is friendship sacred to you?

on learning to be more intentional toward my friendships in my twenties

photo by Lauren Leekley

On Monday, at noon on the dot, I’m sitting inside of a coffee shop on a beautiful summer day in the middle of June. I’ve found a table placed perfectly under a skylight. Little droplets of sun scatter across the surface and I think about taking a picture, but I don’t. I take small, frequent sips of my maple matcha latte, which was a little too sweet, but I ordered it anyway because the barista had recommended it so excitedly. I eye the door every few seconds, anxiously awaiting the friend I’m supposed to meet here. Grace, one of my close friends of many years, and one of the first people I met in the music industry, just wrapped up a month of touring as support for another band — and the last stop was the previous night in Sacramento, somewhat local to me. I sadly wasn’t able to make it because of pre-existing Father’s Day plans in the evening, and I’d felt that familiar pang of guilt that comes with choosing family obligation over friendship, even when the choice feels right. But we both carved out time for the following day to see each other before Grace flew back home, because we simply wanted to.

I’ve realized as I get older that if you don’t want to spend time with someone, you simply don’t have to. Call me Captain Obvious, but this was something that genuinely took me years to understand fully. Grace and I didn’t necessarily have to see each other on Monday. Making the time was an extra step we both took willingly, because we both wanted to. If I wasn’t going to make it to the show, that could’ve easily been it. A text saying sorry I missed you, and a promise to make it next time they’re in the area. But we both chose to meet up on Monday anyway, and there’s something so pure and genuine to me about that choice, about the way it reveals what we actually value underneath all the noise.

I truly believe that the beauty and strength of any friendship lies in its intentionality — in how we choose to meet each other somewhere in the middle, even if just for a few hours. Even when there are a million other things we could be doing. Friendship used to feel like something that just happened, and now it feels more like conscious choices you make about who gets your attention and deserves to take up your time. Growing up and maturing also means understanding that most of what we understand friendship to be is really just circumstance: you’re friends with someone because you sat next to them in class, because you lived on the same street, because you were working on a project together. But remove the circumstance, and you discover whether there was ever anything real underneath.

Proximity also does not always equal intimacy. A lot of times, we think that because someone is always around, always available, always saying yes, that this constitutes closeness. But real friendship is about choosing and being chosen, repeatedly, even when it’s inconvenient. I’ve started to notice the difference between people who are present because it’s easy and people who are present because they’ve decided you’re worth the effort. My social circle might have gotten significantly smaller since being a teenager, but it’s not because I’m being left behind. I used to worry about that being the reason why, but really, I just began to gradually categorize who is genuinely interested in being a good friend to me, and who is willing to set aside time to work things out on the remix the minute things get rough.

It’s almost mathematical, the way some friendships reveal themselves to be convenient rather than something that was chosen. Who shows up and who makes excuses? Who remembers and who forgets? It’s not that I’ve become calculating, exactly, but I’ve definitely become more aware of patterns. I notice who stops reaching out when I stop initiating, who changes the subject when I mention something difficult, and the difference between those who make time and those who promise to make time. Anyone can say they value your friendship, but not everyone can maintain it when it becomes inconvenient or when something better comes along.

A tried and true test of real friendship is seeing who truly values your time and energy enough not to waste it. I had a friend once who would call me with the same problem every few days, narrating the same situation with slight variations, asking for my thoughts like I’d never verbalized them before. We would spend countless hours dissecting what things meant or didn’t mean, what she should do about it, and I’d offer my perspective carefully, thoughtfully, the way you do when you actually care about someone’s wellbeing. Then she’d thank me, hang up, and proceed to do the exact opposite of everything we’d just discussed. And the cycle would repeat itself over and over again: the same crisis, the same request for advice, the same disregard for anything I’d said.

It was uniquely exhausting. And I’m not claiming that friends always have to take each other’s advice — the point is whether they’re engaging with you as a person with thoughts worth considering or using you as a way to hear themselves think out loud without having to sit alone with their own thoughts. I started to notice that she never asked me how I was doing — well, at least, not really. She would ask in that performative way people do, but the moment I started to answer, I could feel her attention drifting, waiting for her turn to redirect the conversation back to her problems. Our friendship had become a monologue disguised as a dialogue.

I think we tell ourselves that being needed feels the same as being valued, but they’re completely different things. Being the eldest daughter is something that follows me everywhere; this sense that I’m responsible for other people’s feelings, that their emotional stability is somehow my job to maintain. So when friends treat me like their personal therapist, it doesn’t feel like a hassle; it just feels familiar. It feels like what you were put on earth to do. But something I’ve had to learn the hard way is that being the person everyone calls when they need something is not quite the same thing as being loved. I constantly get caught up in a loop where I confuse being needed with being special, but really, it just makes me tired. Turns out, being needed can actually be the most isolating feeling in the world when you realize someone only reaches out to you when there’s something they want.

