Is inconvenience a worthy cost of close friendship? | Canada Voices

Wendy Ha regularly makes soup for her friends when they’re sick and brings them flowers when they need a pick-me-up. The 52-year-old flower shop owner, who lives in Burlington, Ont., says going above and beyond for her friends is more than worth the effort – especially since they showed up for her through her battle with breast cancer about a decade ago.

“My girlfriends were there to take me to chemo, to massage my feet, to make me laugh, to hold my hand,” Ha said. “These girlfriends, for the rest of my life, will always be my number one.”

While Ha takes joy in prioritizing her friends, current social trends suggest this approach isn’t the norm. Online discourse indicates we don’t owe our friends anything at all and cancelling plans is often regarded as a form of self care. We glorify protecting our peace, setting excessive boundaries and avoiding any situation that might feel draining – often at the expense of our friendships.

How to break the digital friendship death loop and actually spend time together IRL

This aversion to what might be considered inconvenience in friendship has emerged during a rise in therapeutic culture, which places a large emphasis on the self, says Laura Eramian, a social anthropologist and friendship researcher at Dalhousie University.

“There is this tendency out there, at least for some people, to use a therapeutic justification for why they’re not going to keep plans or put time into going to see friends,” Eramian said.

While staying home and resting can indeed be a form of self care, so too is spending quality time with others. Research has long shown that time with friends is essential for mental health, yet Canadians are spending far less time with friends than in previous decades. Nearly half of Canadians don’t feel they spend enough time with loved ones, according to Statistics Canada research released in 2025. We are lonelier than ever: A total of 36.9 per cent of Canadians in 2024 said they feel lonely sometimes, while 13.4 per cent feel this way often or always.

Experts say our craving for connection is directly at odds with our desire for ease – and the expectation that friendships should always feel effortless and convenient just isn’t realistic.

Why convenience is at odds with connection

Compared to spouses or children, maintaining friendships is seen as voluntary, so they’re often first to suffer when someone has too much on their plate, says Eramian. Societal barriers, such as a lack of public spaces or minimal leisure time because of work and family responsibilities, can also be a significant contributor to why friendships are de-prioritized, she says. But with the leisure time we do have, we’ve grown so accustomed to spending it in solitude and convenience – thanks to UberEats and self-checkout and ChatGPT – that we have become friction-averse in most areas of our lives.

“We live in a world where almost everything is optimized to save us time and minimize our efforts,” said Arkadiy Volkov, a psychotherapist and the clinical director of Feel Your Way Therapy in Toronto. “This type of mindset can creep into our relationships when we start to expect our connections to be as easy and efficient as the other spheres of our lives.”

Refusing to show up when things get hard can create disconnection, Volkov said, and disconnection can lead to loneliness.

“Deep friendships aren’t built on convenience but instead on responsiveness over time,” he said. “It’s when we show up for the people in our lives when it’s not convenient, even if it requires flexibility or effort on our part.”

How to nurture your long-distance friendships

Relationships become meaningful when we experience someone being reliable, emotionally available and willing to inconvenience themselves for us, he said.

Lisa Fenn has experienced this firsthand. The 58-year-old from Port Dover, Ont., places a strong importance on following through on her word and showing up for her friends. When that effort is reciprocal – although Fenn doesn’t expect it to be “tit for tat” – she said it creates friendship in which there is immense trust, depth and respect.

“In your twenties, you’re not thinking about how life is going to throw you curveballs, but later in life you are going to want to have people to lean on,” Fenn said. “If you invest now, the payback is beyond your imagination.”

Friction-maxxing

People do very poorly in isolation, especially as they get older, says Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a Montreal-based sociologist and journalist. “If you make it a habit to self-isolate in the name of caring for yourself, you’re going to find that your well-being suffers,” she said.

“Friction-maxxing,” a term coined by Jezer-Morton, offers a potential solution to this misguided approach to friendship.

“It’s the process of building up tolerance for ‘inconvenience’ (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) – and then reaching even toward enjoyment,” Jezer-Morton wrote in The Cut.

The idea is to embrace friction rather than avoid it, and feel the satisfaction that comes from the very human experience of putting in effort and overcoming obstacles. In friendships, Jezer-Morton said that may look like convincing a friend to take a night off while you babysit their kids or enduring the vulnerability of inviting a friend over when your home is less than tidy.

At its core, it’s showing up for people and letting them see you for who you really are.

“You have to expose yourself, be honest and let them know you,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re stuck in this sense of artifice or you’re acting a part.”

Keeping friendships alive

Louise Rachlis, a 79-year-old from Ottawa, has been running with a group of friends (the self-proclaimed “Antiques of Steel”) every Saturday for more than 20 years. Rachlis concedes she doesn’t always feel like going, but she usually pushes herself to show up anyway and never regrets it when she does.

These days the group is more of a walking or sitting club than a running one, but the hangouts persist nonetheless.

“There’s nothing like being with people in person,” she said. “Our regular meetups have kept our friendship alive.”

When someone drives across a city to see us or listens to us even when they’re tired, Volkov said it teaches our nervous system that we matter to them. That, he said, is how we form closeness, trust and emotional safety.

Low-maintenance friendships may sound nice on the surface, he said, but they feed into the idea of “emotional minimalism,” which can lead to superficial or even meaningless relationships over time.

That’s not to say friendships should be full of drama, consistently demanding you to sacrifice yourself – it just means time, energy and presence are required if you want the fulfilment that real friendships provide.

“Sometimes relationships will cost us convenience, but that’s what makes them work in the long run,” Volkov said. “Making space for difficult conversations, offering help even if it’s hard and just being there for someone – these moments are what relationships and friendships are built on.”