I came across this sentiment yesterday on Reddit in a thread about whether a friendship should be abandoned due to one party being so ill for the past few years that they are unable to socialize beyond perfunctory texts. The statement makes total sense to me and I agree with it. And yet the comment was downvoted a bunch of times. So what do you think?
I agree it would be unfair to abandon a long-established friendship just because a person’s hardship keeps them from being able to meet up for weekly Happy Hour. It would also be crappy to cut off ties just because someone’s dealing with a chronic illness that sometimes makes them emotionally unavailable.
But it also seems to me that if someone’s burdens are so intense that they are unable to offer you anything in return and the situation doesn’t appear to have an end in sight, then it should be OK to step back from that relationship. If I became a long-term invalid, I wouldn’t want someone to feel obligated to keep tabs on me out of pity or guilt. I would want them to keep tabs on me because–despite it all-- I’m still able to elicit good feelings in them and provide them with something they wouldn’t otherwise have. If there aren’t good feelings between us, I wouldn’t consider that a real friendship. So I wouldn’t blame someone for noping out of the relationship with me until I’m able to elicit good feelings in them again.
What do you think? Do you think friendship should be mutually beneficial in some shape or form? Or do you think friendships that are fueled solely on good feelings are “fair weather” and that loyalty is more important?
You bond with someone over a shared hobby. Let’s say, hiking. You guys are hiking buddies. Hiking is pretty much of all the two of you do together since you don’t share other interests.
One day your friend severely injures himself. He is no longer able to do the hiking thing or anything else that is physically intense.
You hang out with him a few times. All he wants to do is sit in front of the TV and watch football and drink beer. You hate both football and beer. You would rather be out in nature, but your friend isn’t about that life anymore. Probably because being outdoors reminds him of what he has lost. Your friend declines to do any of the activities you suggest, even those that aren’t physically demanding. Being crippled out in public embarrasses him. So that means no movies, no shows, no museum visits, no music festivals, no bar hopping, no nothing. Just TV and beer and superficial conversation.
Are you a shitty person for letting this friendship fade?
Would you be dumping him because his health has declined? Or would you be dumping him because you no longer have anything in common?
It may be that the issue is one of definitions- because if I only do one thing with someone ( hiking, bowling, playing chess, whatever) to the point where I might call them " my X buddy" , I don’t really consider them a friend. Just like I don’t consider my neighbors “friends” simply because I chat with them on the stoop and people at work aren’t my friends just because I sit with them at meetings and have lunch with them. There are all sorts of social relationships based on a shared activity/interest/circumstance that end when that activity/interest/circumstance ends. Friends are the people I hang out with unrelated to any activity , go on vacation with, invite to my kid’s wedding, continue to communicate with even though they’ve moved hundreds of miles away and we can no longer hike together. They’re the people I visit when I travel to the place they now live, and the people who visit me when they come to NYC.
I guess I don’t have friends, under the definition you are using. And lest it sound like I am being a sadsack over here, I am 100% OK with this. I have always considered myself a loner and it is only recently when I have felt comfortable describing others as “friends”. But they are friends of circumstance. Take away those circumstances and I don’t think there would be anything there.
Dumping a friend because they are unwilling to reciprocate in making you feel happy seems very different from dumping them because they are unable. Granted there’s not a sharp line between the two, but then, much of the time there’s not a sharp line between being friends and not-friends.
I’ve certainly had friendships that dwindled to annual 'Happy birthday! messages for years on end, due to practical reasons, which then restarted up again when circumstances allowed. I might well cut back when someone’s barely responding, but that’s not the same as cutting them off.
A friendship I’m no longer getting any pleasure from, with someone who damn well could put their fair share of effort in to improve it but isn’t, that one I might cut off.
I guess I don’t see a meaningful difference between letting a relationship fade because you think a person isn’t willing to reciprocate versus letting it fade because they are unable to. Like, if over the past few years, a long-time friend only calls me up when they need help and is never there for me when I need help, that is going to wear on me. Even if they have very good reasons for not reciprocating.
