By Todd Ler (with contributions from Phil Ossefie and Pierce Ng)
TLDR: Yes because we have nothing to lose, unless we’re busy, then maybe later.
Our main concern
After we’ve ascertained that we’re indeed not the problem here because we’re trying, it’s going to be very tempting to conclude that they’re to blame. The next logical thought would be
“should I cut ‘em off?” or “should I stop texting first and see how long before we become strangers again?”
Anything along those lines.
I may be wrong, but if we told internet communities that lately our interpersonal relationships have seemed one-sided—that our friends of any Tier aren’t reciprocating or don’t seen to care about us—something tells me most of the internet will call us losers, then recommend cutting that relationship off.
Since this is an article by losers for losers, our main concern is:
How many lousy friends can we cut off before we have no friends left?
If the answer is “a lot,” then what are you even doing here reading this article lol? You can stop now and go right ahead with pruning your life. For the rest of us, this whole section will deter being trigger-happy with removing friends from our life.
Too much “focus on ourselves”
Often when the internet calls us losers, it comes with the common advice to “focus on ourselves.”
Don’t get us twisted, here at LTA we are big proponents of self-improvement, it’s the Condition for Tier C friends—being interested in life and therefore interesting to others. It’s generally good to strive in our career or have hobbies.
However, too much focus on ourself is being self-absorbed and plain selfish, which is problematic for several reasons:
First, selfishness can lead to pursuing personal gain at the expense of the well-being, needs and feelings of others. This has repeatedly been established throughout history as terrible.
Second, let’s say we attain success without any collateral damage, but we neglect our personal relationships in the process. Now, despite all this financial freedom and time freedom, we have nobody to spend quality time with (see note).
Note: We love Shaq and it’s not the best example so we’ll swap it out when we find something better. We don’t know what led him to not having his quality people around to spend time with, but a scenario like that is still something we want to avoid. We only wish him the best.
This relates to the third problem: having no personal social lives, free from business agendas and productive motives, could potentially stunt us emotionally and turn us into miserable, bitter people who are far more likely to do bad things with our power.
Working on ourselves is truly an easier access solution because it’s about independence and doing what’s within our control, without need for others. But the goal is:
- To solve neediness to better attain or maintain friendship
- Not discard friendship from our lives
We don’t have to need them, we shouldn’t need them, but it’s great to want friends and seek genuine human connection.
It’s about creating those favourable conditions that facilitate expressing ourselves in ways that human beings actually connect with, referring back to “like each other’s company” and “having fun.”
That means friends meet each other not because we’re rich and successful, but being rich and successful makes it easier for friends to meet. We wanted to spend our time with them anyway.
The case AGAINST cutting ‘em off
In theory, lousy friends who don’t care about us are problems in our life. It leads us to feel lonely, needy, unwanted, inadequate. Cutting ‘em off should reduce the problems in our life.
It should fulfill self-care, self-respect, boundaries and prioritize relationships that are mutually beneficial and therefore truly important.
However, friendships in real life are less straightforward. People change and go through ups and downs all the time. They can become distant because of all sorts of reasons, some of which could be temporary.
Prematurely or wrongly cutting off “lousy” friends could counterproductively lead to more problems. We could feel even more isolated because we’re reducing the size of our support system, and that’s on top of still feeling lonely which we’ve already been for a while.
This would be especially bad if we already have few friends. It could worsen our social withdrawal. We may even reach a point of alienation—being uncertain of our belonging to a normal-functioning society, asking ourselves,
“What if there’s something fundamentally wrong with me? Am I incapable of being normal? Am I unable to have friends? Am I not meant to?”
These already sound scary and could be the start of a dangerous downward spiral. Our mental health would be in a much darker place than the initial neediness caused by lousy friends.
Defeats the point of a friend
Friends are supposed to be people we actually like spending time with and want to pay attention to. Usually we can only reach this state by making a safe space, communicating openly and actively forgiving where applicable.
Friends generally already understand each other better (than strangers and acquaintances), given the cumulative interactions together, we’d know each other’s personalities, quirks and beliefs fairly well. And friends still want to understand each other better because we’re genuinely interested in each other’s lives.
