January 9, 2025

Hello, Happy New Year, and welcome back to The Society Newsletter!

Every week we're publishing this newsletter exclusively for you all at The Society Premium level where Chelsea shares her personal thoughts on a different topic, recommendations, and everything in between.

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❤️ TFD

I've been thinking a lot lately about the crisis of reliable friendship. As someone who shares quite a bit about hosting and entertaining -- and who has a book on the subject out this fall! -- it's a pretty dominant theme in my life. And the more content I create on the subject, the more I'm made aware that the norms and etiquette around reciprocal friendship have started to fall apart. Every day, videos go viral of people (usually women) who have painstakingly prepared a party to which no one showed up. Every video I make about this or that aspect of hosting is filled with comments about guests' flakiness, or being the only person to host in a group, or generally not finding other adults who share this investment in friendship.

And to be fair, my current social setup (where I have wonderful guests who also, themselves, regularly host me) did not come to me by accident. For much of my adult life, I felt frustrated by that lack of reciprocity in my social group, or would be heartbroken the night of a special event by people who bailed last minute. I learned, only after much trial and error, that good adult friend groups demand curation. Part of that is having honest conversations, but part of it is accepting when a friendship is no longer worth investing in. (It's never an easy thing, but learning to accept when someone isn't matching your energy and moving on offers a lot of relief after the initial sadness.) One of the most exciting things about getting older, for me, has been this increasing level of intentionality and effort in platonic relationships, something I think demands a level of maturity we often just don't have in our twenties.

When I made this video -- stitching another creator whose lovely-sounding party went totally unattended -- many people directed me to this creator. A few days ago, she made a video about our need to step up in friendships and be more accountable. Unsurprisingly, the video quickly went viral and led to her being attacked on a fairly wide scale, ostensibly for the crime of suggesting that friendships should demand a level of reliability and effort from all parties, even when we don't always feel like offering it. On the surface, this is a totally common sense thing for a therapist to say -- sometimes adulthood means showing up, because that's the basis of strong relationships! -- I understand why it was received so controversially.

Essentially, we've entered a time where the most dominant strain of therapeutic advice on the internet encourages the opposite behavior. Everything is framed in terms of the self, and even our most hurtful choices (such as not showing up to an important event because we don't feel like it) are reframed as empowering because they are centering our own desires. There is a strong undercurrent of not owing people, and even talk of basic acts of friendship in terms of labor. The obvious issue -- that our choices directly impact others, and constantly prioritizing the self is antithetical to building community -- is brushed aside. This kind of framing positions us each as the center of our own, hyper-individual universes, and insists that any interrogation or boundaries around behavior done in the name of self-care is itself aggressive.

And as with many conversations on the internet, nuance is flattened in favor of the most extreme examples. Just like rightful criticisms of fast fashion are often dismissed with talk of some people only being able to afford Shein, so, too, are we often redirecting these conversations about basic adult relationships to bad-faith digressions. On my video about intentionally curating friend groups, there were the inevitable comments about what if you have an emergency, or what if you're in a mental health crisis, or what if you physically can't be present?

Obviously, there are always going to be situations that prevent us from showing up, but in the case of the specific video I was stitching, five of seven RSVPs canceled the morning of the event. In no world do I believe that all five of those guests had force majeure events preventing them from attending. Like in many situations, I'm sure most fell on a spectrum of "didn't end up feeling like going" to "didn't even want to go in the first place."

The issue with this framing -- that having standards of reliability from friends is somehow unfair -- is that it totally ignores the role of communication. Not totally sure you'll be able to attend or afford something? Don't agree to go! Looking likely you may not make it? Give the most heads up possible! Having to cancel something? Apologize, and proactively suggest another activity to show that this person is a priority in your life! Can't make in-person gatherings? Schedule video chats! Write emails! Find ways that show respect and care for the person you want in your life, or accept that they may not want to be!

Showing up late regularly, whether or not intended, is actively disrespecting someone's time. Cancelling plans, not showing up places, not even RSVPing? This often edges into the territory of also wasting their money. Our friends have every right to demand a certain kind of respect, because at the end of the day, friendship is a completely optional thing. And perhaps it's that aspect that bothers me most about the mutated therapy discourse that so fully rejects the needs of others in favor of the self: it acts as though these relationships are owed to us.

Whether or not a therapist will tell you, the truth is that all friendships -- hell, all invitations -- are privileges, and subject to terms and conditions. Centering ourselves in every relationship, refusing any effort or accountability beyond exactly what we feel like doing, might feel good in the moment. But it is also very likely to land you with few friends, and even fewer friends who are willing to go the extra mile for you. Friendship isn't labor, so to speak, but it does require a level of effort from both parties, and the least of that effort is actually showing up when we say we will.
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— C