There's more and more people who seem to think they shouldn't have to inconvenience themselves at all for people they ostensibly care about.
It's because a lot of redditors are entitled people that are so used to having everythging go their way, that they see basic human resiprocity as some sort of burden that needs to be shouldered and simple interactions as an affront to their being.
It's like when some people rant when someone was trying to make conversation with them in train or other long rides. They say they are offended because the person feels entitled to their attention, and honestly I find this so wild.
The worst is when you just decide to stop texting people because they never text back and you give it a month, no texts, then another month just to see, no texts, then you just stop texting them and you drift apart. I had to move so I wasn't able to see a lot of them just randomly anymore and now I'm not sure I ever will. Two of them remembered my birthday but didn't make any plans to get together so I didn't try to make any either.
Dude. It is the worst. I was always the 1 to put effort in the things we would do. Even if it was just a group call. I was always the 1 to remind everyone when someones birthday was coming up and when it was mine i got nothing. From all the supposed friends i had only 2 send me a happy birthday. And when i wasn't gonna plan things as i didn't have time or whatever. Then suddenly i was to blame when their plans fell trough. Ive tried so hard to keep close with the few friends i had left but this year i just stopped as i would look trough our chats and it was like 80% me and they always had short answers. And they blame me for ghosting them.
I’m in a trio, and two of us live together and another is an hour’s drive away. The further away friend comes every week for trivia, so the two of us here intentionally make sure we’re heading up to the other friend too to balance it out
My husband stopped being the “friend dad” with a group of friends. Now we see that group about once a year, when we host our annual bbq. They don’t make any effort in between.
Thankfully we have other friends who do regularly return the effort, but I wish those folks would show a bit of effort because I enjoy their company.
This is why I basically only have neurodivergent friends. Just like romantic relationship you have to be compatible with how you view your time. If you don’t text me back for five days then I understand cuz I do the same thing lol. But if you called me and said “I need you cuz I’m having a breakdown” then I’m getting in an uber to your house immediately. You have to be compatible in how and where you place the effort into the relationship.
I have had different levels of friends if that makes sense. Like some are more surface level and maybe they aren't up for getting personal but we enjoy the same hobby. I've had friends where we text daily and others we go for weeks or months. I value them both.
This is totally some of my text chains. One set of friends I text, and don’t expect an answer from for a week, but when they did text back, they were like, “hey, I saw this thing. I thought all of us could do it together.”
Another friend, we were sending each other messages so long that it required 30 minutes to text a reply back. Longer if they jumped around on topics.
This sounds like a good idea on paper but in my experience people who identify as neurodivergent have VERY little patience for each other and want to be the only one tolerated in the group.
As I get older I really value that my main friend group has gotten so good at taking turns making the effort for things. Several people have houses they can host in and everyone is good about bringing stuff. It’s cool
This is me. I was the constant planner for efforts but then I had some health issues combined with pretty severe depression, and I stopped doing a lot of planning. A lot of folks I thought were friends never reached out to me when I functionally disappeared for over a year.
We had a friend group where one girl always was taking initiative for organizing board games. Then we had a falling out
The remainder eventually expressed that playing board games again would be fun. And so I decided to be the one taking initiative, because the others are even more introverted than me
Well, took getting used to, but so far it's going well
This has historically been me in my friends groups, and the past few years I've been letting go of a lot for my own sake. I'm still learning to deal with the reality that most of my friends are not great at being friends,. It used to not feel like a burner at all, but after figuring out my social life is pretty much non-existent unless I'm constantly on top of people, it's really demoralizing for me to try and be this person again.
I talked to an Irish guy who spent some time in the states. He said he was shocked how friendly everyone was. He'd go out to bars and everyone wanted to be his friend. They'd buy each other drinks all night, get phone numbers, see each other every night over the course of a week. Then one day he needed a ride to the airport, he texted all his "friends" and not a single one responded. He was dumbfounded.
Meanwhile a German friend of mine described an American exchange student in her class. The class threw a big going away party for him and every single classmate showed up and expressed how much they liked him and how much they'll miss him. Apparently this was a big shock to him because he thought they didn't like him much.
It seems that American culture is very into the superficial appearance of friendship and community but absolutely not into the actual social contracts and mutual obligations that should come with those relationships
It's kinda fascinating. There are alpha positions in human groups, they just don't work as the wannabe alpha people describe. Instead they're popular, if the most stressful positions in group. People kinda fall into that naturally or the group falls apart
Lowkey this was kinda me. Groupchat of about 9-10 people, was going just fine and was all active until I stopped initiating convos cause I felt like the only one putting in effort. Funny thing was, these people were only relatively recent friends to me. I don’t even know why it fell apart, they were friends with eachother before I ever met them.
Speaking of showing up, and definitely asking for a friend, what if your own siblings aren't coming to your wedding, that they agreed to speak at, because of BS excuses?
One is simply not taking care of their health at all, and is then blaming their own health. The other just doesn't feel like it.
My ideal friends are the ones who I don’t talk with for over half a year until someone randomly invites the other to game, followed by 2 months of daily gaming in comms and socializing like 0 time had passed.
Some people mistake the desire for reciprocation as wanting a transactional relationship, so they constantly let down their friends even if they do a lot work in the relationship, because they think their friend is not entitled to what they see as a transaction when it's being reciprocal. So when the friend goes cold and gives the explanation, they are like "huh, so you were an asshole who expected me to do things for you. you didn't do them unconditionally"
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u/TwinStickDad 13h ago
This is the fucking truth. I've seen so many friend groups fall apart when that one person who was making all the effort checks out.
It's a shame that we all expect friendships to be deep, immediate, and effortless. We'd all be a lot less lonely if we tried to show up for each other. If we didn't make excuses for ourselves but not for our friends