There’s been a lot of talk online lately about adult friendships: how hard they are to maintain, how busy everyone is, how “life just happens.”
Just take a look at r/FriendshipAdvice or r/Adulting on Reddit. I’d say 80% of the posts in those communities are about maintaining adult friendships.
The most common sentiments floating around social media include:
• The “I’m too busy” defense. Case in point, this Reddit comment: “I would love a friend, but between keeping my marriage healthy with my husband and raising 2 under 5 I honestly do not have time for anymore relationships. I came to this realization about a week ago.”
• The self-care > everything movement, exemplified by a content creator who said, and I quote: “…maybe they’re just prioritizing rest, peace or their boundaries, which is fine.” (I translated this from Filipino to English for my non-Filipino readers.)
• The belief that adult friendships naturally fade or require less effort. Some people assume that as you grow up, your preferences change, so you just “grow apart.”
People are defending their right to prioritize family, careers, and self-care — and they’re not wrong.
But here’s the thing: when friendships consistently land at the bottom of your priority list, they stop being friendships. They become placeholders. Background noise. Emotional storage lockers you plan to open again someday when you finally have time. And that’s not what friendship is supposed to be.
I understand all of this. I really do. Life gets overwhelming. Priorities shift. No one can show up at full capacity all the time.
But at some point, “busy” stops being a circumstance and becomes a choice. Because friendship, like any other relationship, requires maintenance. And when it’s repeatedly deprioritized, that message lands — whether we intend it to or not.
Friendship Requires Maintenance
Why is friendship always the first to go?
Friendship, like any meaningful relationship, does not run on autopilot. It needs checking in, follow-through, and mutual effort.
We don’t expect marriages to thrive without communication. We don’t expect careers to flourish without showing up. Yet somehow, friendship is treated as optional — something we’ll return to once life settles down.
Friendship is not a lesser relationship. It’s not a placeholder until romance arrives, children are born, or careers stabilize. And yet that’s exactly how it’s treated in adulthood: optional, flexible, endlessly forgiving.
We don’t apply this logic elsewhere. We don’t tell our partners, “I’ll check back in after I give birth.” We show up to work tired or even sick, because we know constant absence leads to consequences. We don’t excuse emotional distance in family relationships by calling it self-care — we still reach out to the son who’s acting out, or the daughter who’s withdrawn.
But when it comes to friendship, neglect is often reframed as inevitability. Suddenly it’s called “growing up” or “setting boundaries.”
Why is friendship always the first to go?
Reciprocity & Responsibility
Friendship, like any enduring connection, requires maintenance. Not constant availability. Not daily communication. But intentional effort, mutual responsiveness, and the willingness to show up even when the timing isn’t ideal.
When someone says, “My priority right now is my partner, my child, my job, myself,” what they are also saying — whether they mean to or not — is that friendship ranks lower. That it can wait. That it isn’t urgent or essential.
And while people have every right to choose their priorities, friends also have every right to believe the message they’re being sent. And to feel hurt by it.
Because relationships are built not on intention, but on behavior.
You cannot claim closeness while offering distance. You can’t ask for understanding while offering silence. You can’t keep withdrawing and expect the other person to keep giving. That’s not friendship. That’s emotional convenience.
Sometimes, friendship asks more of us than convenience. Sometimes it asks us to show up tired, overwhelmed, grieving, or stretched thin. Not because we are obligated, but because that is the cost of having a village that doesn’t disappear when things get hard.
Community isn’t built in ideal conditions. It’s built in the middle of ordinary, messy life.
To treat friendship as less than other relationships is to misunderstand its value. Many of us survive adulthood because of our friendships — because someone checks in, remembers us, makes time, and chooses us again and again.
That kind of connection doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because both people decide it matters.
“But Life Is Just So Busy…”
I can already hear the rebuttals:
“But I have kids.”
“But I’m barely surviving.”
“But I’m going through something.”
“But I don’t have the bandwidth.”
All valid. I believe you. Life is heavy. There are seasons when showing up for anyone else feels impossible.
And listen — I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been the unavailable one: sending “maybe next time” messages, letting texts sit on “seen” for days. I’ve also been the one whose invitations go unanswered, whose voice notes go unheard, the one who waits.
What I’ve learned is that while unavailability might start as necessity, it often turns into a pattern. At some point, it becomes a choice. We start choosing to be unavailable to our friends.
That internet quote says it best: “What you allow, you choose.”
So what happens? We coast through life, choosing everything else over friendship, and then one day we wake up lonely, wondering: “We used to be so close. What happened?”
Here’s what happened: you chose this.
Here’s the nuance: acknowledging your own limits doesn’t erase the impact of your absence. Both can be true. You can be stretched thin and still unintentionally hurt someone who kept reaching out. You can love someone and neglect the relationship until it no longer feels mutual. You can have good reasons — and still cause real harm.
The problem isn’t the hard season. It’s using the hard season to justify indefinite silence.
If a friend says, “I’ve been feeling distant from you,” and your first response is “I’ve just been busy,” you’re asking that friend to understand your life — without offering understanding in return.
Relationships work two ways. If you want grace, you have to offer repair. If you want the friendship to survive, you have to let people in — even just a little. Even a simple “I don’t have capacity right now, but I still care” can be enough.
That one sentence can be the difference between a friendship that grows through the hard parts, and one that quietly dies from neglect.
It’s okay not to have capacity in the moment. But the question remains:
When will you?
No one is asking for constant attention or unrealistic energy. But friendship requires awareness. If you can’t meet up, can you send a voice note? If you’re overwhelmed, can you at least acknowledge the message? Can you show up in small ways that still say, “I haven’t forgotten you”?
Because while we all need space, what we also need — desperately — is each other.
Choosing Friendship
Sometimes, sustaining a friendship means choosing it — even when it’s inconvenient. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re busy.
Adulthood pulls people in a dozen directions: jobs, children, partners, errands, rest, religion, family events. Every hour gets claimed. All of that matters.
But would it really be so much to skip one gathering with people you see every week? Would it be so terrible to miss one Sunday service to make space for someone who’s been waiting — patiently — to feel like they still matter to you?
I’m sure Jesus won’t send you to hell for rescheduling once.
You cannot build a lasting friendship on leftover time. You cannot claim to value someone you never make space for.
And honestly — would you be happy eating someone’s leftovers? So why should your friend be satisfied with the leftovers of your time?
When every other part of life gets prioritized, and friendship is always the thing that can wait, the message being sent is clear:
“This relationship doesn’t matter enough.”
Maybe you think your friend understands. Maybe you believe they’ll always be there when things settle down.
But here’s the truth: no one waits forever. Even the most understanding people eventually stop reaching out when they realize they’ve become optional.
Adult Friendship Is a Choice
The idea of “adulting” shouldn’t mean we lose our capacity for care and connection. If we want true community, we can’t ghost each other in our busiest or hardest moments.
Friendship doesn’t fall apart because people get busy. It falls apart because people decide — consciously or not — that it can wait. That it’s optional. That it will still be there later.
But relationships don’t survive on good intentions alone. They survive on effort, reciprocity, and the quiet decision to keep showing up.
And when friendship is consistently treated as expendable — something to return to when life calms down — it eventually stops waiting.
Not with a confrontation.
Not with anger.
Just with distance.
That’s how most friendships end in adulthood. Not because of conflict, but because one person kept choosing, and the other kept postponing.
How about you? Have you lost a friend this way?
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