Adult friendships should expire every two years.
Not dramatically. Nobody has to block anybody. No subtweets. No mysterious Facebook posts about “snakes.” Just a polite email from the Department of Grown-Ass Relationships:
Your friendship is approaching its renewal date. Please review the updated terms and conditions.
Because why are we automatically renewing friendships based on who we were in 2009?
We’ve healed. Gone to therapy. Found boundaries. Lost boundaries. Found them again. Prayed. Cried. Changed careers. Buried people. Outgrew people. Learned that “keeping the peace” sometimes means keeping certain people away from ours.
Meanwhile, some friendships are still operating on expired software.
You’re working on emotional regulation while your friend is still loud and wrong, then offended because you expect an apology.
Ma’am, volume is not evidence.
Then there’s stagnant energy. Every conversation is somebody else’s business, somebody else’s relationship, somebody else’s downfall. Nothing is growing except the group chat notifications.
Renewal denied.
Low-vibrational energy is exhausting once you’ve worked hard to raise your own. Eventually, constant chaos stops feeling entertaining and starts feeling expensive.
And we need to discuss the Pick-Me Protection Clause.
If every conversation somehow circles back to men, male attention, male approval, what he bought, what he texted, who wants her, who doesn’t want you, and why women are allegedly the problem—I regret to inform you that your application is under review.
I cannot spend another fiscal year explaining that being chosen by a man is not a personality trait.
Especially when your coochie has been making executive decisions without consulting the board.
Listen. We have all made questionable romantic choices. Renewal does not require perfection. But if every six months I’m helping investigate another man who had seventeen red flags, three children you discovered separately, no fitted sheet, and an active situationship he described as “complicated,” eventually I’m charging a consulting fee.
And motherhood doesn’t automatically renew your friendship with expanded benefits.
I love your babies. I will celebrate them, spoil them when I can, and show up because I care. But having a child doesn’t quietly enroll every woman you know in your village.
A village requires consent.
I did not receive an onboarding packet.
Adult friendship renewal should require a few boxes checked:
☑ Can we disagree without becoming disrespectful?
☑ Can you apologize without adding “but you…”?
☑ Do you celebrate me without secretly competing with me?
☑ Can our friendship exist without gossip holding it together?
☑ Do you respect my boundaries even when they inconvenience you?
☑ Can we grow differently without resenting each other?
☑ Is support mutual?
☑ Can you make terrible decisions without making them my emergency?
☑ Are we still friends, or just people with twenty years of evidence?
Because longevity and compatibility are not the same thing.
Some friendships survive because both people keep choosing each other. Others survive because nobody has had the courage to admit the friendship ended emotionally six years ago.
Growth changes your appetite.
Healing changes your tolerance.
Maturity changes what you’re willing to call friendship.
So yes, I’m proposing renewal contracts.
No lifetime memberships.
No automatic extensions.
Just two adults occasionally asking:
Do the people we’ve become still belong in each other’s lives?
If the answer is yes, sign here.
If not?
Thank you for your years of service.
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