Am I the bad friend?
Friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson recently came to a realization about her social media engagement: Any time she posts content that centers the viewer as the wronged party of the story she is telling — like how to know if your friends are venting too much or why your friendship expectations feel mismatched — it performs extremely well with her 420,000-plus followers across Instagram and TikTok.
“We tend to really notice when we are done wrong, when others are forgetting about us,” Jackson said. “We are center to the story.”
These numbers are part of a larger shift that Jackson and other experts have observed when it comes to modern friendship. These relationships are increasingly seen as something to engage in when it’s convenient or beneficial — specifically when they are beneficial to you. In short, friendship today has a touch of selfishness. Everyone wants to have good friends but are less concerned with how to be a good friend.
Most people say friendship is important to them, but often act in ways that contradict that sentiment. We want friends to show up to our birthday parties but might not bat an eye at canceling on them. We yearn for connection but only want to hang out if it’s at the right time, right place, and with the right people. Otherwise, staying home is far more appealing. “The socializing opportunity has to be so overwhelmingly positive or appealing that it’ll tip the scale,” William Chopik, an associate professor of social and personality psychology at Michigan State University, told Vox. And platonic relationships are still generally considered secondary to romantic ones, mere nice-to-haves to fill the hours when your partner is busy.
The inherent self-centeredness of social media, where you are the main character, and the popularity of AI chatbots that are always available and never tire of hearing about your life, may also be skewing our idea of what it means to be a friend. One of Chopik’s students casually likened friends to NPCs — a non-playable character populating the background of a video game — as if your BFFs lack an inner life or purpose of their own. While you are certainly the main character in your own life, you’re not the center of your friends’ worlds.
Selfishness is the biggest contributor to friendship breakups, according to behavioral science research, which means that stepping outside of yourself and making an effort to be a good pal can be the difference between a lasting friendship and a failed one. Selflessness doesn’t mean people pleasing or being a doormat; it’s more about considering how you can enrich your friends’ lives to harbor goodwill. And it involves looking at what you bring to the table instead of only thinking about what your friends can offer you.
Would you be friends with you?
People often consider how their friends can augment or support their lives but fail to think whether they would meet those same standards. Jackson suggests getting specific with all of the qualities you look for in a friend: a good listener, supportive, doesn’t cancel plans, offers tangible support when needed, among others. “Could another person say you’re doing a great job of actively meeting those things?” Jackson said.
In reflecting on this, you may start to see areas where you could be a little more selfless. For instance, maybe every hangout with a particular friend involves getting dinner because you enjoy it, but you never stopped to ask whether that’s what they want to do, or you assumed it was fine because they’ve never pushed back. The relationship shouldn’t be solely on your terms.
Being a good friend is more than simply holding affection for another person, which can be amorphous and hard to define. Instead, think of concrete examples of what Jackson calls “inconveniences” to gauge the extent of your selflessness. A friend called in a panic about their sick child, and you helped talk them through the emotions. You attended a friend’s poetry reading on the other side of town after a particularly hectic day. The goal here is to take stock of tangible ways you’ve performed the work of friendship that solely benefit the other person.
Of course, it’s natural to focus on your own desires and preferences. But the people who are “communally motivated” — inspired to care for the welfare of others — tend to have better relationships and are happier overall. “How can we be more communally motivated?” said Bonnie Le, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “I think about it as being attuned to what other people need.”
That might mean planning an at-home movie night for a friend who lost their job and is looking to save money or thinking of other ways to cheer them up that you know they’d really appreciate. You’re reflecting on the context and constraints of their life to craft a hangout that benefits them, even if it’s slightly inconvenient for you.
You can’t know for sure what’s going on in another person’s life until you ask, however. (This is especially true with new friends you don’t know well.) Consider the last time you inquired into how your friends were really doing or followed up on something they shared weeks ago. When you hang out, who’s doing all the talking? The ratio of sharing to listening should generally be balanced over the course of your friendship.
Relative parity is really the key. In her research, Le has found that people who are “selfless to the point of neglecting their own needs” and who are bad at asking for help don’t feel as satisfied with their lives compared to those who gave and received support. There will always be periods of give and take in long-term relationships — a friend going through a breakup will need your support, and they’ll ideally return the favor when the time comes — but, on the whole, one person shouldn’t always be in the position of emotional caretaker.
Give and take is important, but healthy relationships don’t involve keeping score, said Jaimie Arona Krems, an associate professor of psychology and the director of the UCLA Center for Friendship Research. “Yes, people are attending to how much their friends cost and how much their friends benefit them. They’re not completely blind to it,” she said. But you’re probably not going to think much about these costs until your friend is absent when you need them the most, and you realize how much you’ve supported them without ever being helped in return. While this seems contradictory, this willful ignorance is beneficial, because as soon as we admit our care and affection is conditional, the relationship becomes transactional.
Reframing selfishness as something that actually improves friendships
Friendship and goodwill is an investment — and, in a sense, that’s a little selfish. Sure, it has the potential to do a lot for another person; they feel supported, validated and, yes, entertained. But it also is good for you personally. It’s uplifting and energizing, makes you happy, gives you an opportunity to vent, and imbues your life with meaning. If you need a reason to be more selfless when it comes to the happiness and well-being of your friends, remember that the same goodwill comes back around eventually.
“It pays to help your friends even when your friends don’t know that you’re helping them, the same way that it pays to nurture an oak tree whose shade you benefit from,” Krems said. “Your nurturance of that tree benefits you through that tree’s growth — and the same way your nurturance of your friends will come back to you.”
This cycle is buoyed by trust. You trust your friends will continue to show up for you, will prioritize your preferences, and show curiosity in your life as much as you do theirs. Getting to this point takes time and repeatedly showing up even when there’s nothing to gain immediately. “When you have two selfless people, like in a marriage, who want to outdo each other,” Jackson said, “then, man, there’s such freedom in not having to do the mental labor of calculating whose turn it was, who’s been doing more than the other.” Because, contrary to what social media would have us believe, friendship is a two-way street, not a self-serving enterprise.