Nobody taught me how to be a friend. My mother didn’t have girlfriends, not really, and even with a sibling in the house, I grew up without a working model of what the give and take of friendship was supposed to look like. I watched plenty of relationships up close growing up, the good, the complicated, the ones that shaped me in ways I’m still unpacking. Friendship, the real kind, with reciprocity and repair built into it, wasn’t one of them.
So, I built the skill from scratch, as an adult, with no blueprint, and for a long time, I built it badly. Not because I didn’t care. I cared enormously, more than most people ever knew, because caring loudly wasn’t something I’d learned how to do either. I just didn’t have the tools. Nobody had ever shown me what to do with conflict except survive it, minimize it, or disappear from it entirely. So that’s what I did, over and over, to people who probably deserved a version of me that knew better.
Here’s how badly. In my twenties, I had a friend who was gay. Her being gay never bothered me for a second. What I couldn’t handle was when I started to feel like she was attracted to me and leaning on me the way you’d lean on a partner, not a friend. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask her what was going on or tell her where my line was. I just froze, panicked, and disappeared. Ghosted her completely. Not because of who she was, but because I didn’t have the first idea how to have an uncomfortable conversation with someone I cared about. I wasn’t mature enough to set a boundary out loud, so I set it by vanishing instead.
That wasn’t the only time I did it, and honestly, it might not even be the one I carry the most shame about. During my first real abusive relationship, I had a whole set of friends who wanted nothing but good things for me. They saw what was happening, or at least sensed it, and they tried to reach me. I cut every single one of them off instead. That man came close to ruining my entire life, and rather than let anyone see how bad it actually was, I hid it. All of it – the abuse, his drug use, his jail time, the massive amounts of money wasted, the shame- I hid it all. I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone knowing I wasn’t perfect, that the put-together version of me they’d always known was cracking under something I couldn’t control. So, I did what my muscle memory knew how to do, the only move I had. I disappeared from every person who might have actually helped me. I wasn’t a good friend to them in that season, not even close, and I know that now with a clarity that still stings. I’m still ashamed of that failing, if I’m being honest with you. Not the relationship itself, I understand how those things happen and I don’t beat myself up over having been in it. I’m ashamed of the friends I shut out while it was happening, the hands that were reaching for me that I refused to take.
That was my whole playbook back then. Somebody crossed a line, real or perceived, or I got embarrassed, or something felt like too much for me to explain out loud, and I just left. No conversation, no closure, no chance for either of us to understand what happened or repair anything. I didn’t handle conflict. I avoided it, completely, and I called the avoidance strength for years before I understood it was actually the opposite.
Underneath that avoidance was a set of expectations nobody could have met, because I set them without ever announcing them out loud. If I consider you a friend, I will go to the ends of the earth for you, no question, no hesitation. But I spent decades assuming everyone else operated on that same frequency, and getting quietly devastated when they didn’t, without ever telling them what I needed in the first place. That’s not fair to put on another person. I know that now. I didn’t know it then, and I definitely didn’t know it while I was busy protecting an image instead of asking for the help that was right in front of me.
By the time I hit forty, I was tired of managing all of it alone, tired of being the one who gave everything and got confused when it wasn’t mirrored back, tired of ghosting instead of talking, tired of hiding my worst seasons from the people who might have actually walked through them with me. I said forget it, I’m going to live how I want, and if people don’t like it, they can deal with that themselves. That sounds like I stopped caring. It’s actually the opposite. It’s when I started caring enough to stop hiding behind a proxy version of myself and actually show up as the real one, softness, mess, and all.
Therapy is where I learned that the capable & assertive version of me and the soft version of me were never two different people. I’d spent years thinking I had to pick one, armor up and be unbothered, or stay quiet and get walked over, or worse, disappear entirely so nobody could see the parts of me that weren’t holding it together. Turns out you can hold a boundary and still be tender. You can say no to somebody and still love them. You can let people see you struggling without it costing you the relationship. Somebody had to teach it to me, but knowing it and it actually sticking are two different things, and it didn’t stick until I was well into my forties.
Here’s where I am now. I have few friends. My circle is small on purpose, and I’ve made my peace with that. I have plenty of acquaintances who believe they’re my friends, and honestly, that’s fine with me too. I’m a private person about my own stuff, I don’t talk about my past much, but I’m fun to be around, and a lot of people only ever get that version of me. That’s okay, and I’ve made peace with the fact that not everybody gets full access, and that’s not a character flaw, it’s a boundary. I genuinely enjoy being alone, always have, I’m an introvert at heart no matter how vivacious I learned to perform in a room. My alone time is where I heal and where I gather back up whatever I spent on the long days of communicating, advocating, and holding space for everybody else’s feelings. Some folks think my extended stretches of alone time are strange for someone as social as I am. Good for them. I do what my own heart and mind need to settle, and everybody else is welcome to focus on their own backyard. I use real boundaries these days instead of disappearing acts. I still see a therapist, not because I’m broken, but because she helps me keep an honest eye on my own intentions and my own missteps in real time, before they turn into another person I quietly wrote off. I’m not perfect at this. I don’t think I ever fully will be. But I know how to have the conversation now instead of the vanishing act, and that’s the friend I wish I’d known how to be a long time ago, for the people who reached for me and got nothing back but silence.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone in it. A lot of people are carrying real pain around how to connect with other human beings, and our world has made it easier than ever to just opt out entirely, to let a screen stand in for a conversation, to let isolation pass for independence. If you’re struggling with this, truly struggling, find yourself a good therapist. Not a bad one who just nods along like you’re telling a nice story. A real one, who will push you toward the uncomfortable work of actually changing the pattern. It’s worth every dollar and every hard hour it takes.
Have you ever had to unlearn a friendship habit that wasn’t serving you? Tell me in the comments.
