Performing friendship instead of living it
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When Friendship Felt Like Performance
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7 Mins
Daniel Okoro
Edited By:
My Diaries Anonymous: Kai W., Drama and Performance
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People say my group is “goals.” We brunch, we go on trips, we’re in each other’s stories constantly. But I’ve started to notice how exhausting it is. Every laugh feels like a cue, every brunch like an audition. If I stopped dressing right or posting enough, I swear they’d stop calling. I don’t know if I’ve got real friends or just co-stars.
I’ve learned to laugh at jokes I don’t find funny, to nod at stories I don’t care about, just so I don’t lose my seat at the table. It’s subtle, but when you live in constant audition mode, you start forgetting what your real laugh even sounds like. And sometimes I wonder if I walked away tomorrow, would any of them actually notice?
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Friendship performances hide loneliness in crowded rooms
Sometimes I test my friends by staying quiet on purpose, just to see if they’ll notice. Most of the time, they don’t. And that hurts more than being left out, because it proves what I suspected: that my place in the group depends on how much I perform, not who I really am.
It’s exhausting performing all the time. I’ve built a version of myself that’s likeable, funny, on-brand but it’s not sustainable. I don’t know if anyone actually knows me, or if I’ve just given them a highlight reel. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I dropped the act completely no filtered posts, no perfectly timed laughs. But then I remember how quickly silence gets misread as indifference, and I fall back into character. It’s like my friendships depend on constant effort, and I’m tired of auditioning for a role I never wanted in the first place.
I get Kai’s point about friendship as performance. I used to spend more time rehearsing what to say than actually enjoying being with people. Finding one friend I could be quiet with showed me how heavy that performance had been.
It hurts when the only way to be noticed is to disappear first.
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I’m not there yet, but I get now that groups don’t have to be everything. Keeping even a single friendship outside the performance helps when the main crew feels shaky.
Friendship groups look like safety, but sometimes they’re just another stage. I read about “group-saturated investment,” where your whole identity is tied to one group. That’s me. Every laugh, every outfit, every story feels scripted, and it’s exhausting. And when you feel that script slipping, it’s not just about losing friends, it’s about losing a version of yourself that only exists in their presence. Which makes leaving or being left feel like erasure.
Performing friendship isn’t the same as having friends applause can’t replace reciprocity.
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From hundreds of listening sessions, where researchers just sat and listened to students one on one, HAPHE observed the risks of over-investment in groups. Students who centred their entire lives on one group often found exclusion devastating, not just because of lost friends but because their identity had been fused with group performance. The data shows that grief here is not trivial; it’s rooted in the collapse of a structure that once felt like home.
Some Tips
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1. Notice when you feel unseen and gently test the waters by expressing something true even small honesty builds connection.
2. Pay attention to who follows up with you those are the friendships worth deepening.
3. Reflect on the difference between being *included* and being *valued* they’re not always the same.
4. Check in with yourself regularly “Am I showing up because I want to, or because I feel I have to?”
Sending softness your way. This world is loud protect your quiet.
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Daniel Okoro
Nottingham Trent University, Media and Communications
This entry has been shared with permission and lightly edited to ensure tone consistency. Names have been changed. Over 70% of students now report burnout symptoms. HAPHE was created to support people like you building life around more than one thing. Take the HAPHE Pledge here: