The Recession Wrecks Friendships

In his book The Big Sort Bill Bishop shows how our country is ever more divided along economic lines. Migration patterns differ by income, reinforcing the separation of people into rich and poor counties—a phenomenon that has been on the rise since 1976 with a big jump since 2003, according to a recent paper by professor of government James Galbraith. One of the reasons why schools are so often segregated, in terms of class as well as race, is that rich and poor people—or even middle-class and working-class people—don’t live side by side in many places.

Even small, nuanced class differences can be hard to negotiate. Do you feel your throat constrict when you suggest a meal with a friend at a restaurant that you worry might be too pricey, or not pricey enough? Have you ever had a friend over a few times and not been invited back, only to figure out, when you’ve finished feeling insulted, that your friend is embarrassed by her apartment? We often sidestep relationships in which spending habits don’t match up exactly, I think, to spare ourselves feelings of inadequacy or insensitivity, those awkward breaches that make intimacy feel like work. Remember that indie movie Friends with Money in which Jennifer Aniston flummoxes her whole circle of screenwriter and fashion-designer friends by going to work as a maid?

But the recession is forcing more of that pricking of conscience upon us. Because of the downturn, friendships between two people whose Saturday night spending and overall class status used to calibrate precisely have now turned into trickier relationships between one person who still has money and one person who doesn’t. The sudden uneven footing isn’t easy to negotiate, as I’ve learned from the responses I got to my question about the effect of the recession on friendships. The one-sided change in circumstance trips up even—or, perhaps, especially—old and close friends. People need BFFs to sustain them through this time of doldrums. Yet judging from my inbox, sometimes these too are lost. The rifts between friends created by the recession are a kind of collateral damage. We’re only beginning to sift through the rubble.

One reader, call her Katie, says of her best friend, “We have always been able to lean on each other until recently.” (The readers who wrote to me didn’t want their names used for this story, and who could blame them?) What’s changed is that when the recession hit Michigan, where Katie lives, her friend lost her job. Meanwhile, after years spent digging herself out of the debt of divorce, Katie scored, in a small way, by buying a house at the right time. “How can I confide in her when small problems arise in my life, when hers are so much worse?” she asks of her friend. “We have not seen each other in a few months and phone calls and emails are down to about two a week. I miss my friend, but I don’t want to add to her problems or make her feel worse. … When we do talk, I never discuss my life, I always make her talk about hers.”