In her latest book, my boss and Mamamia Out Loud co-host, Mia Freedman, writes that friendships aren’t always mutual.
Sometimes you’ve drifted apart, or no longer have anything in common. Perhaps you’re not as compatible as you once thought. The end doesn’t need to be dramatic or confrontational, she says. We just need to understand that it would be completely unsustainable to remain friends with everyone we’ve ever met in our entire lives.
Many of us subscribe to the belief that friendships should be for a lifetime. That we should make the effort. But where on earth is that coming from?
I often feel great anxiety about the friendships I’ve let go. The people I used to work with, or the friends from school I no longer see. I grieve them. But life is busy and messy, and friendships inevitably end.
Mia Freedman, Monique Bowley and I discuss the phenomenon of the obligatory friend. Post continues below.
Vanessa Van Edwards wrote a column published on Medium last month titled, “The Obligatory Friend.”
“What happens when you realise an old friend has become an obligatory friend?” she asks.
An obligatory friend is someone who, “you don’t enjoy spending time with, but end up spending time with because you feel guilty, it’s a habit or you do not know how to stop,” Van Edwards explains.
Top Comments
Yeah, I'd say that's good advice; I've actually used it myself. (Just keep in mind that some people might not be in a financial position to do things. And in a related manner, for events that have a required/expected dress code, may not have clothes they could wear. This could be why they are not contacting you.)
But aside from 'obligatory friend', I'd also look at if you are a 'fall-back friend': even if someone is contacting you, if the only times they do so is to ask you to go to things with them that they don't have anyone else to go with, then you're the 'fall-back friend'.
I agree partly. I definitely have a few friendships that have run their course - I still care about those people though - but I don't enjoy catching up anymore.
I also have friendships that I really value, and I don't want to lose touch, but we all lead really busy lives and sometimes it takes real effort to organise to catch up - yet if you don't, although the warmth remains if you catch up after along time, often the easy familiarity is gone. I wouldn't want to do the "don't text" test with these friendships. At times in my friendships I might be the one to miss replying to a message or take a really long time, and at other times it might be a friend - if we each started doing some type of rule about the other having to make contact first, we would never see each other! If you value the friendship I'd say stay in contact, don't take it too personally if you don't get much response sometimes, but yeah if it happens consistently (and you know it's not because your friend is struggling or withdrawn or something) then maybe let it go.
I have a bunch of male friends from work that regularly manage to have a night at one of their houses to catch up. They all have crazy jobs, many kids between them, but they still find the time. In comparison, trying to get more than 3 of my female friends together at one time is like herding cats. I put it down to women not giving enough value to their non-family relationships and diminishing the importance of interests outside of kids. Maybe us women need to act like men when it comes to catching up with friends.