Not every friendship deepens.
For a long time, I believed that closeness was something that naturally would grow and develop in a friendship. If you shared enough time, enough laughter, and enough history, the relationship would eventually deepen. You’d find yourself inside of what we call intimacy, something that I fully longed for throughout my life. In my experience, care felt like something that accumulated quietly, without needing to be called out or examined too closely.
As an adult, I’ve learned that this isn’t always true.
There’s a pattern that I keep running into. It’s a pattern that almost always sends me reeling into a familiar series of questions about myself— my worth, my needs, and my sense of connection. When I recognize this, I tend to have a hard time trusting myself. But now, I’m learning a lot about how to reframe my friendships in a way that honors the relationship and honors me.
Now, what I’m musing on isn’t why this keeps happening, but how I respond when it does. I’m learning to stop chasing emotional reciprocity as proof of my worth.
I keep finding myself emotionally attuned to people who operate on a flatter frequency.
You meet someone and have things in common, or you share hobbies you can do together. We send memes and reels back and forth, we game together, laugh together. We trade bits of backstory, personal lore.
You might start spending a lot of time together. Seeing them, talking to them, becomes a small beacon of light in your life. Over time, you’d consider them close. They might even say the same about you.
For me, love tends to show up when attachment, care, and emotional intimacy are present and working together. Love isn’t a stepping stone to something else; it’s where the friendship can live and grow.
I’ve heard how dangerous it can be to share deep, formative memories and experiences with someone. How those stories can become the bonds that strengthen affection, or soften something in your chest. Put simply, it can be risky to offer the deepest parts of yourself to someone if you have no intention of loving them.
This affection grows in a way that feels organic. But inevitably, after a while, things start to feel…off. Like we’re not on the same page.
I keep running into situations where my friend isn’t able to meet me where I need them in the moment, emotionally. If I’m going through a hard time mentally or emotionally, they just can’t offer the kind of presence I need — even something as simple as a listening ear or words of encouragement feel out of reach, and my emotions are left hanging.
And it starts to make me feel awkward. No other way to really describe it. Like I’ve exposed too much. Like I’ve reached out and I’m met with a closed door.
Internally, I notice how my body responds to the dissonance I feel with others.
There is a sense of having misjudged the room.
