This psychology-based insight explains why some friendships become emotionally draining.
Why Some Friendships Feel Like A Burden Instead Of A Bond
Friendships should feel mutual. When they become one-sided obligations, they can slowly erode connection and joy.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | Last Updated:
Not all painful friendships are explosive or dramatic. They do not necessarily involve betrayal, cruelty or overt neglect. Instead, some friendships fade into a low grade sense of emptiness. You might still be in touch with a friend and you might still share a history with them. Nothing is technically wrong with your friendship, and yet you walk away from your interactions with them feeling unseen, oddly lonely or emotionally tired.
If you've experienced these strange moments with a friend in your life, you might share a one-sided bond with them. You can't really categorize this relationship as abusive or toxic, at least not in the popular sense. A one-sided friendship, however, is still imbalanced in ways that erode emotional nourishment from a bond.
(Take my fun and science-inspired Friendship Style Quiz to know what kind of friend you are in your group.)
Research shows that these kinds of relationships are common, difficult to name and uniquely draining because they violate our expectations of mutual connection without triggering clear alarm bells.
What Makes A Friendship One-Sided?
Friendships are primarily sustained by reciprocity. They don't require a perfect balance of effort at all times. But they can't really survive without a general sense that care, interest and effort have been flowing both ways over time.
Social exchange theory suggests that people evaluate their relationships based on perceived social costs and rewards. In healthy friendships, for instance, the rewards of emotional support, validation and shared enjoyment roughly outweigh the cost of effort required to maintain the bond (for both people).
In one-sided friendships, this balance slowly breaks down. One person, often unknowingly, takes on the responsibility to initiate all meetings, to listen more than they are listened to and to adapt to the changing needs of the friendship. The other simply benefits without fully reciprocating.
What makes these friendships especially confusing is that the imbalance is often subtle. The friend may not be unkind in an obvious sense. But they might still be emotionally unavailable, self-focused or chronically distracted.
Research on social pain shows that exclusion and emotional neglect activate many of the same neural pathways as physical pain. Studies using brain imaging have found that feeling ignored or unimportant triggers activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region associated with distress.
Unlike overt conflict, emotional absence gives the nervous system no clear target; there's nothing specific for it to confront or resolve. Instead, the body simply registers a vague sense of disconnection.
This ambiguity increases psychological strain without giving it an out. This is why unclear relational losses are so much harder to process than definitive endings. When a friendship exists but does not emotionally respond, the brain struggles, often for long periods of time, to make sense of it. One is left questioning whether the problem is real or imagined.
Why Does A One-Sided Friendship Take Root?
Attachment theory offers important insight into why people stay in emotionally lopsided friendships.
People with anxious attachment tendencies are more likely to tolerate low responsiveness in relationships. They often over function socially by checking in more, offering more support and minimizing their own needs to preserve connection.
Avoidantly attached individuals, on the other hand, may unintentionally create one-sided dynamics by maintaining emotional distance. They may enjoy companionship but limit vulnerability, leaving others feeling close yet unsupported.
When these types of individuals pair up, one person leans in while the other stays loosely engaged. The friendship persists, but emotional intimacy never quite forms.
One sided-friendships often involve invisible emotional labor, too. In friendships, this can include remembering details, providing reassurance, offering empathy and regulating one's own disappointment to keep things smooth.
Research shows that unreciprocated emotional labor predicts emotional exhaustion and resentment over time. When one person consistently holds the emotional weight of the relationship, the friendship becomes a drain rather than a refuge. This is why these friendships often feel empty rather than overtly painful. The labor continues quietly, while the reward diminishes.
Why We Normalize One-Sided Friendships
Many people stay in one-sided friendships because they do not feel justified in leaving. Cultural narratives often suggest that friendship should be low-maintenance and forgiving. There is pressure to accept people as they are, to not expect too much and to be grateful for any connection at all.
Psychologically, this is also reinforced by social comparison: people are less likely to evaluate friendships critically when they believe others are also emotionally distant or busy. If everyone seems unavailable, emptiness starts to feel normal.
There is also the sunk cost fallacy. The longer a friendship has existed, the harder it feels to question its value. Time invested becomes a reason to stay, even when the emotional return has dwindled.
How Does A One-Sided Friendship Impact Us?
Over time, one-sided friendships can subtly shape how people see themselves. We partly form our self-concept based on how others respond to us. When a friend rarely asks questions, follows up on our lives or shows curiosity, it can lead one to internalize that the emotional absence is indicative of their unimportance.
People often respond to their needs being unmet by shrinking their needs even further. They stop sharing, try to keep things light and generally lower expectations. This protects the relationship but at the cost of their authenticity. Eventually, the friendship might survive, but the person inside it feels smaller.
Many people sense the imbalance but hesitate to address it. This is because when issues are vague or relational rather than behavioral (like in one-sided friendships), people expect confrontation to be invalidating. It feels hard to say, "I feel emotionally alone with you," without fearing dismissal.
In one-sided friendships, the less invested person may genuinely not notice the imbalance. Emotional awareness varies widely, and some people lack the skill to engage deeply even if they care. This does not make the emptiness imaginary. In fact, it means that the emotional mismatch is structural rather than malicious.
If a friendship consistently leaves you feeling unseen, pay attention to that imbalance rather than rationalizing it away. This may even mean recalibrating expectations. Not every friend can meet deep emotional needs. Or it may mean allowing the friendship to loosen naturally rather than forcing connection.
In some cases, it means seeking reciprocity elsewhere rather than asking one person to become someone they are not.
Healthy friendships do not require constant intensity, but they do require mutual emotional presence over time. When that presence is consistently missing, the emptiness you feel is not oversensitivity. It is your nervous system noticing the absence of reciprocity.
Take the fun and science-inspired Boundary Setting Style Quiz to know if you're able to keep one-sided friendships at a healthy distance.
Take the research-informed Self Care Inventory to know if you're equipped to protect yourself from a one-sided friendship.