On being the friend everyone comes to with their problems — and never the other way around.

I am, by most accounts, a good friend to have in a crisis. I listen well. I don't give unsolicited advice. I show up. I remember things — the names of people's difficult colleagues, the outcomes of their medical appointments, the anniversaries of things they've lost.

I have been this way for as long as I can remember. It's not a persona I constructed — it's genuinely who I am. But sometime around my early thirties I started noticing something: the flow of need in most of my friendships moved predominantly in one direction.

The experiment

Earlier this year, going through something difficult of my own, I decided to test the reciprocity. Not in a manipulative way — I genuinely needed support and I decided to actually ask for it rather than processing things privately as I usually do.

I reached out to four people I would have described as close friends. I told each of them something real — that I was struggling, that I wasn't okay, that I could use someone to talk to.

One responded immediately and was exactly what I needed. One responded two days later with a message that was warm but redirected the conversation to her own situation within three exchanges. One checked in once and didn't follow up. One didn't respond at all — I know they saw the message.

What I took from this

I want to be careful here not to be self-righteous about this. People are busy. People have their own struggles. The friend who didn't respond may have been in something themselves. I don't know.

But I think there's something worth examining in the pattern. When you become known as the strong one, as the capable one, as the person who has things together, people stop checking whether that's still true. The role calcifies. You become a resource rather than a person who also needs things.

And if I'm honest — and this is the uncomfortable part — I enabled this. I trained people over years to see me this way by never showing the parts that weren't composed. My self-sufficiency was real, but it was also a wall.

What I'm doing differently

I'm being more inconsistent. I'm letting people see me when I'm not okay. I'm asking for things more, in small ways, to recalibrate what people expect of me and what I expect of myself.

It's uncomfortable. The identity of the strong friend is, in its own way, a comfortable one — it comes with clarity of purpose and a sense of being needed. Giving that up, even partially, means sitting with more uncertainty about what I offer and what I need in return.

But I think it's necessary. You cannot sustain a friendship that only flows one way indefinitely. Eventually you run dry, and you're left wondering how you got there.