Stop Avoiding Conflict in Your Friendships with Minaa B
I’ll admit, I haven’t experienced many serious friendship breakups in my life. My most significant one was documented in my 2021 newsletter, How to Save a Friendship. I interviewed my friend Neelou, whom I had a falling out with back in 2016. Though we made an early attempt to repair the relationship, it didn’t go so well, and we didn’t speak for four years. In 2020, we managed to reconcile, and I interviewed her about our journey to repairing our friendship.
Another significant friendship ended with my best guy friend in my early twenties. One night, I canceled our plans last minute to spend time with a guy I had just started dating. I was completely unaware that this decision would unravel our friendship. Even though I acknowledged that what I did was selfish it didn't seem to matter. I wrote him a long email apologizing and asking for a little bit of compassion, but it went unanswered. I felt hurt that, despite the support I had shown him through his own relationship ups and downs, there was no grace extended to me while I was dating someone for the first time, might I add. We had never fought like this before. Months later, he reached out to reconnect, but without any accountability on his end, I knew I wouldn’t feel safe in that friendship again. Looking back, I know I made the right decision.
I have always prioritized trust and safety in my friendships. I am sensitive, I have a lot of feelings, and I need a judgment-free space to be vulnerable with those closest to me. If that’s not possible, then I just can’t be close to that person. I can be very forgiving, but emotional safety is a hard boundary for me. In those moments where close friends have made me feel unsafe, something inside of me just snaps, and I can’t view them the same way. I may be able to maintain the connection, but I know who I do and do not feel safe with.
Since friendship breakups have been a highly requested topic for this newsletter, I knew I needed to bring in a professional to do it justice. I couldn’t think of anyone better than Minaa B, a licensed social worker, mental health educator, and author of Owning Our Struggles: A Path to Healing and Finding in Community in a Broken World. In our conversation below, Minaa opens up about her mental health struggles and what led her to this work. Together, we explore how to navigate difficult friendship dynamics—what to do when you’ve been ghosted by a friend or feel like distancing from someone yourself. We dive into the meaning of building intimacy in platonic relationships, understanding self-regulation vs. co-regulation, and embracing healthier ways to connect. I hope you find valuable insights here for navigating your relationships.
To kick it off, what were you like as a kid?
Minaa: I had two different phases of my childhood. Phase one: I was very shy, quiet, introverted. I come from a very large family, and I think that played a role in it because I come from a blended family, and I am the youngest of 13.
I was bullied as a child in school, and I was bullied in the home by a sister from my mother's side. I think of young Minaa as someone who really had to learn how to stand up for herself. My trauma response is to fight, and I developed that stress response as a result of the things I experienced in early childhood. I remember starting middle school and saying to myself, this is a fresh start. I need to walk into this space with a sense of being for people to know: don't mess with me. I flipped the switch, and I carried that energy with me in the home with this particular sibling. I am grateful for it because it's why I am the way that I am now. I'm still working on assertiveness and boundaries.
We're talking about friendships today, but with sibling relationships, you think you're supposed to have this built-in best friend, someone who will always be there for you. I have two older brothers in the same blended family situation. My parents both had a son from a previous relationship and then met and had me. My brothers are about 11 and 12 years older than me, and they were my protectors, but also my tormentors, depending on their mood. I feel very grateful that I'm quite close with them, but my relationship with them has ebbed and flowed a lot over the years. Sometimes, we're closer than we were at other times. Having a complicated relationship with siblings isn’t something we’re really prepared for, right?
Right, and what's hard is I have enough compassion to look back and recognize some of the things my sibling experienced in her childhood, where it was very obvious she needed help. My parents are from Panama, so growing up in a Caribbean Hispanic home, mental health was not something my parents understood. They grew up by the belt, and so, as a result of that, my sister and I grew up by the belt. I think the belt kind of exasperated trauma she already had, and it did not help manage the trauma she already had.
Hearing all of this, I assume that this situation with your family is possibly the central theme of your healing journey throughout your lifetime. When did you realize that you wanted to become a therapist?
