Generation Flake: Why Are We Constantly Bailing On Our Friends?

From ELLE

It was a normal afternoon in June that suddenly cracked open to reveal one of the most magical gifts.

An invitation to a distant cousin’s wedding had been sent to my mum, and the date arrived like a clump of wet tissue landing on the floor. It wasn’t just that I hadn’t seen the invitation, or written down the day, it was that I really didn’t want to go.

I didn’t want to eat the canapés, I didn’t want to stand in heels, I didn’t want to consider the dress, yawn discreetly into my hand.

And it wasn’t personal, Esther, if you’re reading this. It was impersonal – it was universal. It was a feeling that I and you and every other person who wakes up at six in the morning and has quite a lot of Netflix to catch up on feels most weekends – it was the yearn to bail.

So it was June, and my mum, being an angel, phoned up the cousin’s dad. Of course I wasn’t going to call – are you mad? It was her fault, she said. She hadn’t passed on the invitation, and so was very sorry to call so late, the day before, but Eva wouldn’t be able to make it to the wedding.

There was a pause. Quite a long pause, as she tells it, a pause that crawled down the line and sat sweatily beside her with a look of disgusted fury. They’d already organised the catering, he said. Would… Would he like us to reimburse them? My mum called me as soon as she hung up. When she told me that they had agreed on a cheque for £3O ‘for the vegetarian option’, I had to sit down for a minute. £3O – so simple. Putting a price on flakiness, it could be the answer to all our problems. I had purchased the right to forfeit my guilt. I allowed myself a moment of quiet glee, imagining an extra option that should be attached to every RSVP – yes, no, and ‘with the best will in the world, here’s £3O’.

This is the age of flaking. Thanks to technology that allows a fluid flexibility to arrangements, the modern culture of busyness, and an increasing ambiguity to our friendships (especially those born online), bailing on plans has come to define our generation.

A survey of 2,OOO British people concluded we’re a ‘cancellation nation’, after estimating we each make 1O4 social arrangements a year but bail on half of them*. ‘No, Thursday’s out,’ a man says into his phone, flicking through his diary in the famous cartoon from The New Yorker. ‘How about never – is never good for you?’

Though Bob Mankoff drew the cartoon back in 1993, today it pops up regularly on Instagram, still an illustration for our time. ‘Now the phrase is firmly entrenched in the culture,’ Mankoff says, ‘so much so that it can be referred to as though it were an anonymous aphorism.’ For most of us, the bailing process starts with good intentions. We genuinely want to meet up with the friend with whom it’s been too long, we mean it when we say yes. And it feels good to say yes! That familiar elation, a plan in place. But then, inevitably, ‘something’ happens.

Yes, something happens, whether it’s the realisation that, as a people pleaser you have accepted a thousand invitations and must take to WhatsApp to quickly cull the birthday drinks and the horror movie.

Or, in these zero-hour times where it’s difficult to plan your next period, let alone know where you’ll be in a month’s time, work arrives – a deadline, a job – and it takes priority. Or, as the day approaches and a cloud of social anxiety settles, you find yourself lying awake at night planning exit routes – make small talk in a noisy room? You’d rather lie.

Then there’s the last taboo: laziness. Sure, you could have a shower, do your hair, spend two hours catching up on the current state of your ex-colleague’s kitchen and wake up with a hangover the size of Italy. Or, alternatively, you could… not?

Stylist Gemma Rose Breger and beauty journalist Sam Silver of @ThisIsMothership posted an image on Instagram that read, ‘Are we still on for dinner tonight?’ then, ‘Do you mind if instead we cancel and reschedule several times until we lose touch completely?’

They say, ‘We over-promise constantly with wild abandon and extreme enthusiasm, usually the day before our mass exhaustion settles in, but when it comes to seeing the plan through, one out of three times we find some kind of excuse to bail.’ And when they’re bailed on? There’s a moment of fury, but relief soon follows.

These are the stages of bailing, they say. ‘Initially, it’s a tiny flicker – you try to push the idea away, blow it out. But the flame keeps getting bigger. You come up with various different excuses; wait to see if you get bailed on first by throwing out a, “Are we still on?” kind of message.

Finally, that flicker becomes an all-consuming fire; it’s burning and you have to put it out and just do it.’ Inevitably, the close friends, the ones we love the most, feel the full brunt of our flakiness because we know they will understand, so we end up spending an inordinate amount of time with the friends we’re slightly terrified of.

Gemma and Sam’s parents wistfully tell them of a time when you would make a plan to call someone, then walk to the phone box, knowing your friend would be waiting by the phone. ‘You made a plan, you’d go and you’d be on time.’ But now, technology has killed the promise.

Flakiness has become unavoidable, filling our text messages and the column inches of our papers. Writing to New York Magazine’s agony aunt Heather Havrilesky, a woman describes herself as ‘An introvert who has deceived the world by pretending to be an extrovert, which means I have a lot of friends and yet I am exhausted at the prospect of maintaining so many relationships at once.’

Her dream, she says, ‘is to live in a little cabin somewhere, focus on my work and never get another text that says “Drinks soon?”’ Havrilesky empathises: ‘Making plans these days sometimes feels like a tedious part-time job you never wanted,’ and, poking deeper, adds, ‘I think you’re looking for a way to live a more genuine, authentic life. In order to do that, you need to learn how to say no without immediately apologising for yourself.’

There is a way, she’s suggesting, to maintain relationships without guilt, and also without rushing off to dinners every night. But it involves learning how to tell people what you need. ‘Today, many people complain about feeling like they’re on a treadmill,’ says psychologist Dr Abigael San, ‘Like they have to be, to do, everything. And, inevitably, that means demand won’t meet supply.’ This then leads to the piles of cancelled arrangements littering in-boxes everywhere.

‘Digital contact has become the norm, so real life provokes anxiety,’ adds Dr San (real life being sitting with somebody and discussing actual emotions). ‘The instinct is to remove the cause. And there’s a negative reinforcement: cancelling brings a sense of relief.’

But it also risks alienating friends. There is, however, a way to bail well. We need, stresses Dr San, to be honest about why we’re flaking. ‘Frankness feels worse, but has a better impact in the long term, because there’s no room for the other person to fill in the gaps.’ The thought of this makes me shiver slightly. ‘Esther, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to come on Saturday because I need at least two hours for a conversation with my boyfriend about the future. Priya, can we Snapchat instead of going to the pub? You get maudlin after two drinks, and I’m already feeling sad.’ Perhaps, she offers, the rise of flaking is a positive thing. While previously we would have dragged ourselves to appointments we were dreading, today we are able to speak up. Which means cancelling. ‘Is this a sign that we are finding our voices? Standing up for what we really need?’ she says, whether that’s time alone or an early night. ‘Is this a sign that people are validating their own rights?’

Could this be the hidden truth of our golden age of bailing? A perfect storm of lubricating technology and anxious timelessness has led to this moment, when we have the facilities to cancel arrangements that will not enrich us or make us happy. If we are honest about what we want, and when we want it, nobody gets hurt. In fact, that honesty allows a depth of candour that we are unlikely to offer up in a crowded bar, or at a white-table-clothed wedding. Could it be? Could flakiness be the thing that saves us?

This article appears in the October 2018 edition of ELLE UK. Subscribe here to make sure you never miss an issue.

('You Might Also Like',)

• Bumble's New Women-Led Business Fund Is The Investment We're All Here For

• Women In Scotland Can Now Take The Abortion Pill At Home

• 11 Of The Best Waterproof Mascaras For Pool-Proof Lashes