I'm in my thirties and I finally understand that the friendships I lost weren't lost because I changed. They were lost because I stopped performing the version of me that made the relationship possible, and nobody told me that was what had been holding it together - Silicon Canals

I'm in my thirties and I finally understand that the friendships I lost weren't lost because I changed. They were lost because I stopped performing the version of me that made the relationship possible, and nobody told me that was what had been holding it together - Silicon Canals

Briefly

"I understood, with a clarity that felt almost chemical, that neither of us was actually in the room. We were running a routine."

"The friendships I lost weren't casualties of time or distance. They ended when I stopped doing the unpaid emotional labour that had been keeping them alive."

"Most advice about adult friendship assumes a clean model: two people, roughly compatible, drifting apart because life gets in the way."

"A lot of friendships don't end because people change. They end because one person quietly stops doing the thing that was holding the whole structure up."