In high school, I knew I wanted to understand human behavior. What happened for me, however, is my mental health really started to plummet. When I was 16, I started to have suicidal thoughts. I attempted suicide by cutting and realized this was not something I could do. However, I continued to cut as a form of coping. So that was when I realized I wanted to understand what was happening to me.
A turning point was going to my best friend and asking her, do you ever have dark thoughts like this? She said she never had those thoughts and never had urges like that. So my mindset was, now you are showing me what the other side looks like. What do I need to do to have a healthy emotional life?
In our current culture, “you are not alone” tends to be a model. Sometimes, people struggle when they are alone in something. I know 16-year-old Minaa needed to be alone. She did not want other people to relate to her struggle. What 16-year-old Minaa needed was somebody who could help her get out of her struggle. I went to talk to the guidance counselor. Talking to her brought me so much peace and so much ease. It felt so good to have someone that I could share things with because a lot of the things that hurt me were things happening in the home that I just didn't feel like I could tell my parents.
So, this is interesting because you wrote a book that came out last year, Owning Our Struggles: A Path to Healing and Finding Community in a Broken World. My first question to you was going to be, do you feel like there's a common misconception about needing to heal alone?
I think that is a common misconception. I think healing happens both inside community and outside of community. Keyword here: community. When people say “relationships,” the brain automatically goes to romantic relationships. I try to remind people that there are all forms of relationships. So sometimes healing needs to happen while you are practicing aloneness and solitude in the midst of being in community before getting into a romantic relationship. I do believe that we need people so that we can heal our attachment wounds, figure out how to recreate our attachment styles, and also do the healing work that comes from being wounded by people. Hurt people hurt people, and that's where the scar comes, right? Sometimes, we need to be around community to recognize that people are safe. There are some unsafe people to be around, but that doesn't mean everybody is unsafe. We are biologically wired to be connected to people.
There is a belief that we're supposed to grow up to become independent individuals instead of being interdependent individuals, where we learn how to be self-sufficient while also knowing how to rely on others. We need community for society to function and for us as individuals to function. So, I believe that we need to figure out how we can become more interdependent. That requires breaking down our ideologies, and it also means deconstructing our Western culture, where certain ideologies exist in our American system, such as “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “you must do everything alone.” Many Western ideologies play a role in why we feel how we feel. So it's a breaking down of self, but also a breaking down of systems.
Do you have to set boundaries with your friends about how much they can lean on you because of your work?
That's a good question. It's very rare that I have to set boundaries. I think the first time in a very long time that I had to set boundaries was when I was writing Owning Our Struggles. My life changed so quickly after the pandemic. I got my book deal in 2021. I became a full-time entrepreneur in January of 2021. So, that took my life in a direction I had never experienced before.
As a result, I had to learn what boundaries I needed to create because now I was living a life I never lived, and I had to focus so much on my work that I wasn't as present as I usually could be. So I had to have conversations I never had before, like, “I can't answer your phone call right now because I'm in the middle of writing.” “My phone is on Do Not Disturb. Not to be insulting to you, but it's really a courtesy to let you know I'm unavailable, and I'm writing.” I cannot be distracted during this time. And my friends adjusted to it.
Did anyone actually take it personally?
I do think some did. Luckily, I have a very transparent relationship with my friends where I can say to them, "Well, it sounds like you're taking it personally, and I'm sorry about that, but I trust that you're just going to deal with it." I don't say that in a crass way, but I think it's important to know these are 10+ year friendships. I have friendships with people that I can just be very straightforward with, so even when my friends are upset about something, I'm like, "Girl. All right, well, you're going to be upset." I can do that with my friends. For some people, that might come off as harsh, but I exist in friendships where we can be very truthful with each other. I know there are some friendships that can't operate like that because they did not develop that type of intimacy with each other.
