The Price of Performance
What a Friendship Breakdown Taught Me About Connection and Being Seen
Does connection equal utility, or does utility equal connection?
I find myself returning to this question more often than I’d like — during quiet moments, in the hollow after conversations that now feel more like transactions than exchanges of spirit.
It’s a strange thing to feel lonely when you are in a room surrounded by people who know your name. But I suspect I’m not alone in this.
The Fall: What a Friendship Breakdown Reveals
I say this after a recent friendship breakdown that has left me falling, falling into a hole whose sides are lined with hurt and despair.
As I fall, it is as if with every meter of descent, I remember and relive moments of connection, but this time, I am doing so from a different angle, a different light, and what I see has lost its shine.
I equate this experience to how we experience love; one minute we are soaring, flying high — free with a bird's-eye view of the world lifted with the undulation of fields and meadows, and city rooftops.
However, when challenges arise, we find that we are quickly brought back to reality — grounded. Maybe even buried, but not before we fall into a pit, with no guide ropes, safety nets, and knowledge of how far and long we will descend.
I believe that if love had a mercurial scale of difficulty, it would be the rejection that comes from unrequited connections, which would make it bubble over as one of the hardest types of love.
This love severely clips our wings and damages us.
Discovering that a person is not who we thought they were, or that they did not enter a friendship or relationship in the same spirit, always hurts, but sometimes the hurt is necessary to see a situation for what it is and subsequently obtain clarity and liberation.
I say liberation because I would not be writing this essay if it was not for this breakdown. I recognise there is an energy that comes when you have accepted that you are falling, and begin to relinquish, readdress, and possibly cut misunderstood bonds.
Grounding After the Fall
Falling is a lesson that reveals that you are beyond the benefits of being grounded and traversing in a direction where perhaps you have forgotten who you are and all that you have. Your previous attempts at flight may have seen you soaring for a while, but even birds have a time and need for rest.
Grounding is what steadies us; it is the place from which we can build and be vulnerable. It is the place from which we value what we have and where there is no need for pretence. It is the place from which we can witness and honour our worth and be who we are.
But what nobody tells you is, the more sensitive and vulnerable you are, the deeper you are more likely to feel the effects of falling and subsequent hurt.
But build and soar high we must.
Perhaps we need to build better, with deeper and wider foundations, to withstand the external elements that you cannot control. Or maybe it is not solely our method of construction we need to interrogate, but rather the location in which we build.
Love in a Capitalist World
When I try to rationalise the recent friendship breakdown, I am reminded that we live in a world that measures value by our productivity. Hannah Arendt criticised modern society, warning that society will become stuck in accelerating cycles of labour and consumption.
I think in the back of our minds, the majority of us absorb and accept society's models of labour and consumption. If we are not vigilant, we become puppets, orchestrating divisions that divide us in our race to the top — fueling an avoidance to be at the bottom of any pile?
As a consequence, where attention is limited and time is a premium, relationships begin to mirror the economics of efficiency. We spend less time seeing each other and offer our availability with conditions.
Our affection and definition of what is and how to love come with justifications and qualifiers. Even friendship, an essential and sacred bond, often arrives with an unspoken question — what can I offer, what do I get in return?
The Performance of Belonging
I know there have been times when I have performed more than I’ve lived. I have smiled when I wanted to speak. I have offered the polished version of myself instead of the distressed, honest one.
Each time I have done that, it has felt as if it has been necessary and a matter of survival, but I know a little light inside me dims. I know this isn’t what I want, but I am practised and conditioned.
I suspect that for many of us, we are aware of the pretence, but we are in denial, not ready to accept that the pretence stems from our desire to be accepted and liked. However, this pretence comes at a price and separates us from who we truly are.
I often think about what happens to us when every connection must prove its usefulness. When your worth is tethered to what you produce, how you serve, and who you impress?
The harm is subtle but cumulative. We stop saying what we mean and living how we want. We curate instead of connect, and become caretakers of our lives instead of architects.
The irony is that we crave authenticity, and yet we live in a world where to survive, we must learn to hide in plain sight.
The Absurd Loneliness of Being Liked
There is an absurd loneliness that comes from being surrounded by people who love the version of you that has been crafted for them. The version that knows how to fit in, mould to expectations, honour the sometimes silent value exchange.
This version of you is fluent in the language of performance and has forgotten how to speak honestly. This you may be reliable, impressive, and even admired, but it comes at a cost because the essential part of you is not truly seen.
Courage to Unmask
To be seen means lifting the masks and personas and polished exteriors and be known not for our achievements or our usefulness, but for the mess we actually are.
No one truly has all of life figured out, and I would be wary of anyone who claims to do so — we are all in the process of becoming and evolving.
I long to sit across from someone and let the silence breathe, to say, this is me — I am enough — without the need to edit or explain.
Sounds simple, but I know it requires everything.
It requires me to reexamine my assumptions and beliefs, think critically, and perhaps relearn what I know; most of all, it requires me to unravel my conditioning and find the courage to start taking risks.
I know in this examination and the ruins of my past connections will always lie the memories and reminders that I once tried, and it was from this place that I once soared.
The Cost of Conditional Love
Still, I now accept this after recently discovering that a friend was not the person I thought they were. I can see how when we show up with a value expectation, it stunts the height to which we build, clipping our wings and limiting the height we can soar.
The liberation in accepting the situation allows me to move on with knowledge of what to receive and how I want to build what is necessary.
I want to learn how to show up without guarantees, to love fully, to be bold, to lean into discomfort, to be a better human, a percentage each day.
Starting From a Place Of Presence
I am starting from a place where we say, I exist, you exist, and that’s enough.
Because presence is not efficient, it doesn’t produce outcomes or promise certainty. But it heals. It reminds us that we are more than what we do, and when we pare back what ultimately matters, we find it is the connections that don’t ask for a transaction, only our truth.
I sometimes wonder where the assumption that we need to earn love comes from, and how it is that we let the world convince us otherwise, when we inherently know that it is with an open heart that we thrive and make and honour connections.
Perhaps the truth is, and has always been, out there, and we are just distracted, equally terrified of the freedom and power that come with vulnerability, and I must add the responsibility of living with an open heart.
A Call for a Quiet Rebellion
Resistance and rebellion are never easy; they produce casualties, but this is a fight worth fighting. It does not call for a grand revolution but instead a defiance against society's systems that encourage the commodification of our relationships.
What does a non-utilitarian connection demand and look like?
I would say consistent acts of truth, a refusal to perform and an offering of our full selves — leading where we turn over and show the soft underside of our bellies, and live by the mantra — this is me. I am enough.
Because deep down, when we examine what we want, it is not enough to just be useful, but instead.
To be real.
To be seen.
To be loved.
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I love this, Jesse. Let's seek the truth, be seen for who we truly are and be loved for it, rather than for what we can offer.
This struck a chord. A few years ago I lost a friend too, and the hurt of realising they weren’t who I thought they were still bothers me. We don’t speak now. Your words captured the ache and confusion of that kind of loss — and also a shift that can come after, when you start to see things more clearly <3.