Ask The Flytrap: Do I Need New Friends?

Welcome to your new favorite advice column from your favorite feminist journalism collective! New editions are published every Wednesday. Read on for the drama, the tea, and the commiseration—and if you want to submit a question, scroll on down to the bottom of this post for more info.

Let's get into it:

Dear Flytrap,

I find myself these days more and more unable to reach out to friends about my own needs. I've always been the friend others can depend on to listen and give advice, but as the world burns down it's feeling harder than ever to ask those same friends for a listening ear or for support. When I do reach out with a dilemma or hard feeling, I usually find it answered with a heart reaction or a quick pivot to what's going on in everyone else's lives, which starts the cycle of just not reaching out anew. The longer this persists the harder it get to share my own needs, and the more burdened I feel with everyone else's problems in addition to my own.

Do you have any advice for finding folks interested in a more reciprocal relationship even as everyone is struggling, or how to be more persistent in getting my own needs met with the friends I do have? I am in therapy and on meds, and they're both great, and yet I've found this to be a persistent issue even among friends I know care about me a great deal. Is this just the way things are for everyone right now, or is there hope for finding a friend group that provides more equal support?

Thanks!

— Friend in Need of a Friend

Hello, Friend in Need!

This question really hit me. I, too, am historically the Bulletproof Friend among my people, an identity I have cherished and cultivated. It's a good feeling, to be the Bulletproof Friend. Until it isn't. As you know.

Humans love roles and scripts, especially among entrenched groups like families and longtime friends and workplaces. And in a lot of ways, those things are necessary—they help us relate to each other and understand ourselves. But people and their needs change, and getting a group to participate in role-shifting, even briefly, can be surprisingly difficult. In my experience, this has to be done explicitly and with intention.

I think your easiest way into getting what you need is to create a situation in which the roles and script are clear, even if they deviate from your social milieu's usual. That script is: We are gathered here today to support Me, Your Friend In Need. You will have to engineer this situation, which is its own work, but I suspect that, since there's already a friend-support model in your existing group, your people can and will adapt. Carve out a time that is specifically about you and the thing you need support on—could be an in-person hang, or a thread in the group chat. Say explicitly: "Friends, I am < going through a thing > and am looking for < support, commiseration, advice, etc. >. I need us to dedicate this time/space to < your shit >." Depending on how bold you're feeling, you can even name the dynamic: "I know I don't usually air my grievances and ask for a lot of support, but I am really struggling right now and could use some dedicated time with my people to work through < my ish >."

It is possible, even likely, that you will need to say and do this more than once. You might even have to name it in real time, if your people shift back to the old dynamic. If anyone asks, I officially deputize and encourage you to do so. (ACAB, but I'll play Bad Cop here.)

You say you know your friends care about you a lot and I believe you, so I am optimistic that your friends will respond well to this. They may have been failing to show up for you previously because they thought that you don't like or want, rather than don't need, this kind of attention/care, or think the heart-reax was adequate in the absence of being told it wasn't, or just not know how to care for a Bulletproof Friend, or be wrapped up entirely in their own shit. In any case: That's all good information to have.

It may be that not everyone in your group can or will show up for you, even when explicitly asked; it's okay to save that information for future use and decide that not everyone is the kind of friend you need when shit gets hard. You can adjust how much you share/support with them in return, and that's an entirely valid choice. We don't need to be everything to everybody, and we can't expect everyone to be everything for us, but unmet/unstated expectations in any kind of a relationship are a recipe for resentment, and resentment will 100% kill any relationship dead after a time. Nipping that resentment ASAP is the best way forward, either because it will get you closer to getting your needs met from your current people, or it will remove the guesswork about expanding your circle.

To the question of building a new kind of friendship with new folks: This is a both/and! You can pursue this at the same time you seek the support you need from your existing folks. I don't think showing up to your new knitting group on week three and immediately dumping all your worst problems on a bunch of people you barely know is the best plan, but you can absolutely start experimenting with new ways of relating to folks who maybe don't already have an established script/role for you. Get to know them on mutual, genuine terms, and lightly feel out what happens when you float some lower-stakes ish. Go into new relationships with this explicit intention, and see if new folks surprise you with more willingness to engage in emotional give-and-take.

You're right that it feels like everyone is going through some real bullshit amid < gestures wildly > everything. The world is a really fucked up place right now. A lot of stuff is harder than it used to be, for awful (fascism) reasons. But also for boring, normal reasons—as we age, we naturally change and face different challenges and adapt differently. The stakes tend to get higher, and time seems to shrink; we can feel urgency ramping up as we age, making it so that something that might not have fazed us years ago really causes us agita now. Which is to say, in case you need to hear it: It's okay to need support from your people even if you never asked for it before, and you're 10000% allowed to ask for it.

Let us know how it goes? In the meantime, I'm sending supportive vibes your way.

— Andrea

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