I get a lot of questions about how to navigate friendship breakups. In 2021, I did a newsletter where I interviewed a friend that I had a big falling out with, we didn't speak for four years, but we reconciled in 2020, so that was a positive outcome. I think people need guidance around friendships and friendship breakups where no reconciliation is in sight. When I solicited questions from my followers, the most prevalent were about ghosting. Is it okay to ghost a friend I don't want to be friends with anymore? Or a friend has ghosted me. Do I reach out and ask why? What's your take?
I think context is always key because there are times when people will tell me this person ghosted, and when I get more context, it's very clear they did not ghost. The first thing is we have to start paying attention to behavior. We rely so much on communication, and I understand communication is important, but verbal communication can cause us to neglect action. There are times when people will be saying one thing to you, but their actions show something else, and we will disregard their actions simply because of the words that came out of their mouth. I think that leaves people very hurt and wounded because they're not paying attention.
I
t’s important to be aware that sometimes people ghost you through their actions first. What we're looking for is either a text message or a sit-down conversation where the person explains and states to us, "I don't want this friendship anymore,” but the moment you stopped being invited to places, the moment that person who you texted every single day goes from texting you once a week to them just not texting you at all. Every time you do outreach, they might respond, but they're not doing outreach to you. Those are subtle signs that someone is starting to step back from the relationship.
Now, when that happens, you can decide if you want to talk with them. When people say, should I or should I not? I always say, what do you want to do? What do you feel is right for you at the end of the day? It's about managing expectations. You can decide you're going to have a conversation and not be ready to hear the things people have to say to you. So you need to be mindful and say, if I am going to reach out to this person to say, why did you ghost me? Or you're acting funny. You also need to be prepared for the worst.
So, is it okay to ghost someone? It depends on the context. It can be more valuable to communicate and let someone know I've decided to pull back from this relationship. It's valuable to communicate when there's something happening in the friendship that you don't like. People with avoidant tendencies will decide to cut someone off or create distance when, really, it's because they're conflict-avoidant and they don't know how to assert themselves to say, I did not like it when you did X, Y, Z. That is not going to be helpful to the person who is doing the ghosting. You're never developing the skills that you need to have hard conversations to assert yourself and to make people aware of how they're impacting you.
I think it's a very common experience these days. I've had a friend who, although not a super close friend, I think we were investing time in getting to know each other, and then I noticed she wasn't calling me as much. I called her out on it once or twice, and then I never heard from her again. I'm intentional about my friendships and how I invest in people, so sometimes I have just stopped reaching out if the only time I hear from you is by sending memes. Did I ghost, or did I just stop reaching out, and then you never reached out, so we never spoke again?
Exactly. That's why I think the whole thing requires nuance: reciprocity is important in a friendship. When you're not getting reciprocity, and it starts to become imbalanced because it's one-sided, the person who's keeping up with the friendship will get burnt out, exhausted, or even disinterested in the relationship. So if you choose to pull back, but that person is not seeking you or reaching out to you, then it also shows you where they stand, and that's a form of communication as well.
The other part, too, is the lack of awareness you can't control because, again, if this is the effort you're putting into a relationship, someone will probably match that effort eventually. I can't do the self-awareness for you, but maybe if we want, we can have a conversation. The most important thing that we can do sometimes is recognize the signs of somebody who is pulling back.
If you want friendship, you must be intentional about cultivating and caring for the friendship. It cannot fall on one person to do all the work to maintain the friendship. The number one way we hold ourselves accountable is through changed behavior. So, if the changed behavior is not happening, the most I can do is assume that this is the nature of our relationship. Maybe you will exist as a connection versus a friendship.
Do you think people are struggling to identify the category of the friendship that they're in with someone? There are so many different types of friendships. It's hard even for me to know. Is this person I’m friends with because we work in the same industry really my friend? Is this influencer who wants to create content together really my friend?
After having been an editor for so long, something I've had to contend with over the last couple of years is the people who only wanted to be friends with me
because of my job and what they could get from me or what they were hoping they could get from me. Also, I would say after the summer of 2020, there were white people who were cozying up to me because they knew it looked good to be aligned with me, but they have just kind of faded out, and I don't hear from them.
