Why does no one have the time to be a good friend anymore?

Picking up your siblings from school. Driving your aunty to the airport. Helping your cousin do homework. Washing dishes at a family friend's home, or helping your best friend's mum make dinner.

This was the type of family culture I grew up in, where acts of service were the reigning love language and inconvenience wasn't a chore, but an honour.

We displayed our affection and commitment to one another not through hugs, kisses and verbal displays of affection, but through shared meals, errands and the most valuable currency of all: time.

But now, as a 26-year-old who is married, moved out and building a life of my own, I'm starting to wonder if inconvenience as a love language is becoming a lost art.

Watch: Ask Mia Anything | Love Languages. Article continues below.

Growing up, I prided myself on being a good friend. I stayed up as late as my high school besties needed me to while they vented about their broken heart and teenage self-loathing. I bought lunch for friends who forgot theirs or didn't have the money. I helped edit my friends' essays and ended friendships with people who wronged them. I considered myself loyal and committed, and I measured this in how much I was willing to inconvenience myself for the sake of a loved one — which to me, rarely had a limit.

You might think I'm a people-pleaser, a self-sabotager, or someone who needs to learn to love themselves and put themselves first. I wouldn't blame you — how could you think anything else when we live in a self-care culture that fetishises the individual and prioritises our comfort at the expense of everything else around us?

But what if we were meant to (within reason) inconvenience ourselves for our friends? What if love and commitment are supposed to cost us something? What if we can't be the only person who benefits from a relationship? Why does that scare us so much?

I like baking cakes for my friends. Sometimes this takes days and over the years, it has cost hundreds. But to me, it's an act of love — not a chore — and so I refuse to be compensated for it. Normalise doing things out of love! Image: Soaliha Iqbal/Supplied.

Writer Laura Pitcher published an article in Dazed that asked a question I've been thinking myself for years: does no one have the time to be a good friend anymore?

Pitcher spoke of her own experiences of choosing self-isolation and bed-rotting over seeing friends. Despite considering herself a social person, Pitcher admitted that she often found these social engagements too exhausting.

The article goes on to explore the changing nature of friendships, particularly in the USA, and the findings were interesting. These days, it seems that while the number of friends people report having has stayed relatively consistent, how often they see them has decreased significantly. Young people in particular are beginning to feel the pain of this, with some lamenting a lack of connection in their lives.

Friendship is changing in Australia, too. In the '80s, the average Aussie adult had nine close friends who they saw weekly. By the '90s, this had decreased to five close friends who they saw fortnightly. And now, we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic where social connection is sparse and young people feel more alienated and isolated than ever.

There are a lot of factors that can explain our changing commitment to friendships. We're being worked to the bone in an unforgiving capitalist machine that leaves us exhausted, our cups too empty to fill others' (this was the thesis of the Dazed article), even though it's probably exactly what we need in that moment.

Seeing your friends more than once a month feels like fantasy these days. Image: NBC

In Australia, I suspect the cost of living also has something to do with it. A train trip to and from your destination can cost $10, and going out has become exponentially more expensive. With the cost of groceries these days, even hosting dinner at your home for two friends can cost you up to $100.

Personally, I feel like I only have three close friends, four at the most — and I only see one of them weekly. The others I see roughly every three or four weeks, but we've been guilty of not seeing each other for months at a time, and I am notoriously terrible at opening or responding to messages online.

Sometimes our long swathes of times without seeing each other is my fault, sometimes it's theirs, but either way I feel lonely. Inevitably, I find myself thinking of time and inconvenience.

In Sydney, it can take an hour to get just about anywhere, which can make visiting friends feel like it's more trouble than it's worth. Meeting somewhere in the middle costs money, but doing things for free like going for a walk requires at least one of you to get out of the house (which I am guilty of rarely doing).

Seeing friends IS healing and self-care. Image: Soaliha Iqbal/Supplied.

Over the past two years, I've noticed I see my favourite people less and less — we're flakey, bad at committing, and often treat our catch ups like a chore.

I didn't realise I had strayed so far from my values until my mother-in-law was talking about a trip she's taking to Tasmania.

When she mentioned catching an Uber to the airport, my husband was aghast, and insisted we would drive her, as we live quite close to the airport. This was when I truly realised how much I — and perhaps the collective we — have failed to prioritise our loved ones, to the point where they feel like an inconvenience.

It made me wonder, 'Do I still feel like I can ask my friends to drive me to the airport?' If not, how do I reconcile that, when for so much of my life, this is what I thought love was — helping out, despite the inconvenience.

I still feel like that's what it should be.

When I moved into my apartment solo, my family — including relatives I had never met — rallied to help me get my couch, mattress and other large furniture up three flights of stairs. My brother built my desk and bookshelf. I've moved house a dozen times since I was little, and we never needed to pay for a mover because someone always came through and helped us.

When my best friend moved, our group didn't think twice about rocking up and helping her unpack. Image: Soaliha Iqbal/supplied.

I get that we're all tired and broke, and life is hard, but I don't think that when people talk about "self-care", they mean isolating ourselves and rotting in our exhaustion.

Maybe trekking to see a friend or simply having them over for coffee is not the mammoth and impossible task we build it up to be. Maybe this is actually self-care.

Every time I actually see my friends, I think to myself: "Wow, why don't we do this more?"

It's so nourishing and healing, and you feel so unburdened. I think when we start to see friendship as a chore and social isolation as the antidote, we forget that.

Community building and nurturing relationships takes work, but not the kind of work that is transactional, resentful, or one to be immediately compensated.

Let's bring back being inconvenienced for others. In a world where convenience is its own currency — and time is something we're constantly chasing — it's the ultimate show of love.

Feature image: NBC.