People Who Constantly "Audit" Their Friendships Are Not My Kind of People

an essay on friendships, how to stay close, how to let go, how to find nuance & everything in between <3

Hi friends, so happy to be writing to you today. Excuse the fact that it’s been over a week, which is a long time for me—we’ve been moving into our new home! With the move, I feel like every single crevice of my brain space has been taken up with overwhelm, unpacking, organizing, and adjusting to all of the ‘newness’ of this fresh start & new area, so even when I’ve had the time and space I haven’t had the brain capacity to write or even really think. You know the feeling?

However, I am so happy to be landing in my body, back on this earth (lol but seriously) again. Today I woke up and thought to myself, “I’m so back, baby. My brain works again. Hallelujah!” Had myself a little iced coffee, took a cold shower, signed the kids up for a fun indoor gym with their nanny. ventured out to a cute coffee shop by our new house, and here I am… posted up, ready to go! I will write more about the move soon because I have a lot to say, but today I wanted to tackle another subject: friendships. The nuances! The feelings! The emotions of it all! How to keep them, how to let go, how to sniff out a narcissist, and how to cultivate peace within your relationships!

I posted this on my stories a couple of weeks ago and received an astonishing amount of replies from you guys agreeing with the sentiment & asking me to do a deep dive. I was thrilled, because I am so down for a bigger chat on this topic. Read the below story snippet for a breakdown of my thoughts that we’ll dive deeper into today:

I’ve written a few posts on friendship in the past (like this one on friendship breakups) and would truly like to write a whole book on the topic one day, because it fascinates me and is also deeply important to me. Friendship is such a nuanced topic and there are so many layers to it, and with all of the opinions out there right now I feel as a thick and thin ride or die in my friendships kind of person, I have the responsibility to talk about this. By no means am I perfect in this realm or in any realm, but I do have a legion of loving, unconditional, wonderful friends from every stage in my life and then some—and that is probably the thing in life I am most proud of.

Obviously, as with anything, no way is the right way to do friendship. All of our personalities are so different, what I look for in a friend is going to be very different than what you look for. There will be things I can ‘get past’ and things I cannot, that will likely be different from what those non-negotiables would be for you. That said, I do think there is a respectful and loving way to approach friendships that I think a lot of people are sadly missing in this day & age because of this age of insanely over-therapized speak and deeply self-indulgent ‘rules’ we have for our friends in the name of ‘having boundaries’—although the ones that get it, get it. People who get the nuance. Pure hearts. Those are my kind of people.

The main thought I want to write about today is: the ultimate ick, which really is a form of sadness, I get from people who feel they have to constantly “audit” their friendships. I find it to be self-indulgent, unnecessary, sad because it leaves little room for complexity, and honestly… a tad narcissistic. Now just to make it clear, I am not saying that you need to keep everyone in your life always. I think it can definitely be warranted to release friendships from your life, and that can be highly cathartic and healthy. What I’m talking about here is the way that somehow between the rise of ‘TikTok therapists’ and how popular it is to ‘be in your villain era’ and ‘cut people off in the name of health’ and do ‘energetic cord cutting’ with people just because maybe they did one thing you didn’t like—we’ve somehow lost the plot.

We’ve lost the complexity of how beautiful it is to witness someone in all of their humanness, to hold space for their faults and imperfections, and to be in company with unconditional love in which you know your darkest little crevices will also be seen, witnessed, and forgiven. The problem with these consistent ‘friendship audits’ (there are many terms for this, but this is a popular one I see floating around) is that it often cuts a friendship off at the limb… leaving an open wound on both ends exposed. Especially for the ones willing to feel it. It often feels like an excuse to not have hard conversations or to shy away from being honest, and really doesn’t leave much room for a friend to be going through a hard time or to show ‘all sides’ of themselves. To me, the statement feels a lot like, “let’s be friends until I see you do anything I don’t 100% like or agree with,” which of course, is not an accepting way to move through life.

Friendship auditing people out of your life is a form of radical non-acceptance disguised as self-love. It’s a form of using and twisting very valid therapeutic approaches like loving yourself and putting yourself first and discovering new parts of yourself—but twisting them into something they were not originally designed to do. It is my feeling that people who feel the need to live this way are hiding from parts of themselves and holding many layers of themselves that they are not personally okay with, and thus not wanting those things to be reflected back to them. What makes me the most sad about it as someone who can feel & see the energy ‘between the words’ in the room… is that it feels like the harshest form of self-judgment and dislike of oneself there is: to not allow yourself to be truly seen by another.