Friendships run on a spectrum, and it’s hard for people to identify where they are on that spectrum because it's so broad. If you're in a relationship with someone, you have dating and courting, then you have, we’re in a relationship, we're engaged, we're married. So there are different levels to a romantic relationship, where a person can identify where they stand with someone. We don't have that for friendship. Even though we have the term acquaintances, no one ever says, this is my acquaintance. The only thing we have to distinguish the level of intimacy within a friendship is best friend and friend.
So, because we don't understand where people fall in just the “friend” category, it can be hard to identify the level of intimacy we are in. We just have to be very mindful of what we want in a friendship. We also have to be mindful of what qualifiers we look for in a person to help them progress in our lives within that space of intimacy. What qualifies a person to be your friend? If you are someone who goes on a brunch date, and just because we hit it off, we like the same color, and we watch the same shows, you're my bestie. I'm going to ask you to take a moment to pause and step back. Why is it so easy for someone to have that level of access to you after a three-hour brunch date? What is it that they're offering you? What do you know about that person? How do they add value to your life, and how do you add value to their life? Maybe it’s simply a connection.
Is this the person you're going to call when it's an emergency? Is this a person that you want to call when you're really in a dark place and you need to vent? Is this a person that you want to tell your personal business to already? There are also layers to our personal business. You might know some personal things about me, but there's other stuff you don't know about me.
We have to start defining our standards for friendship the way we define our standards for romantic relationships. When we define those standards, we also recognize what we want to give in that friendship, but what do we expect to receive so that we can be aware of where we might fall on that spectrum of friendship for that other person?
Is social media blurring lines? I think we're best friends because we follow each other and DM sometimes. Even I've experienced that where I'm like, "Oh, well, I DM with this person all the time." And then I didn't get an invite to the wedding. I'm like, "Oh, okay. We're not really friends."
I think that it can. Much of it concerns what happens when people share very intimate parts of their lives on social media. You start to feel like you know them. If I already know what your kid looks like, I know your partner and what they look like. You gave me a house tour. I know what every room looks like. I know what kind of car you drive. I even know what the interior looks like. It creates this psychological effect that we have a level of closeness because I know so much about you that, before social media existed, I would probably only know your name and the information you choose to divulge through a conversation.
If you're constantly posting things about yourself, understand it does something to your psyche. It creates this parasocial-type relationship where sometimes we feel closer to someone than we are. Now, when you take it to the next level, you're DMing them back and forth, and it feels very cordial, safe, and nurturing. You do start to think, oh, I'm in. This person really likes me. Then, like you said, you see the wedding, and you're like, "Dang, I didn't get the invite." I think it's just one of those things we have to remember not to take personally.
Investment is very important to me when I think about building friendships. I don't really do surface-level friendships regarding those I'm pulling into my inner orbit. But also, I have very high expectations of friends because I also have them for myself. So, that is something I have had to shift as I've gotten older. In this case, I would say these were newer friends who’ve now become very close friends, but there were instances where that person wasn’t able to show up for me in the way I wanted them to, and it caused issues.
There's been a handful of times where it was like, "Oh, I need to take a step back. I need to recognize what this person is capable of giving and what they are not." Once I recenter myself, then I can resume. I've done this with a couple of friends, and our friendship has been much more enjoyable since I got myself together. Sometimes, we create these expectations of others that we're not communicating, so then we end up resenting them.
That's a common thing. That's where the communication piece comes in because we tend to assume they know better. Going back to the story I shared earlier, as I was in a new stage of my life, I had to invite them into this new journey with me and say, listen, guys, I've never had this level of work before. I've never been in this position before, so this is how you will engage with the new Minaa.
It’s been like that ever since. Sometimes, I'm unavailable to do certain things because I have a deadline. So, that is a new adjustment my friends had to make. I had to make adjustments for myself, too, knowing that there are things I'm missing out on because I have to travel and be far away, and I have a commitment, and this is now my job. So I do think it's so valuable when we can just express to the people that we are in a relationship with that this is the new me. Can you embrace the new me? That's the other question to it.
