My Instagram poll on your most common friendship struggles revealed that issues with reciprocity hover at the top. For advice on navigating these issues, I want to tell you about my driver, Ted.
On the road to a speaking event, I started chatting with Ted. He mentioned that his wife died last year from cancer, and that he didn’t know where he’d be if he didn’t have friends. His 70th birthday was approaching and he was having trouble keeping the guest list under 40, much to his son’s upset. In other words, Ted was a friendly guy.
Knowing the research on how older men tend to struggle with loneliness, I asked Ted what his secret was. “Don’t keep score,” he said, “be willing to be the one who reaches out. They’re happy to hear from you, even if they never reach out themselves.” In other words, give up on reciprocity.
While I appreciated Ted’s advice, I knew it wouldn’t work for me. For my closest friends, I require reciprocity. If the reciprocity isn’t there, we can be friends, but we won’t be close. But I also don’t think anything was wrong with Ted’s approach.
Sometimes relationship advice is too one-size-fits-all, ignoring the heterogeneity in how different people experience the same events. For example, one study found that when anxiously attached people viewed a threatening face, their amygdala—the part of their brain associated with negative emotions and stress—was triggered more intensely. When people with low self-esteem faced potential rejection, another study found, they released more cortisol (a stress hormone) than people with high self-esteem.
Some of us, like Ted, may be perfectly at peace in a one-sided friendship. Others, however, may be pumping with cortisol, or teaming with stress at the thought of it. No one should endure friendships that make them feel chronically lousy, even if those same friendships make others feel fine. We need to know ourselves, our needs, and our boundaries to make the right call for us (I realize this is an ironic thing to say from someone who has given a lot of advice on friendship).
So next time you’re in a one-sided friendship, I’d like you to ask yourself do I have the capacity to give grace? By that, I mean can you be at peace in a one-sided friendship, or does it trigger resentment, stress, and feelings of unworthiness in you? If it’s the latter, you have your answer.
