“How do i know if im the problem? ive lost a lot of friendships and i feel like i tried to do everything right but sometimes it rings in my head that if i keep losing friends i must be the "common denominator" i really really try to be introspective, and take accountability for my wrong doings, but like. is it me?”
This is one of the most painful questions a person can ask—and one of the most honest.
When you’ve lost multiple relationships, the mind reaches for math: There’s a pattern. Our brains love pattern recognition and in this one, your brain has created the formula of: I’m the constant denominator. Therefore, I must be the problem. It sounds rational. It sounds mature. It even sounds like accountability. But often, it’s grief looking for a place to land.
The idea of being “the common denominator” can become a kind of self-indictment, a way to make sense of loss by turning it inward. At least if it’s you, there’s something to fix. It’s a way we feel in there is a solution, as if it will prevent further loss and grief. Something to control. Something to atone for. Uncertainty is harder to live with than blame. Blame and shame are where we go to, to avoid grief.
But introspection, taken too far, turns into self-surveillance. It stops being about responsibility and starts becoming a quiet form of self-abandonment.
Here is something rarely said plainly enough: losing relationships does not automatically mean you are doing something wrong. Sometimes it means you are changing. Sometimes it means you are no longer willing to contort yourself into shapes that once kept the peace. Sometimes it means you are going through change, and growth can be profoundly destabilizing to relationships that were built on your old self. Sometimes that old self was silence, your flexibility, or your self-doubt.
Self inquiry is beautiful though, and I love that you are willing to self reflect. But accountability has a very specific texture. When you are “the problem” in a given relationship, there is usually clarity—specific feedback, recurring themes, moments you can locate and feel regret for without collapsing into shame. There is room for repair. There is dialogue, even if it’s uncomfortable. Accountability is a clear mirror. When you are confused, and asking “am I the problem” it’s usually grief wanting to hide behind shame.
Shame is vague. It says, something is wrong with me as a person. It loops without resolution. It grows louder in the absence of information. And it thrives when relationships end without explanation or with emotional ambiguity.
It’s also worth asking a different kind of question—one that doesn’t center blame at all:
What kinds of people have I been choosing and what type of people have I been losing? What dynamics feel familiar, even when they hurt? Who am I when I am trying to be “good” in relationships, and what does that cost me?
Sometimes the common denominator is not a flaw—it’s a pattern of over-functioning. Of being the one who reflects, repairs, reaches, and bends. Of staying longer than is kind to yourself. Of confusing depth with endurance. In your case, based on you saying you try—really try—to be introspective and accountable. That matters. People who lack responsibility rarely worry this deeply about being at fault. The presence of this question already tells me something about your care.
The inquiry that might serve you more gently is not “Is it me?” but “What would it mean to let relationships fall away that cannot hold who I am becoming?”
Not every ending is evidence of failure. Some are evidence of discernment arriving late—but arriving, nonetheless. You are allowed to learn from loss without becoming its scapegoat.
— Paula Santos, LP
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