In this month’s anonymous letter, a reader describes a friendship that feels close when they’re together but leaves her anxious when they’re apart. Her friend wants more space, while our letter writer wants more consistent communication and time together. Despite many conversations about their different needs, the same pattern keeps repeating. What should our letter writer do next?
See the entire Dear Nina Friendship Dilemma Library.
I love my friend dearly and have worked hard over the last few years to build a friendship with her, because we have so much in common and our lives are intertwined in a lot of ways. This is a friend who is warm, affectionate, and likes to talk about deep things when she is with me, but when she is gone she can be very much out of touch. For example, she isn’t good at replying to texts and rarely initiates.
After listening to your podcast I recognized that I couldn’t always be keeping track of that and just tried to be myself and I counted her warmth and listening skills as her “reciprocity.” However, despite trying to tell myself she cares, I struggle with anxiety and self-worth and am constantly overthinking if she really cares about me or not. I feel really anxious at her silences and when she finally replies or we finally hang out, I feel so good and totally reassured. This relief lasts for a week or two, before the cycle starts again. The hardest part is, my anxiety seems to trigger her desire to get more space from me.
Over the years we keep running into this problem. I have been to counseling, have worked on my own anxious attachment, and have tried to give her the space she needs. We have talked about our different needs and capacities many times. Each time we have a similar conversation. I wish she could be more consistent and responsive and initiate sometimes, whereas she would like more “relational space” to allow her to have her own life and not to expect her to be available or involved on a daily or weekly basis.
Every time we are together we do feel really close. We have shared so many experiences, hugs, laughs, and tears. But we keep running into this: each time I start feeling confident in her love and feeling like we are “besties” or that I can just reach out whenever, that’s when she disappears or has very short replies and starts to seem annoyed with my desire to hang out.
I never know if my texting her is going to be welcome or annoying, or if I ask to hang out if she’s doing it just to appease me or if she actually wants to. I try to give her space, but I also never seem to know how much space she really needs: Weeks? Months? I struggle with jealousy when I hear that she’s gone on a trip with other friends or is hanging out with them, because I feel like she would never go to that effort for me.
I know her capacity for friendship and spending time together is less than mine, but I am starting to think at this point that the difference is in her DESIRE for friendship. I know I need to detach myself from her and recently I told her that I have decided to pull back my efforts to the level of hers. I feel like deep down that means we just won’t be friends anymore. I have other friends, but I do really care about her. It’s hard when my expressions of affection or asking to hang out are seen as “pressure” even when I am trying not to pressure her.
Is there hope for this friendship, or how can I demote a friendship that was so close without heartbreak every time I see her?
I’m glad you’ve worked with a therapist on your anxious attachment in this friendship. And it’s hard to know if your friend tends to pull away from everyone, or if this is a dynamic with you in particular. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t really matter. At a some point (and I believe you’re there in this friendship), understanding why someone is acting a certain way doesn’t change what you need to do about it.
I want to see you stop trying to win her over. From what you’ve described, she’s made her limits clear.
You are certainly not alone in a dynamic like this, which I would say is more than merely an uneven friendship—a topic I’ve written and spoken about many times. As you’ve noted, I often advise readers and listeners not to keep track of who reaches out first as long as enthusiasm and desire for the friendship are found in other ways. But when I strongly suggest not to keep score, I am not saying: settle for scraps. Reciprocity doesn’t always look like equal effort in every area, but there still has to be a sense that both people want the friendship, even if they show it differently.
Your situation goes beyond one person doing most of the initiating. You’ve been trying for years to build a particular kind of closeness with someone who has repeatedly shown you (and told you!) she doesn’t want or can’t manage that level of involvement. You are each describing someone the other is not. There is nothing wrong with your needs and desires in a close friendship, but you can’t force this woman to give you something she’s made clear she can’t or won’t give.
I also want to point out something that may be hard to accept: her warmth and affection when you’re together aren’t necessarily mixed signals. She may genuinely care about you, enjoy your deep conversations, and feel close to you in those moments. But affection and availability are not the same thing. Someone can love spending time with you and still not want the kind of ongoing closeness you’re hoping for.
You said that your anxiety seems to trigger her desire for more space. Then her distance increases your anxiety, and the cycle continues. I’m sure this dynamic has caused both of you plenty of stress. It’s worth continuing to explore with your therapist how to tolerate uncertainty in friendships without needing constant reassurance. But doing that work doesn’t mean you have to keep pursuing this particular friendship as a close one.
You sound like a caring and thoughtful friend. Your worthiness and goodness have nothing to do with this friend and this friendship. It seems that your sense of worth has become tangled up in what this particular friend thinks of you. No more! (Picture me giving you a hug, but also shaking your shoulders gently, too.)
You asked if there’s hope. There is hope, but not the kind you were asking about. I don’t see much hope for this friendship becoming the close, consistent relationship you want. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop caring about her or that the two of you can no longer be “friendly.”
Here’s what I would do next.
