WHEN DID TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF TURNED INTO AVOIDING EVERYONE?

The other day a friend told me she wasn’t going to one of our best friend’s birthdays because she wanted to “protect her energy” and she knew there was going to be people there that have bad vibes. My first thought was... ok but it’s our friend… who cares who else is going? but I said something normal like “oh okay” and we moved on. But for some reason I kept thinking about it afterwards. Not because I think everyone needs to go to every birthday, dinner, engagement party or questionable bar their friends invite them to. God knows I’ve cancelled plans because at 7pm the idea of putting jeans on suddenly felt completely unreasonable. It was more the reason. Protecting my energy. Protecting my peace. Setting a boundary. Doing what’s best for me.

We’ve gotten really good at this language, and most of it exists for a reason. There are people you should absolutely distance yourself from, situations you should say no to and friendships that end because staying in them is genuinely worse than leaving. But I’m starting to wonder if we’ve become so good at identifying what we don’t owe other people that we’ve forgotten there are some things we actually want to give them anyway. Because sometimes your friend isn’t draining your energy. She’s just asking you to come to her birthday when you’d rather stay home. Sometimes she isn’t toxic, she’s annoying you. And sometimes a boundary is a boundary. Other times, if we’re being serious, you just don’t feel like going. Which is fine. I just don’t know why everything has to become a psychological explanation now.

There’s something very appealing about the idea that anything uncomfortable is a sign we should remove ourselves. A friendship feels difficult? Maybe we’ve outgrown it. Someone asks too much of us? Maybe they don’t respect our boundaries. We leave dinner feeling tired? Maybe that person drains our energy. Imagine talking like this ten years ago. Your friend would probably just tell you to shut up. Now you can almost build a case for never doing anything you don’t want to do. And I get why that feels good, especially because so many of us grew up being told the opposite. Be nice. Don’t disappoint people. Say yes. Keep the peace. Don’t be difficult. We needed to learn that saying no doesn’t make you selfish. I just think we may have taken a very necessary lesson and maybe stretched it slightly too far.

“You don’t owe anyone anything” sounds amazing until you imagine everyone you love living by exactly the same rule. Your friend doesn’t owe you a call when you’re crying over someone she told you not to date in the first place. She doesn’t owe you help moving apartments. She doesn’t owe you a birthday dinner after a horrible week at work. She definitely doesn’t owe you another two-hour conversation about the same problem you have been discussing since February. Technically, none of us owe each other much. But that would be a pretty depressing way to have friends. Most of the things that make someone a good friend are things they didn’t technically have to do. They came anyway. They answered anyway. They stayed a little longer. They listened to the story again, even though this time they did start with “I love you, but...”

Friendship has always involved a certain amount of inconvenience. I don’t mean constantly sacrificing yourself for other people. I mean normal inconvenience. The kind that comes with caring about someone whose life does not run on exactly the same schedule as yours. People call at bad times. Birthdays happen when you’re tired. Someone will choose a restaurant on the other side of the city. Your friend will start dating someone you cannot stand and you’ll have to find a facial expression that says “interesting” instead of what you’re actually thinking. That’s having people in your life. And lately I wonder if we’ve started treating normal friction like evidence that something is wrong.

The internet loves the idea of “outgrowing” people. There’s something very clean about it. You were one version of yourself, now you’re another, and unfortunately certain people no longer align with the new you. Sometimes that’s exactly what happened. But sometimes friendships are just having a bad season. I have friends I’ve been incredibly close to, then barely spoken to, then somehow become close to again. People get into relationships. They move. They get busy. They become obsessed with work. They disappear into some new version of themselves for six months and eventually come back. If I had treated every distant phase as proof that we had “outgrown each other,” I would have lost people I’m very glad I didn’t.

And I’m sure there have been periods when I wasn’t particularly easy to be friends with either. That’s the part I think we talk about less. We spend a lot of time asking whether other people are good for us. Does this friendship add to my life? Do I feel energised after seeing them? Do they respect my boundaries? Are we still aligned? All fair questions. But I sometimes imagine my friends doing the same assessment on me and suddenly I’m a lot less enthusiastic about the system. There have definitely been dinners where I complained too much, times I was distracted, times I disappeared because I was wrapped up in my own life, times I needed more than I was giving. I would hate to think someone went home afterwards and decided I no longer served them. Maybe I was just being annoying that week.

And maybe that’s what bothers me about some of the language around relationships now. It can make other people sound like products we’re constantly reviewing. Good for my energy. Bad for my energy. Adds value. Doesn't add value. Aligns. Doesn't align. People are going to be inconsistent because people are inconsistent. They’re going to have periods where they’re fun and periods where they’re absolutely exhausting. So are you. Knowing someone for years means meeting a lot of versions of them. You don't have to keep every version forever, but I also don't think every version requires an exit strategy.

There’s another thing I’ve noticed, and I’m guilty of this too: the more comfortable you get with your own company, the easier it becomes to make absolutely everything else feel like effort. You have your evening planned. You know what you want to eat. You can watch exactly what you want. Nobody is late. Nobody changes the restaurant at the last minute. Nobody brings a random person you weren’t expecting. Being alone is incredibly convenient. Other people are not. And if convenience becomes the standard, other people are going to lose every time.

Maybe that’s why the birthday thing stayed with me. It wasn’t really about a birthday. Missing one party obviously doesn’t make anyone a bad friend. It was the idea that protecting yourself should always win simply because it’s protecting yourself. I don’t know if I believe that. Sometimes the person you love matters more than the fact that you don’t really feel like leaving the house. Sometimes you go to the birthday tired. Sometimes you answer the phone knowing exactly which man this is going to be about. Sometimes you sit through the dinner, cross the city, change your plans, listen to the voice note that really did not need to be eleven minutes long. And sometimes you say no. The hard part is probably knowing the difference.

I don't want friendships where everyone is constantly sacrificing themselves for each other. That sounds exhausting. But I also don't want friendships where nobody ever asks anything of anyone because we're all too busy protecting our peace. I want the kind where I can say no and still know that, when it actually matters, I'll be there. And I want my friends to know that too.

Maybe taking care of yourself isn't always choosing yourself. Sometimes it's choosing the people who make your life feel like a life in the first place.