A Cancellation Plague Is Upon Us—and It's Ruining Our Female Friendships
Last week I was walking out the door to meet a girlfriend for coffee when a ping rang out from my bag and my heart began to sink. A quick look at my phone confirmed what I already knew: our date was off. An important errand had come up. Could we reschedule for another day? A row of weeping emojis followed the words. I squinted at the screen.
“No worries.” I texted back, the choice of punctuation a coded hint of how I really felt about being ditched. (Is there a more passive-aggressive way to finish off a text message than with a period?) I’d organized my day around our meetup, which had been on the books for weeks. Part of me obviously got it—stuff comes up—while another part was pissed.
In my over-scheduled life, having an hour of free time isn’t the worst thing in the world. But last-minute cancellations seem to crop up more often than they used to, and whenever it happens I wonder: Are casual “I can’t make it!” messages taking a serious toll on my valued relationships with the women in my life? I fully understand that we’re so busy being breadwinners, bosses, parents, and partners that sometimes the last thing we want to do at the end of a long day is talk more, but factor in how effortless bailing has become, and the new move of pulling the introvert card, and I’m concerned that a cancellation plague is upon us. And I’m not the only one.
When I chummed the social media waters with a question about female friends and canceling plans, my inbox to overflowed with responses. “I often find myself thinking: Do you not have a calendar? Because you’ve been on mine for a month,” one woman, Mary, wrote to me. (Sources who responded to Glamour.com for this story asked for only their first names to be used, lest their friends see them casting shade online.) “How could you just ‘forget’ we had plans? Or ‘accidentally’ double book?” she asked.
A litany of familar excuses can be particularly infuriating in 2018, given we’re all carrying digital calendars around in our phones. So with myriad tools for tracking time in our pockets, what’s making friend dates so hard to pin down? Some women chalked it up to the technology itself. “The ease of texting is a curse that really makes you question friendships,” said, Aya, via Facebook. She and her husband recently took a trip to the West Coast and made plans with friends for the first time since they became parents. Everyone was enthusiastic when Aya sent out the plan to meet at a bar, well in advance. But a lot of people were late. Others didn’t show up at all. One friend said she wouldn’t be on time because she was “running errands” and then posted an Instagram story of her husband playing the guitar. Another couple bailed because they were “walking the dog.”
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As a mom of young children, Aya said it’s tough to find time to hang out with adult friends in general, and the plan quickly went from a fun gathering to something stressful. “It’s like: Put in the effort. I do,” she says. “I’ll admit it: I cried.”
One friend said she wouldn’t be on time because she was “running errands” and then posted an Instagram story of her husband playing the guitar.
Kasia, who lives in Atlanta, feels similarly. “Anytime someone bailed, I typically would feel euphoric because I love alone time,” she said. “But lately I’ve been craving human connection, so when someone can’t make it last-minute, I wilt a little.”
Chronic canceling doesn’t just affect working-age women, either: Even college kids, who ostensibly should have more time on their hands to hang, are experiencing the scourge. One young woman who just wrapped her second-to-last semester pointed out that her peers put pressure on themselves to do it all—excel at school, have a part-time job, experience the party scene—while also performing it all on social media.
“We make social commitments to meet these expectations [put on us] by a competitive society, and then, when the time comes, we’re so worn out we cancel,” said the student, Caroline. She also pointed out another thing that many other women reported: that even though they find it supremely frustrating when friends cancel plans, they themselves do it themselves more than they’d like to admit. And they often agree to plans they know they won’t be keeping, because it’s easier to say “yes” and cancel later than to say “no” in the moment.
“Everybody does it,” Caroline adds.” I think people don’t expect as much from one another anymore.”
Some put the blame squarely on the way we communicate in the Digital Age—without the accountability of face-to-face contact. “It’s so easy to make fast plans, and if something ‘better’ comes up it’s so easy to cancel,” another woman, Stacey, told me. Others echoed her sentiment, adding that—thanks to social media—FOMO (that’s Fear of Missing Out) is often at play: We say yes to everything because we don’t want to miss anything, and because we want to continue to be asked.
Yes, there’s value in self-care and “me time,” but there’s a level of narcissism involved in the idea that we think we’re too busy, or stressed, to devote time to anyone but ourselves
But over the last couple years, something fundamental has changed: Our FOMO has been replaced by FOGO (fear of going out). Performative admissions of how much better it is to stay home has become the thing to do on social media. There are countless memes dedicated to the fact that early bedtimes and hanging solo on the couch has become preferable to spending time with our friends. Canceling plans to hang out alone is a reasonable enough excuse, and yes, there’s value in self-care and “me time,” but there’s also a level of narcissism involved in the idea that we think we’re too busy, or stressed, or mentally exhausted to devote time to anyone but ourselves. It’s at odds with the very idea of friendship.
Still, in spite of complaints about how often they get canceled on or cancel on others themselves, women largely agreed on the fact that how often you keep a plan isn’t necessarily a barometer of the value you place on the friendship itself. More, it’s just a sign of the times. The fact is that women are worn out these days for all kinds of reasons that differ from even a few years ago: We’ve got a lot on our minds, and our plates. Given the current cultural climate, political activism is up, as is generalized stress about the state of the world—57% of women between the ages of 18 and 49 report being more anxious in 2018 than they were the year before. From headlines about what’s happening at the border, the future of the Supreme Court, and widespread sexual harassment, the desire to avoid reality is understandable..
Today’s friendships might be galvanized by national fire drills—like attending the Women’s March—but falter in the ins-and-outs of every day
At the same time, our cultural doldrums make investing in friendships all the more important. As Kayleen Schaefer, the author of Text Me When You Get Home, a nonfiction book on modern female friendship, told me, today’s friendships might be galvanized by national fire drills—like attending the Women’s March—but falter in the ins-and-outs of every day. “No one likes to feel like they aren’t valued in a relationship,” she said. But coming together in sorority to advocate for shared beliefs and causes can help remind women of why they are friends in the first place. It’s a helpful reminder of how much we need one another, and a testament to how vital it is to have women we love, and lean on, in our lives.
As for my canceled coffee date, eventually we did manage to get it rescheduled. Personally, I think the person who cancels should be the one to set the next date—and that the more egregious the cancelation, the more convenient the new meetup should be for the person who got ditched. (This is unofficial Emily Post etiquette for the modern era. For the record, I also advocate for picking up the phone when you’re going to cancel last-minute; the blow is softened by actually hearing someone’s voice.) We had coffee, near both our offices, before going our separate ways.
Hours later, I was sitting at my desk when another ping came from my bag. “Happy hour next Friday?” wrote that same girlfriend, who had included a couple others on the chain. A flurry of texts, and a sense of general agreement followed: It has been too long since we’d all hung out, and we needed to be better about finding time to hang. I’m happy to report that—somehow, seemingly against the odds—we all managed to make, and keep, that date.
Elizabeth Kiefer is a New York-based writer and regular Glamour.com contributor.