A few years back, I got a phone call from a friend at 9:30 at night. For a few seconds, I looked between the name flashing on the screen and the half-filled suitcase in front of me. I had decided, at the last minute, to get on a one-way flight to a country I hardly knew to see a man I had met twice. (That man is now my husband and father of my soon-to-be-born child.) I let the phone ring, knowing it wasn’t urgent and that I would call back soon when I was making a slightly less life-changing decision.
That friend never spoke to me again. When I called him after I got to the other side, following an eight-hour flight, a three-hour stint in passport control, and a few other time-consuming chores that tend to arise when you get on a flight to a new home in a new country with no real plan, my call was rejected. After some more attempts, I got a friendship breakup text. He wasn’t willing to have a relationship with someone who wasn’t all in, he explained. Who wouldn’t pick up the phone at the drop of a hat regardless of what was going on?
After a few angry drafts of me questioning who on earth would be friends with someone so self-absorbed, I remembered that he had recently been in therapy. It suddenly dawned on me that the language in the text wasn’t even in the voice of that friend. I admitted defeat and simply replied, “Okay.”
As friends go, I’m admittedly not a great one. I will leave texts unread for days. Sometimes I will bombard someone with 20 questions, demanding updates from a person whom I just happened to think about for the first time in months. I will move to the country on a whim and not call you for a couple of weeks, but when disaster strikes or you need a hug, I will, whether it takes an eight-hour flight, be there.
My friends generally accept this because this used to be called life. At least for those who grew up without means of constant communication. Those who did grow up glued to a screen would call this style of friendship “narcissistic behavior,” and, with the backing of their expensive therapist, they will cut you off because your journeys aren’t aligned and “they need to focus on healing,” or something.
It is of no surprise that members of Generation Z, my own cohort (although I am an ancient one), are lonely. Everybody seems to know at least one young person who has cut off contact with mom or dad because their values don’t align. Everybody knows at least one young adult who entered therapy and exited a noticeably worse and less tolerant person.
If you look on social media, family estrangement is a trend, like a new style of knitwear or hairstyle. #ToxicFamily even has its own side of TikTok, with 1.9 billion views on videos offering advice and support on how to break off relationships with parents and siblings and how to break “generational curses.” The comments are troubling, with teenagers and 20-somethings being egged on by people who should know better to pack up and leave home after being “disrespected” by a parent. Studies show that more than one-quarter of Americans have cut off a family member, but nobody seems to bask in it, enjoy it, and even brag about it like Gen Zers do.
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Just weeks away from becoming a mother for the first time myself, I’ve found myself over the past few months analyzing my childhood and the parenting techniques of which I am a product. For the first time, I am noticing how people speak to their children, at what age children start noticing what tone they are being spoken to in. Does a 4-year-old know you think he’s being annoying or is he still oblivious?
I’ve come to the conclusion that unless there is actual abuse — not just what we call abuse nowadays, which is someone doing something that you don’t like — most people are trying their best, and most parents, siblings, and friends have the best intentions. Sometimes people get it wrong, like not picking up a call from a friend who wants to chat mindlessly when you’re busy. If members of Gen Z need to be taught anything, it isn’t how to run away from home or cut themselves off from their grandmother after a family row at Christmas. It is tolerance.
Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.