The reasons are layered. People are living longer and healthier lives, which changes the calculation of staying in an unsatisfying marriage another twenty or thirty years is a long time to be unhappy. The stigma around divorce has diminished. And crucially, more women have financial independence today than in previous generations, which means staying for financial security is less of a constraint than it once was.

Some friendships were always a bit of a stretch. You stayed in them because of history, or convenience, or the shared context of parenting at the same time, or because it felt like you were supposed to be close. You showed up, you made it work, you adjusted yourself to fit.

But as you get clearer about who you are — and the identity work we talked about in our previous post pushes you in this direction — you start noticing which relationships ask you to be less than yourself. Which conversations leave you feeling a little flattened. Which friendships are built more on habit than on genuine connection.

What if people stop liking me? What if I stop being invited? What if, when I stop performing all of this, no one actually shows up?

Here is what I want you to hear: it is okay to say no. It is okay to take care of yourself. And a lot of times, when you start doing that, something unexpected happens. You stop showing up out of obligation, and you start showing up because you genuinely want to. Things become lighter. More true. More connecting.

The trouble is, when you’ve been so good at caring for everyone else, you often forget — or never learned — how to identify what you need and how to ask for it. And here’s the kicker: people can’t read your mind.

I often hear women in this stage say they’re tempted to scrap a relationship because “it’s not working anymore.” But sometimes, it’s not that the relationship is broken — it’s that what you need from it has changed, and you haven’t yet named it.