I was scrolling on TikTok, and I saw a video of a woman doing some crazy acrobatic yoga moves whilst listing things she wished she’d known in her 20s. In all honesty, I was concentrating more on the poses she was able to strike – passively imagining myself giving them a go and ending up in A&E for an afternoon – but when I did listen to what she was saying, I noticed that the running theme was she wished she hadn’t wasted so much time with people who didn’t really care about her, and who she never actually trusted.

And I’ve spoken about this quite a lot recently because the first four years of my 20s have included some failed friendships, as well as management of insecurities that came out of them. I’ve never struggled making friends – in fact, when I was little my (then) teenage brothers used to complain to our parents about me having loads of friends because occasionally I’d come home with a head full of knits, which I’d very generously then pass onto their 15-year-old heads. Sorry for that one lads; wasn’t on purpose.

Anyways, throughout school, I always had big groups of friends. But regardless of the group, eventually, one of the girls would end up waking up one morning and deciding that she hated me, make snide comments, criticise me for things I couldn’t change, and ultimately turn the other way. Friendship over. My efforts to avoid it or work it out never seemed to achieve much either. Every time it happened it stung, but as I got older this pattern started to become duller because often I was sure that I’d not done anything wrong to make her feel that way because if I had, I would’ve been the first to start crying and apologise because the guilt would’ve made me feel physically sick. Plus, in these moments when I’d asked the young girl in question why there was now a problem, she’d get all vague and heavily imply (or say) that she just didn’t like me. You can’t do much with that. Except get paranoid about when within the years-long friendship that became true.

Obviously, I’m not a perfect person, I’ve not always been the best friend to people but when I’ve made mistakes before I’ve been able to genuinely apologise, then move on from whatever it was I did. Plus, given that these times when I did make mistakes it was with my friends, who I love and care about, I never meant to upset them, so of course I said sorry – and meant it. But when I think of all of the friendships I’ve had since I was about 11, it becomes clear that some of those friends ended up making me feel pretty insecure. With certain people, I privileged avoiding conflict and ensuring that everyone liked me so much, that I ignored the snide comments, and told myself I was okay with always being the one to text, or call, or drive to wherever the other person wanted to be.

When your friends take the mick out of you, a lot of the time it’s harmless, genuine fun. They make a dig at you, you make a dig at them, everyone laughs, nobody is offended, everything is fine. However, you also have to be careful to notice when something actually stings you in a way that wasn’t intended by the person who threw the joke. Or maybe they did kind of mean for it to hurt. And maybe you’ve heard that joke that suggests they don’t actually like you a fair few times now, so it doesn’t feel very ‘jokey’ anymore.

No matter how long you’ve been friends with someone, or where or how that friendship started, you’re not entitled to their time, nor are you to theirs. Like everything, friendships require you to both put effort into them and if that balance becomes so off that the friendship ultimately breaks down, it can really hurt. Way more than when you stopped texting that lad you liked for a month. To try to avoid this pain now, I’ve noticed myself approaching friendships with people differently than before.

If someone is terrible with their phone then that’s (sort of) fine, but I can’t rely on them the way I might want to, so I place some distance there. Whereas, if they make slightly mean comments about me or what I do, or if they only ever message me when they want something from me, then that’s not friendship to me. So I don’t need it. But ultimately, it boils down to this: if you wouldn’t take it from someone you’re dating, then why are you taking it from someone you call a friend? Those I keep close to me now only make me feel good, and I wholeheartedly trust that every single one of them actually likes me. It sounds so silly, but I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever felt able to say with such certainty.

*Cue one of them thinking they’re funny and texting me ‘haha I actually hate you xo’ after reading this.