I don’t think I would ever tell someone “I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” But if I don’t get any enjoyment being with someone, I will probably stop accepting invitations to hang out with them and stop initating conversations with them. I think the question for me would be how long to give a relationship before doing the fade-out thing. I think holding out for a couple of years is reasonable, but I could see holding out longer if the friendship used to be really deep.
Does it have to be all or nothing?! Sure, no expects you to sit and suffer for hours, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t call or text to inquire how he is doing and offer other suggestions for things you might do together.
I’m sorry, but your “hypothetical” strikes me as a massive effort to contrive a scenario that would make it okay to abandon a friend simply because he isn’t entertaining enough anymore.
It doesn’t strike me that way - but that may be because of the “definition” issues.Let’s say I know somebody from bowling. For the past X years, we’ve bowled in the same league and we socialize on bowling night. Maybe we even have a drink after the league. I hear that s/he’s sick or injured. I don’t call or text or visit because I don’t have this person’s phone number because I have never needed to contact them before. And I wouldn’t offer other suggestions for things we could do together, because if our relationship hasn’t deepened over the past X years, I feel no obligation to work at it now.
But this situation is very different from the situation of a friend who I bowl with and go to baseball games with and I invite to my superbowl party and whose family I know and he knows mine and so on. And if he got sick or injured, of course I would call/text/visit. And if course if he could no longer bowl, we could continue doing the other things that we were already doing.
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Okay, so the friend in the example has become unable to offer much, but they don’t seem to demand much either. If I fall ill I would like my friends to keep in touch occasionally, I think that would contribute to my mental health.
So to contribute to this staying the social contract in my culture I will offer the same to any friend who falls ill. Friendships are mutually beneficial, if you integrate over everyone’s relationships as a whole, which in my view is the better approach than making your personal interactions wholly transactional.
Similar here, also part of the situation with me is a heavy focus on relationships with my nuclear family, also extended family. But I’ve found in virtually all cases when I don’t have the original activity/setting in common with former classmates, co-workers and activity-sharers we fall out of touch. And my current friends are really more my wife’s friends or wife’s friends’ husbands than mine.
Assuming it was a person I was long term or lifelong active friends with, then they got sick and I ‘dropped’ them because of it, I could see other people thinking poorly of that and me feeling bad about my own actions. But some of us for better or worse don’t have those kind of friendships outside their family, where a different set of obligations and expectations kicks in.
And there are lots of other cases where people politely call themselves ‘friends’ that don’t reasonably require a permanent relationship when the reason for the original relationship is gone. Although in other cases one might restore or expand contact with somebody in that category if they have a difficult time. I’m thinking of people we’ve visited at home or in the hospital when they were sick who we only ever said said a casual ‘hello’ to previously (note: anyone is free to ‘deconstruct’ any apparent kind act into ‘well you just did that to make yourself feel better’ and who knows?, it’s not worth debating IMO). Also I guess if a coworker I was once close to but fell out of contact with when we no longer worked together fell seriously ill and I learned of it, that would be a reason to reestablish contact at least for a visit, v zero contact now.
Sure, but at some point it should be OK to admit to oneself that he or she is only going through the motions and not really engaged in a sincere relationship. Like, if a person is motivated to call or text someone just to keep up appearances (i.e. not wanting to be perceived as a shitty psychopath), then are they really being a friend?
I will be the first person to admit to not seeing the point of a friendship if there is no entertainment or any other positive experience involved. I can definitely see myself being there for a loved one even if circumstances make it hard to be around them. But it wouldn’t be friendship keeping me bonded with them but rather love. I don’t know whether I can say I actually love (rather than like) my friends. Maybe that makes me a shitty psychopath. I don’t know.
I can also see myself staying committed to someone out of a sense of duty and social obligation. Like an older neighbor who lives alone and needs some looking after. Or someone who was once a friend but is now a shadow of their former self for whatever reason. But in such a case, I would not consider this person a friend of mine. If a sense of duty is the only thing driving me, I wouldn’t feel like they were my friend.
Pretty much this. Business relationships should be mutually beneficial. Friendships can be beneficial to one or both - and beneficial in completely different ways. Friendship, like love, doesn’t have to make sense to anyone outside of the people involved.
You have defined the difference between “acquaintance” and “friend”.
It’s always seemed to me that there’s a sort of hierarchy… friendly acquaintances, friends, and then Friends (with capital F). Friendly acquaintances are people you’ve met, maybe hung around with a bit. An example might be a good Friend’s co-worker who shows up to happy hour every Friday. You’re friendly with them, and may chat with them, but your interactions are constrained more or less by happenstance- you happen to be at happy hour at the same time and know some people in common.
Then there are lower-case f friends. These are the people you typically hang around with most of the time- you are reasonably intimate with their lives, you make sure and invite each other to big life events like weddings, etc… If they asked you to help hide a body, you’d call the police right away.
And then there are capitol F Friends. These are your boon companions, your lifelong friends who stick with you, and you stick with them through hell or high water, good and bad, etc… You’d help them hide a body, no questions asked.
If a friend of yours told you that they hang out with you solely out of guilt and not because they enjoy being around you, how would you feel? Because I would feel rotten if I learned people were only connecting to me out of guilt or pity. I would rather be alone than have friends like that.
I don’t think a friendship has to be equally reciprocal or be mutually beneficial at all points in time. But I am having a hard time imagining a real friendship where one party doesn’t get anything out of it except possibly a feeling of virtuousness.
I guess my friends are small caps. I think I would probably help them hide a body as long as they give me the dish afterwards. And that dish had better be good.
You give an example that is not friendship, but obligation. Can you not fathom, for example, an able bodied person being a true friend to someone confined to a wheelchair with limited ability to communicate? It happens, fortunately pretty frequently. I guess all I can do is share one of my favorite quotes - “The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.” The original author is likely lost to time, perhaps it originated with Charles Haddon Spurgeon, but it applies well to this thread. Sometimes one is a friend to another who cannot and never could reciprocate in kind. I, for one, am glad of it.
Growing up, growing different, growing apart–that’s totally natural and good and healthy. I don’t even know where any of my childhood friends are. They all grew up to become rednecks and we gradually lost respect for each other. We parted on good terms, but there was a mutual understanding our happiness lay down separate paths. What DIDN’T happen was one day my hiking/kayaking/shooting buddy decided to bag all that and take to the couch & NFL. Just not a realistic scenario.
If a hanging out-type friend gets laid up with an injury or illness, and becomes “boring” during their convalescing period well that’s the test of your bond isn’t it. If you ditch, you are the definition of a fair weather friend and your sick friend will remember the depth of your loyalty. No need to face judgment for that, but you need to know that about yourself if that’s how you roll.
All relationships, including friendships, should be a net positive in your life. But ‘good feelings’ is a benefit, and I think most of the terms in the OP are being used in a way that are different than I would use them. In the example given, if all the person can do is occasionally text, then I’d just occasionally text them and text them back. I don’t see why I’d want to abandon the friendship with the person, as I’m still staying in touch with someone I like and it’s not holding me back from my own life. I have a friend (former partner) who has moved a long distance away and who is bad at staying in contact, but I’m still happy to see them when they have energy for communication or are visiting where I live.
It’s also important to establish boundaries and limits. My parents had a long-time friend who had a stroke and was highly incapacitated. They helped out a lot, taking care of bills and cleaning while he was out, and a decent number of their mutual friends talked about how they expected to move him in with them and provide long-term care for him. But they had to gently explain to people that while he was their friend and they were willing to do quite a bit to help him out, they weren’t prepared to give up the rest of their lives as caregivers, and that if he didn’t recover enough to regain independence then they’d help get him into a nursing home. Some people might say that’s abandoning a friend, but I certainly wouldn’t agree.