I feel like there is a growing intolerance for conflict or being uncomfortable. This feels just like dating. People are avoiding having conversations about their expectations of dating or friendships. Resentment builds up, and oftentimes, I think, yeah, if people are conflict-avoidant, then they're going to ghost. Or someone's scared to speak up, so they just ghost or put up with the bad behavior. At the end of the day, we all have just to start talking to each other.
Agreed. Dating and friendship experiences mirror each other because, at the end of the day— the person you bring into that friendship is most likely the person you bring into the pursuit of a romantic relationship. I've heard so many stories of people who have been in one-year, two-year, or even three-year relationships, and they decided to ghost the person as a way of breaking up—hat level of conflict avoidant. And I literally mean, not even subtle signs of my actions showed you, just me deciding one day I'm done with this. Still, instead of communicating, I'm done with this. I will just block the person, never talk to them again, and remove them from my social media accounts. So, the person on the other end is shocked and taken aback by that behavior.
I think there's a lot of work to be done on teaching ourselves how to be assertive versus passive or passive-aggressive in our relationships. To build something healthy, you must teach your body how to manage discomfort. That discomfort is the thing that is impacting people's ability to create healthy, nurturing bonds. At the end of the day, we're going to have conflict. It's inevitable. Things are never going to be easy all the time. But we have to remind ourselves that when conflict does arise, there are ways we can handle conflict, we can repair ruptures that take place in the relationship. So this goes back to working on yourself as an individual—whether you're dating or starting to form new friendships, this is also where you have to start to identify your deal breakers.
If I am someone who is doing all of this healing work to nurture myself and to become more communicative, am I going to feel like I'm aligned with someone who is so avoidant? They ghost me every time there's a difficulty? Or they make jokes every time there's conflict because they are so emotionally immature they don't know how to regulate themselves. We have to be honest with ourselves. Can I be in a relationship with you? It's not that I'm saying something is wrong with you as a person, but what I understand is you and I are not equally yoked here because what I need to feel safe and nurtured, you're showing me you can't give it to me.
When we're looking to form new friendships, what are our deal breakers? What are our standards? When you realize that this person is exhibiting certain traits that don't make you feel good, and they're traits that you recognize. You recognize this as a red flag, and it's unhealthy. That's when you have just to pull a full stop and say, I can't continue to move forward in it.
You just gave everybody the script for what to say. Boom.
Yeah. That's what you say.
There's also a rampant misconception regarding friendships that just because you have been friends with someone since kindergarten, they should be your friend for life.
I think that it's familiar and safe. You just have to ask yourself as you continue to evolve if there is value in it. The thing, though, is this is not just a friendship issue, this is a cultural issue. We love longevity. Somebody could say they were married for 40 years, and it was the worst marriage ever, but because they hit 40, we will clap for them and celebrate them. As a society, we have an attachment to longevity because, at some point in time, our brains have been wired to believe that longevity equals quality, health, and success. We demonize people for getting divorced, so of course, we're going to demonize people for ending friendships.
So those people who met their friends in kindergarten... And I think there are some more nuances to that because often, when you're meeting friends in childhood, you might notice your families are infused. It can be a little harder to let that person go. Do you have to let the person go, or do you just need to create more distance between you and that person? Can you adjust the degree of closeness between you and that person? It doesn't mean that you need to say, I will never speak to you again unless you feel that is necessary.
Sometimes, we outgrow someone and assume the ending has to be abrupt instead of saying, "I don't think that we're as close as we used to be, but I'll still come over for the cookout, and I'll still be there for Christmas dinner. But we don't have to keep up with each other every weekend. You don't have to call me three times a week. We don't have to do all that stuff." I want to remind people that sometimes you can outgrow someone and decide that you just don't want to be as close, but that doesn't mean the friendship has to have a hard stop, where we never speak. I think we need to recognize there is value in relationships where even if it didn't hit a certain number, you have to decide if this is something that you want to continue to move forward with. We have to stop using longevity as a marker of success.
Okay, another common question people asked was about navigating a falling out with someone, but you're part of a clique. Or I had a falling out with this person, but I have other friends that are still friends with them.
