There’s a group chat I started about three years ago.
I named it, added everyone, sent the first message, and planned the first dinner. And then the second one. And the one after that. Somewhere in the middle of year two, I started noticing that when I went quiet, the chat went quiet too. Not immediately—there’d be a reaction here, a meme there—but nothing that moved toward actually seeing each other.
I told myself it didn’t mean anything. People are busy. Life gets in the way. I know how to organize things, and other people don’t, and that’s just how it shakes out sometimes.
But it stayed with me.
Because it wasn’t just the group chat. It was the dinner reminders I sent that nobody sent back. The check-ins after hard weeks that rarely came my way. The plans that existed because I made them and wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I had built something real with these people—I still believe that—but I had also built it almost entirely alone.
I’ve been sitting with that for a while now. And the longer I sit with it, the more I recognize what carrying this role for years has actually done to me—quietly, gradually, in ways I didn’t see coming.
1. I’ve started wondering if people like me or like what I do for them
I don’t think my friends are using me. I don’t think they’re calculating. I think they genuinely care about me and would be surprised to hear I’d wondered this at all. But the question has a way of surfacing anyway—usually late at night, usually after I’ve just organized something again—and once it surfaces, it’s hard to put back down.
There’s a difference between being loved and being valued for what you provide. Most of the time, those things overlap enough that you don’t notice the gap. But when you’re always the one initiating, always the one holding the thread, you start to lose track of which one is actually happening. And not knowing is its own specific kind of loneliness.
2. I’ve started feeling tired of people I actually love
This one caught me completely off guard.
I remember sitting across from one of my closest friends at dinner—someone I’ve known for years, someone I’d do almost anything for—and realizing I was tired. Not of her exactly. But of the weight of the thing. Of having made the reservation, reminded her twice, arrived first, ordered the wine, and held the whole evening together before it even started.
The tiredness wasn’t about her. It was about everything that had accumulated around her. And feeling tired of someone you love is disorienting in a way that’s hard to explain. You don’t want to feel it. It doesn’t fit with how you think of yourself. But there it is anyway, quiet and inconvenient and completely real.
3. Letting someone do something for me feels almost wrong
A few months ago, a friend offered to plan something for my birthday. Nothing elaborate—just dinner, her treat, she’d handle it.
I immediately started helping.
Sent her a list of restaurants. Offered to coordinate everyone’s schedules. Started drafting the message to the group before she’d even had a chance to do any of it herself. She finally laughed and said, “I said I’d handle it.” And I had to physically stop myself from responding with three more suggestions.
I’ve thought about that moment a lot since. The discomfort of being on the receiving end wasn’t dramatic—it wasn’t even something I could fully explain. It just felt wrong in a way that sitting with it now tells me something. Being cared for had become so unfamiliar that it read as a problem to solve rather than something to just let happen.
4. I can’t always tell whether I’m doing it out of love or habit
There was a point when showing up this way felt like a genuine expression of who I am. I like taking care of people. I like making things happen. I like being someone my friends can count on.
And I still like those things. That part is true.
But somewhere in the last year or two, I started catching myself going through the motions—checking in, following up, making the plan—and not being entirely sure what was driving it.
Love? Probably. Habit? Also yes. An anxiety about what happens to these friendships if I stop? Maybe more than I’d like to admit.
The moment you can’t tell the difference between something you’re choosing and something you’re just doing, it’s worth paying attention to.
5. I don’t actually know if people would show up for me
I’ve been going through something difficult lately—nothing I’ve announced, nothing dramatic, just a quiet hard stretch—and I noticed that I haven’t told most of the people I’m closest to. Part of that is privacy. But part of it, if I’m being honest, is that I’m not sure how they’d handle it. I’ve never needed anything from them before. I’ve never been the one who called at a bad hour or asked for help carrying something.
The friendships are real. I believe that. But they’ve only ever been tested in one direction, and I genuinely don’t know what they look like from the other side. That uncertainty sits in a strange place—not quite doubt, not quite fear, something in between.
6. Being useful has become the main way I feel like I belong
Somewhere along the way, being the person who holds things together stopped being just a thing I did and became the main reason I felt like I had a place in these friendships. Like the contribution was the membership. Like if I stopped contributing the way I always have, I’d have to find out whether I belonged without it—and I’m not sure I’m ready for that answer.
It’s worth naming what that actually means. It means my sense of mattering in these relationships has gotten tangled up with my usefulness to them.
And that’s not a friendship problem. That’s a me problem—one that was probably there long before this particular group chat, long before any of these specific friendships. The role just gave it somewhere to live.
7. The version of me that exists in these friendships has never been allowed to have a bad day
I’m not sure when I decided that my role in these friendships didn’t include falling apart.
It wasn’t a conscious decision. But I built a version of myself for these relationships that was always okay, always capable, always the one with bandwidth to spare. And that version has held up so consistently that I’m not sure the people closest to me know another one exists.
The hard thing about that is it’s partly my doing. I’ve been the one setting the tone. I’ve been the one who shows up composed and leaves the harder stuff for the drive home. And now the idea of letting any of that drop, of calling someone and saying, “actually, I’m not fine,” feels almost impossible. Not because they wouldn’t care. But because I’ve never given them the chance to, and I’m not sure I know how to start.
8. The thing that made me proud now feels like a trap
For a long time, being this person felt good. It felt like a strength. I was reliable. I was the one who showed up. I was the kind of friend I wished I had more of, and there was something genuinely satisfying about that.
The thing about a role you’re proud of is that it’s very hard to put down. Stopping feels like failure. Asking for more feels like complaining. And so you keep going, keep initiating, keep holding the thread—not entirely because you want to anymore, but because you’ve been doing it so long it’s stopped feeling like a choice.
Realizing it is a choice is the part I’m still working on.
Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.
