Do you actually have friends?

If you're meeting up for a coffee, probably not.

Your catch-up brunches aren’t doing anything for your friendship.

Sitting across from each other, sipping overpriced lattes, and trading life updates isn’t bonding - it’s just a status check. A way to keep the friendship on life support without actually doing anything to strength it.

You’re not building friendships; you’re curating a highlight reel. A perfectly staged performance - smiling over eggs, nodding at each other’s updates, pretending like this means you’re best friends. But it’s not reality. It’s an illusion of depth, a hollowed-out version of what friendship is supposed to be.

Think waaaayy back. In school, university, or those chaotic early career years, friendships were different. Because you were in the trenches together. You weren’t just swapping stories about struggles - you were living them, side by side. Pulling all-nighters. Figuring out how to pay rent. Panicking about your futures. You didn’t schedule time to be friends. You just were.

Now, in adulthood, friendship is confined to third spaces: coffee shops, dinner tables, pottery painting classes. Everything happens in a cushy, curated environment where you relay your experience in the trenches after, instead of living through them together.

Worse? A lot of you aren’t even choosing friendships based on real connection anymore. You’re choosing them based on aesthetics. Who looks good sitting at the brunch table with you? Who fits “the vibe”? Friendships have become transactions - scheduled, budgeted, and aesthetically pleasing.

I’ve skipped third-space get-togethers because I knew they’d cost me £40 for an afternoon of surface-level updates. Let’s be real, no one is breaking down over their heaviest problems in the middle of a perfume-making class. You’re not getting raw, real moments at a candlelit dinner. And if you think you are getting , you’re kidding yourself.

I’ve felt this shift in my own friendships a hundred times over. A lot of my friends don’t even know me, because they haven’t seen me in the trenches. They see a perception of me based on what they assume my struggles would do to the average person. They see my travels and think I’m adventurous. They see my Instagram and assume I’m fine. They don’t see the work, the struggle, the actual lived experience. Back in school, when I aced a test, my friends knew it was a fluke because they saw me not study. Because they were out avoiding the classroom with me.

Now, all they see are the results, and that’s all they have to go off of. No one has time to listen to the process. And even if they do, how do you even begin to explain it?

Here’s the fix: Do something hard together. At least once a year. Something that shoves you out of your cushy, controlled spaces and forces you to rely on each other. Run a half marathon. Go camping for three nights with no phones. Do a tough hike. Volunteer for something intense. Travel in a way that isn’t just sightseeing and comfort. Put yourselves in a situation where you’re tired, frustrated, and forced to work and overcome together.

I did a long run endurance challenge with people I don’t know very well, and being in the pits of pain together bonded us. But even better, sharing this experience allowed their observations of me to shatter a lot of de(illusions) i had about myself.

I thought I was good at being real and honest, but during the challenge, someone pointed out how well I masked the pain I was clearly in. They made me realise I’d gotten so used to hiding pain, for a lot of reasons, that, at some point, I stopped trying to ease it for myself, I just tolerated it in silence.

I couldn’t ask for help unless it was offered, upfront - even then, I kept the asks small. This teaching has changed how I interact with people. It fast tracked my development and our friendship.

If your friendships only exist over brunch and pottery painting, then your friendships are weak. They’re just performative life updates disguised as connection. Third-space friendships are no better than screaming your life updates on Instagram stories and someone hearting them on the other side. It’s just acknowledgement, not enrichment.

You’re showing a curated version of your life over brunch. Neatly withholding what doesn’t fit the exhibit of perfection, of being okay, or whatever mask you present.

If you and your friends haven’t suffered together, do you even know each other? Or are you just another warm body at the brunch table, nodding at and holding up each others delusions?