That's complex. You have to communicate your rules and requests to them. A request could be: I don't need to know information about this person. So, if we are hanging out and that person is not here, there is no reason for you to bring them up.
Your boundaries for yourself could look like this: I'm going to let my friends know I don't want you to have to choose between us, so during your annual Friendsgiving, I won't come if that person is there. Maybe because my heart's not ready, I just don't feel comfortable being around that person. I'm not going to make you choose. Invite who you invite, but I just want you to know if you do invite that person, I'm not going to be there. That's my boundary. I think it's really important to communicate that to a friend.
I see a lot of stories where people feel offended when their other friends choose to stay friends with that person. I think that is deeply complex because it didn't involve those people, so why would they feel the need to let go of that person when it had nothing to do with them? I think there also has to be a level of awareness and maturity to be okay with knowing we will still have similar friends, and I cannot dictate what my friends do, so they may continue to be friends with you. So this is where I have to express to them what my requests are and what my boundaries are going to be.
Minaa’s Tips for Community Care
Understanding self-regulation vs. co-regulation.
Self-regulation is when we work to regulate our nervous system. I am in a state of stress or crisis, and there's a level of urgency, so maybe I need to take a few deep breaths, do a quick meditation, or maybe I need to go exercise. There are practices that you do alone to regulate yourself.
Co-regulation is when we use someone else's nervous system to regulate our own, who you co-regulate with matters. If I am already in a state of stress, and my cortisol levels are high, the goal is to find a way to engage the parasympathetic nervous system to get back to my window of tolerance to decrease my cortisol levels. It does not make sense to try to co-regulate with someone who minimizes your problems, talks down on you, engages in negative judgment where they're tearing you apart, or dismisses your feelings. They also give terrible advice. So they're not helpful in any way. The goal here is that I need someone who is in their own window of tolerance and can engage in their own level of critical thinking and problem-solving to help me get back to my center.
Another note for co-regulation that we have to understand is sometimes, when our body is in a state of stress or crisis mode, we treat that as an urgent matter, and therefore, we expect other people to treat it as an urgent matter. We're urgently seeking relief, so we assume that other people will provide us with the relief we seek. There will be times when you want to co-regulate, but your friends are not available. That is not to be taken personally. It is not an attack against you. This is why you also have to have tools for self-regulation and say, oh, I'm trying to co-regulate right now. This is not working because I need to self-regulate, and the people I want to co-regulate with are unavailable. That is one of the core things I like to remind people of when practicing community.
Understand the difference between rules and boundaries.
Rules are the requests and guidelines that we impose on other people. A boundary is a guideline we impose on ourselves. So, going back to the example I used earlier with the friendship circle, a rule or request to a friend could be, if we're going to have brunch together, please don't bring up this other person because I feel uncomfortable. I also don't want you to try to bring it up to force me to be friends with that person. That is a request I am making of you.
A boundary would be if you continue to ignore my request, this is where I say hard stop, I'm changing the subject, or we will have to wrap up the brunch. We'll have to end the phone call, or I may decide that I need some space from even hanging out with you. The reason why I emphasize that is because, too often, we're saying people are breaking our boundaries or crossing our boundaries. No one can cross your boundary but you. So when you exist in community, you have to be very clear with that person what you're seeking from them in this relationship. What do you need to feel safe in this relationship? And this is why we make requests. Please don't scream at me when you're upset, it makes me uncomfortable. Please don't invite this person. If you do decide to invite this person, this is how I'm going to respond. It's very, very important to know the distinction because often, every time we make a request, we tend to have a boundary that follows that request.
Those are the core things I want people to be thinking about when it comes to understanding how we exist in community. Again, community falls on a spectrum. So, you will have people in your community with whom you have intimate relationships. You will also have people in your community with whom you simply have connections or friendships, and that's also okay. Allow that spectrum to exist so that you can get a variety of your needs met. The more that people exist on a spectrum, the better actually. You just want to be mindful that these are some core things that you want to step into community building with.