In my experience, content & happy people who love and accept themselves the most have the easiest time in friendships. There are many exceptions to this of course, because even happy people can go through months or years of unhappiness and challenging circumstances. But at the end of the day what all people who have an easy time in friendships have in common, I believe, is purity of heart. The ability to see oneself and see another and love all of the parts. To not judge the rougher edges within others, requires first not judging the rougher edges within ourselves. The ability to maintain a friendship is the ability to see someone in their all-ness. It’s next to impossible to love every single thing about someone, just like it is impossible to feel that way about ourselves. But my feeling is that to relentlessly see the best in someone and cheer them on through all seasons of life is what a true, unconditional friendship is.

There is definitely a reason why I got such a huge response to this post on my Instagram story. I think it’s also because sadly, the spiritual space has hijacked this conversation and turned ‘cutting friends out of your life’ into a bit of a bait for spiritual evolution. And while that may be some people’s definition of spiritually evolved, it’s not mine. Spiritual evolution to me means having more love in your heart, not less. It means loving yourself first and foremost and having such a strong, resolute resilience in your own heart that you have the actual space to hold for others at the same time—both friends who have found their joy and happiness in life and radiate it back to you, and friends who are still searching for their own joy and purpose. The ability to have friends from all walks of life, people who you agree with and who you don’t, and an understanding that we are all different and that’s what’s so beautiful.

I think another reason why this is such a hot topic right now is because the years since 2020 have been a rollercoaster of rapid spiritual ascension, and time has been moving in a very different way. I feel the timelines for a lot of friendships got either sped up, broken down, or cut off. The last five years have just intensified everything. And in the last five years, I have both moved on from and released many friendships in my life AND held on to many/most of my most longterm friendships & connections. Because this era, The Age of Aquarius baby, really is operating on a whole new timeline and with such rapid ascension… I feel this is even more of an important conversation, or else you may turn around one day and realize you ‘protected your peace a little too hard’ and may eventually have no friends left. Or, in other words, you are not letting anyone truly see you, or truly love you.

Also I want to say this, there is a huge difference between getting to know someone and realizing they aren’t your cup of tea and so not choosing to pursue a real closeness with them (NORMAL), and cutting off someone who you’ve had years of closeness with over something trivial and small that goes unspoken or doesn’t warrant a ‘friendship breakup’ (NOT NORMAL). I don’t want my feelings on this to get misconstrued as me saying that you have to get along with everyone and be friends with everyone. There are plenty of people I don’t get along with and/or have sort of gotten to know over the years and have chosen to keep a big distance from. What I am talking about in this post is that when you do let someone into your heart, when you collect them as a true friend and vice versa, that is something special. Something sacred. And that should be protected at all costs.

In my opinion there’s nothing worse than making cutting people out of your life a symbol of spiritual hierarchy. I had a particularly painful friendship breakup/fallout that I tried to get clarity on in recent years, and the false-spiritualization of it all that was thrown back in my face when I approached the situation with my own clarity & purity of heart was shocking. Yet, it was all I needed to know to show me that we are not only on different pages, but different planets. We do not want the same things in friendship (and we do not view spiritual evolution in the same way), and I thank the universe for blessing me with that fallout so that my energy can go toward the pure-hearted friendships I deserve in return.

I have lots of personal experiences in this realm but I don’t feel I can fairly tell those stories because I am just one side of them! What I will say is this: for a pure-hearted person, the best and most beautiful thing to find is another pure-hearted person. Two pure people can ride the waves of friendship and have an amazing time together, no matter what comes. That’s the main thing I look for in people now, and it has helped me only attract and magnetize those types of friends into my life for the most part.

The only time I feel it’s warranted and in alignment for me to “cut ties” with someone is when one of my non-negotiables has been broken. I have a clear list of non-negotiables I won’t bore you with but the main one is: pure energy & good intentions. If I start to feel bad energy or super gossipy/judgy soul sucking darkness, it’s not a fit for me. If someone is blatantly disrespectful to my kids or my husband, I’m out. And if someone gives no energy in return to me giving all of the energy, I am also not interested. I have a few other things on my list but it mostly all comes down to energy. Energy does not lie!

I would love to hear your thoughts. Please share them with me below! And just as I ended the IG story post with, I’ll say this: be mindful of this nuanced convo next time you see someone preaching friendship audits & cutting ties with wild abandon. The more spiritually evolved someone is, the more space and love and acceptance they have in their heart. Those are my kind of people. <3 That is all!

PS. Shoutout to all of the amazing friends in my life. From friendships of 30+ years to my college friends, wellness industry friends, new friends, and everything in between—I am grateful for you and I see you with your pure souls. If you’re reading this and you got this far, you’re a real one. ILY.