At some point, clarity arrives like a blunt instrument. Not a soft revelation. Not a gentle dawning.
More like: Oh.
That is what that was. I realised he did not have friendships the way I thought he did. He had a system—a cast.
A social survival mechanism where every person in his life served a specific purpose, like characters in a story written to stabilise him. I was not his friend in the full human sense. I was the adult. And that stung… but it also explained everything.
There was me, the responsible one. The one who got called when something needed fixing, translating, arranging, smoothing over, cleaning up, or containing. I was the “adult” friend.
Which is a backhanded compliment, by the way.
It sounds respectable. It sounds safe. It also feels like being assigned the role of emergency contact instead of a loved human being. He had another female friends who existed for something else entirely: endless flattery. Not even sexual, not exactly — more like the emotional equivalent of being buttered like toast. Like lemon curd on scones. Praise. Affirmation. Worship-lite.
A third category: his male friends. They were there for tasteless memes, screenshots from Tinder, cheap laughs and group bonding through mockery. Not profound. Not intimate. Not complicated. Just a distraction.
These circles never shall be crossed.
We all knew of each other, but not through each other. And the reason for that became obvious: he did not build a community.
He built compartments.
The more I replayed things, the more I noticed how carefully separated these roles were. His male friends were not asked how to clean stains off curtains. I did not get invited into the fun parts: the Tinder chaos, the jokes, the stupid little social rituals that make friendship feel warm.
I got the laundry, logistics, tech support, and the fixing. And if you are reading this, thinking well, maybe that is just how it happened—no. He flipped out when he double-booked. Not mildly annoyed. Not “oops, scheduling fail.” He panicked. Because the compartments were not supposed to overlap. We were not a Kallax system.
Overlapping would mean people compare notes, or he would have to be a consistent person across contexts, or his assigned roles might be broken.
Note: I was never invited to have fun. He told his girlfriend that I was “boring.” That word landed in me like a stone. Me. Boring.
He wrote the script and saw me as a boring, responsible adult. I was cast as the person who handles the aftermath. Why? Because I went to university. I could hold down a job, and I managed a household. Boring = anyone who was not an addict with mounting debt and dozens of bruises from the bar fight the night before.
Oh right… then I was criticised for not being entertaining inside the prison he assigned me. He did not understand that you cannot keep someone in the role of caretaker and then resent them for not being the jester.
That is not friendship; it is a job.
Friendship is not supposed to be a set of extracted functions. Friendship is supposed to be a reciprocal humanity. It is not one person:
- spiralling, the other containing
- collapsing, the other managing
- needing, the other providing
That dynamic can happen sometimes (obviously, we have all heard The Golden Girls theme song), in seasons, because humans are messy. But when does it become the entire shape of the relationship? When you realise you have been turned into a tool?
You are not a friend, you are an appliance. And the cost of being “useful” is that you stop being seen.
I have realised something ugly and liberating at the same time: Being the “adult” friend is not a compliment when it is used to avoid being an adult yourself. Sometimes calling someone responsible is just a way to make them carry what you refuse to.
It is not admiration, it is delegation.
I built competence out of survival. If nothing else came out of my terrible childhood, at least I became responsible.
But competence attracts takers. And takers do not want you to be fully human. They want you to remain functional. This is where language comes back in—because I think roles are often enforced through language. Through labels and repeated casual statements that carve grooves into how you are allowed to exist:
“She is boring.”
“He is dramatic.”
“She is the stable one.”
“He is the fun one.”
Words create social permission. And when you are labelled as the adult, you are not allowed to need anything back. You are not allowed to be messy or to stop responding.
Because your role is not friendship… it is service.
So yeah, it is often the loudest, most obnoxious people who wear the crowns. Because when someone is cast into the caretaker role, the other person gets to remain the star.
I did not stop engaging because I stopped caring. I stopped engaging because I started seeing. And once you realise someone does not love you as a whole person—but as a function—you do not owe them continued access to your nervous system.
You are not a role.
You are not a job title.
You are not the adult on call.
You are a person.
And friendship is supposed to mean you are invited into the warmth, not just the wreckage.