So coming to a decision to cut our friends off by ourselves wouldn’t be very friend-like of us. It doesn’t sound like we’d have expressed ourselves honestly or sought our friends’ perspectives on the conflict.
FOR: Fixing it takes two
“But that’s the problem in the first place!” -oh, that our non-reciprocating friends don’t seem to be trying to accommodate us in their life? It’s always something? And we’re trying to address the problem but they’re the ones who can’t even make time to do that with us?
These problems could be:
- Communication breakdown – where they’re not fully aware of the impact their actions are having on us
- Personal struggles – challenges affecting their ability to engage actively with us
“Yeah, even if life may be busy, it can’t really be months on end of this lackluster reciprocation, right? Is it really that tough on them, or are they just kidding themselves and us? Actually, even if it is tough on them, if I mattered enough, wouldn’t they still make time for me?”
Defense: Generously patient
How long is too long for our friend to be lousy is individually subjective, “months on end” is just one example. Problems like communication breakdowns and personal struggles tend to be more temporary in nature, so the best case scenario is that hopefully the problem doesn’t last “too long.”
Hopefully, it turns out that all we needed to do was to wait just a little longer than we already did. But of course if that doesn’t happen, we can’t wait forever. It does take two, so it’s tough to defend our stance.
All we have is something about being generous with our patience:
Be so patient that our lousy friend can take as long as they want to come back around, and we’d welcome them back with a smile.
And it shouldn’t break our hearts or kill us inside that the only way to be friends with this person is by being unbothered with their absence outside of face to face interactions. Of course, it’s easier said than done. But, if we can find it in us, why not give it a shot? It can only go up from this point since the relationship has already reached an all-time low.
Track record
It’s often the case that friendships have value prior to the current issues, such that ending it would result in a sense of loss, even regret. The strength of emotions in the heat of the moment can make it easy to forget, ignore or downplay that
there have been aspects of the friendship that made and kept us friends in the first place.
A history together, filled with shared experiences, memories, common interests and emotional kindredness, are what led to liking and understanding our friends in the first place.
They have probably made life more enjoyable, been a reliable source of support during low phases and provided emotional, mental, or even practical assistance. The friendship could have enabled personal growth and development, contributing positively to our lives over time.
FOR: They changed too much, too permanently
“If they used to care so much more for us in the past, how could they not make time and effort in the present for us now? Are we not important enough to them anymore for them to make time for?”
Depending on the context or history of the friendship, a sustained distance can be puzzling. People change all the time, so when we say our friend changed “too much,” yes, it means they could’ve become someone who sees us as no longer important enough to make time for in their lives.
It sounds a lot like the “I don’t even know you anymore” scenario—which has been the most clear-cut reason to cut ‘em off so far. These problems could look like:
- Changing priorities – toward career or a different network
- Mismatched expectations – about the level of involvement and effort required in the friendship
Unlike the previous problems of communication and struggles, these problems sound more permanent and therefore more likely to change the friendship to never be the same again.
Defense: Re-learn about them
We don’t know enough about this version of them that doesn’t care about us. There’s always the chance that it could just be a phase.
Communication is still key to gaining clarity on the situation to explore possible solutions or at least compromises. Understanding the underlying reasons can help determine whether the friendship can evolve and adapt to the current circumstances.
Maybe we can see it as renewal? Newfound interest in the aspects of their lives that have made them less inclined to meet us. Since we already “don’t even know them anymore” and they’re just “somebody we used to know,”
viewing them like a new friend that we’re interested in finding more about, or an old one we haven’t seen in ages, could make the interaction a better experience for both of us.
It shouldn’t matter so much that a friendship is never the same again, since life evolves constantly. There’s even a chance that because it’s a good time, it may re-ignite more meetings again, thanks to us leaving behind our angst and negativity.
Vicious cycle reversed? Hopefully. And if it’s not, that’s really ok too. At least we tried.
— continued in How do we avoid being doormats? #8 —
For a friend,
Todd