It got to a point where I felt so drained that I had to explicitly ask for that topic not to be something we talked about together anymore. I knew there had to be more to our friendship than just this, more she wanted from me than my ability to absorb her anxiety and reflect it back to her in a more organized way. But that boundary wasn’t respected, and eventually I had to take distance from the friendship entirely. The experience taught me that some people see you as a resource rather than a person, and that real friends understand that friendship requires reciprocity. Not just in listening, but in actually valuing what you have to offer. But more than that, it showed me the difference between someone who wants your advice and someone who wants your attention. That the friends who only call when they need something aren’t really friends at all. Most of the time, they’re just people who have learned that you’re generous enough to give them what they want.

As I approach my mid-twenties, and I witness more and more of my friends get into serious relationships, I’ve also learned to observe what happens when someone starts dating — because that’s when you discover who actually values your presence in their life. I’ve always felt like when someone is unable to sustain friendships while dating, they’re simply showing you exactly how they understand love. But then there are people like Grace, who still want to carve out a few hours to grab coffee even when they’re exhausted and could easily just go straight home. Or people like Ginny, another one of my best friends, who take care to introduce you to their partners instead of keeping it separate, and understand that caring for one person doesn’t require forgetting everyone else. When I first met Harry, he was just Ginny’s Boyfriend to me (they’re fiancés now, and yes, their names are really Ginny and Harry) but over time, as I’ve gotten to know him, he’s genuinely become my friend, too. I feel like most people aren’t aware of how much easier and how much more fun it can be when you let your worlds collide in that way. To me, Ginny and Harry are living proof of that.

Something I’ve always loved and admired about Ginny is how she has never once disappeared into her romantic relationship. Instead, she invited me and our other friends to get to know him as well. The moment he really started to feel like my friend and not just one of my friend’s boyfriends is so clear and vivid in my mind: I’d been a few months out of a long-term relationship, where the aftermath was pretty messy, and I felt like regressing a little bit. I posted about how I was feeling on my spam account close friends story, which I’d included Harry on, and he immediately snapped me back into reality by reminding me how bad the situation had been before, even making fun of my ex to make me laugh, feel better, and ultimately, continue moving on. And Harry, if you’re reading this, I mean this in the best way possible, but it felt as if he were one of my girls pulling me out of delusion. I could tell he wasn’t just being nice because I was friends with Ginny. He genuinely wanted to do me a solid by bringing me back to earth during my moment of weakness — because we were friends, too. At the end of the day, Ginny including her significant other into her universe of platonic connections never, ever felt like an afterthought or an obligation, it just felt like she wanted the people she loved to occupy the same space, and to see what she saw in each of us.

And I’ve tried to do a similar thing whenever I have a romantic interest in my life, just because it’s always felt like the natural thing to do. It’s idiotically simple to me: if I care about you, I want to give you the chance to know and maybe even grow to love everyone else I care about, too. But even when I’m not in a relationship or entanglement of sorts, I still try my best to connect all the different loves in my life by introducing my family to my friends. For example, after we all hung out together a few times, Harry and my younger brother, Luke, are actually friends on their own now. They’re always sending each other funny reels on Instagram, which Ginny and I find hilarious and adorable. I genuinely think that if done correctly and organically, introducing all the people you care about to each other and having them all exist in the same (or at least similar) circles only makes the love that already exists even bigger and more present. Literally the epitome of the phrase the more, the merrier. I’ve always thought Ginny and Harry are amazing examples of what healthy integration looks like. The healthiest relationships I’ve witnessed are the ones where both people bring their whole selves, including their friendships, into the partnership.

Back in the coffee shop, about five minutes pass by, and I’m mindlessly stirring sweetener into my drink when I hear someone say Hello? and I whirl my head around to look, but it’s not my friend, not yet. Just another person beginning their own small ritual of meeting, of choosing to be present for someone. There’s something special about sitting in this waiting, about knowing that in a few minutes my friend will walk through that door and we’ll spend the next few hours talking about everything and nothing, the way you can only do with someone who actually sees you. It’s such a simple thing, but it feels revolutionary when you’ve spent years accepting less.

It’s not that I’ve become closed off, or more introverted, but that I’ve learned the difference between being open and being available to everyone. Some people earn the right to know you fully, while other people are content with the surface version, and that’s fine too. What’s not fine is giving everyone the same level of access and then wondering why you feel so drained. Because as you get older, your energy starts to gain a limit, and you understand that saying yes to everyone sometimes also means saying no to yourself.

You learn that boundaries aren’t walls, and that one of the biggest favors you can do for yourself is simply refuse to settle for relationships that leave you feeling exhausted and empty. Friendship is sacred to me in a way that demands intentionality. It’s not just a suggestion or a concept to me anymore, it’s something that just has to happen. I’ve learned to tell the difference between people who show up and people who promise to show up, between people who see your friendship as essential and people who see it as optional.

And if someone can’t recognize the sacredness in what you’re offering, then the kindest thing you can do is stop making space for them and start making space for someone who can. I’m learning to trust that the right people will always find their way to you.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​