The internet is full of advice right now that has Allie Volpe, a reporter at Vox, worried. It goes like this: “Protect your peace.” The philosophy goes like this: When relationships get too complicated, cut it out of your life.
If a friend cancels plans, you freeze them out. If a family relationship gets too complicated, you stop going to family dinners.
“It's usually like a front-facing camera video. They're usually in their car and they seem very upset and they're talking about, you know, ‘I don't want any more drama in my life. I am protecting my piece this year, so therefore I am cutting out this person that is bringing all of these negative feelings into my life,’” Volpe said.
Volpe argued in a recent piece, that always ‘protecting our peace’ is killing our friendships. And, we are living through an epidemic of loneliness and we need relationships — ones that are often only strengthened by conflict.
Volpe joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
ALLIE VOLPE: It's normal and almost OK and celebrated to cut people out of your life for any minor infraction, and therefore that will make your life better.
LAUREN GILGER: And it goes even further like you see the “divorce him” thing is going around all over the place now for kind of, you know, minor infringements on marriage, right? But there's also some arguing we should like decenter friendship, that's a phrase that's out there and, and you, and you cite research that shows that people are cutting out family members, parents, things like that.
VOLPE: Yeah, a YouGov poll found that more than 1 in 4 Americans were estranged from an immediate family member. That is quite a lot of people. And so, this impulse to get rid of that problem is really doing us a disservice as far as the potential upsides that could come from addressing a problem with someone we care about.
GILGER: Right, so let's get into that argument that you're making here, that this is kind of killing people's friendships. You talked to a lot of experts about the potential harm of this, about what might be behind it. What did they have to say?
VOLPE: Yeah, yeah, first of all, that this is a pretty new phenomenon, because again, we are social beings. We need other people to survive and this is very evident. In our ancestral times, we lived in small groups and we needed to work together to get food, to protect ourselves, to build shelter. And so if you estranged yourself from even one person in this small clan, that could have profound effects on your survival. Especially if that person was very well liked and they might convince other people to then turn their backs on you, then that makes it way harder to try to, you know, get food, protect yourself.
But, now we live in a world where that's not so much the case. We have all of these modern comforts, but as our society has become more individualistic, our thinking has sort of morphed to think that, you know, “only I am responsible for my own needs and my own happiness, away from this idea of collectivism.”
So if you are of the mindset that “I am right all of the time, all I need is myself. I don't trust other people. Other people are just trying to get things from me — whether it's time, attention,” you start to see these relationships as not inherently functional. And so instead of working to fix them, you know, you might be more inclined to cut them off when we live in a society that hasn't really reinforced the idea that we need other people around us as much.
GILGER: Yeah, it is sort of this idea of individualism that you get out here. You write this quote, you say, “people are not problems to be rooted out and then discarded.” Do you think that this is partially just a misunderstanding of what the point of friendship is? Like, it's not all about me.
VOLPE: Yeah, yeah, I do think that we've sort of just become very myopic in our view of our relationships, and people might be thinking, “What can this person bring to me?” And of course, relationships are two-sided. You need to think about what you are bringing to that other person. Why should someone want to constantly support you or show up for you, if you're not reciprocating that in some way?
I think a lot of factors are at play here, but it really comes down to, what are we offering other people, and why don't we think it's worth showing up for other people anymore? Because like that's the beauty of being a friend to somebody, is showing them how much you care and going that extra mile for them, not cutting them out at the first sign of conflict.
GILGER: You also argue that there's no such thing as a tension-free relationship. Is this just avoidance of confrontation, of uncomfortable conversations? We don't often talk on the phone anymore. Everything's via the internet or text message. That must be contributing to this as well.
VOLPE: Yeah, like I think this all just speaks to the kind of world that we're in right now, which is kind of disconnecting. We're spending a lot more time alone than ever. We are turning to our forms of media instead of connecting with others. We're more distrustful of others. We have systems set up so you can avoid people, like delivery services or self checkout, or we always have our AirPods in when we are around other people. So we have this culture that is really disconnecting, and to have these conversations, it's hard, it's energy intensive.
And so I think people, they want to protect themselves. I think that's well-meaning to sort of avoid the thing that's difficult or going to be energy intensive and potentially vulnerable to hear about the ways that somebody is mad at you or upset with you. We're constantly being reinforced to do the easier thing. And so it completely makes sense to me why this might be the impulse.
GILGER: Yeah, and it's, it's kind of understandable in some ways, right? The world is a lot today, Ut feels like we're kind of bombarded with problems and issues and too many things to care about and worry about all the time. Do you think it's just part of the digital culture, the 24-hour news cycle, that we live in as well?
VOLPE: Yeah, one expert pointed out to me that when so much feels outside of our control, one way of asserting control over our lives is to deal with the people around us. Like, that is one concrete way that we can have control.
So considering all of the crazy and upsetting things that are happening in our government, in our world right now, people might have the only form of control in their lives over who's in it and who's not. So it totally makes sense for people to be like, “Yep, things are feeling really bad. Why would I invite any more badness into my life? Let's get rid of the source of it.”
GILGER: Yeah. Is there a way, Allie, to protect your peace without doing this, without cutting people off, without pushing people away, while maintaining the relationships that we kind of need as human beings?
VOLPE: Yeah, so one psychologist told me that having these conversations takes effort, and it takes practice. So we shouldn't try to shut down in these moments. Again, we shouldn't try to push people away and avoid them in general, and we also should try to avoid the impulse of throwing a label on these people as “narcissists” or “toxic.”
Instead, we should use more words to express how we're feeling like, “I was hurt by this comment” or “I felt really rejected when you canceled plans.” Using those “I” statements is always like therapist tip number one.
Sometimes you might need to take the lead in this conversation too. A lot of people don't have these skills, so it's not bad if the person on the other end is maybe not reacting in the way that you would like. You need to just have empathy for people and understand and have a little bit of grace for them, too. There's only so much you're privy to, like you don't know what their intentions are unless you ask them, so I think it's worth having a little bit of grace for people too.
