"Type A" Friendship Burnout

Type B friends, your over-functioning friends needs a break.

What happens when you take a child of Chinese immigrant parents who were too busy to parent, who adapted to neglect by over-functioning, and sprinkle in some ambition and high energy extraversion?

You get a Type A overachiever, the one who sets her mind on a goal and quickly starts executing. The one who has a thoroughly researched Google doc of reccos for every city she visits. The one who rallies the friend group together, coordinates everyone’s busy schedule to find the perfect day and makes the reso.

You get present day me.

Most of the time I love being the Type A planner, go-getter, make-it-happener. Partly because this is how I’m wired, and partly because I was once an event producer, hotel reviewer and CMO, so I’ve developed the skillset for being action oriented, organized and resourceful.

It’s my superpower.

On the outside, it looks effortless. But even though it’s my strength, sometimes, it’s exhausting using that muscle so much. I wish I could take turns being the one who can just sit back and things will be taken care of.

“But you can! Just choose to not initiate or take care of things and then others will do it!” exclaim the Type B’s.

No Sarah, that’s not what happens, ok?

If you’re the one in the friend group, who usually gets notified of the plans, and you’re told when to show up and where, plus when the bill comes, you just let others sort it out and tell you what you owe - guess what? You are the Type B in your group. It’s easy to “go with the flow” precisely because there is a Type A in the background making sure things run smoothly.

I know, that if I cared less about getting the reso at the perfect spot, making sure we got tickets to the comedy show, and ensuring that each experience is optimized to it’s full potential - I’d prob be chillin just like Sarah.

Good intentions, lack of capacity

Most of my friends aren’t wired this way, and for legitimate reasons. Some have ADHD which manifests in “time blindness” or feeling constantly overwhelmed, that adding anything to their plate seems monumental.

Others have kids, which means the day is always one phone call from chaos: the babysitter cancelled, the kid won’t put on shoes, they’re having a hunger strike because they decided today that they hate chicken nuggies…just insert reason here.

In most of my friend groups, the planner thing bleeds into being the connector. I’m the one introducing people who should know each other, the one who knows a guy when you need a guy. There is, somewhere, a spreadsheet.

Most of the time I genuinely don’t mind it. There are real perks to being the organizer. I pick where we go, which means we end up at the new place I’ve been wanting to try for months.

But sometimes I’m tired.

It catches up with you eventually. There’s the mental load of planning the dinner, booking the reservation, chasing schedules on the group thread, and then sitting at the table by myself while everyone trickles in 15 minutes late.

There’s the quiet running calculation of which friend has the bandwidth right now to hear about something hard, and which friend I don’t want to burden because she’s drowning in her own life.

And then there’s the part where I’m the person everyone comes to for advice, but I’ve done so much work on myself that I rarely have somewhere reciprocal to take my own stuff.

I have a stable life, and that’s not an accident. I’ve put in years of work to get here. But here’s the thing about being the stable friend: the privilege is that people lean on you, and the cost is also that people lean on you.

This is not a trauma dump of my life as a Type A.

I’m writing it because I think a lot of Type A women are in this exact dynamic and don’t have a clean name for what they’re feeling. Your friendships aren’t broken. The people you love aren’t taking advantage of you. It’s just that someone has to plan the dinner, and somehow it’s always been you, and you may have never actually stopped to ask yourself whether you wanted the job or just defaulted into it because no one else was going to step up.

A few things I’m trying lately.

Telling friends specifically to take their turn. “Hey, I planned the last three things, can someone else pick the place this time?”

Recognizing that friendships have seasons. Sometimes that means the amount of time you get with them changes, sometimes the very dynamic changes when they get into a relationship or start a family.

I just let it be.

Since I believe in always having lead generation for new friends, I allow new friendships to develop so that while an old friend is in their low capacity season, I’m still creating connection with other friends. My friend circle just expands. It’s a pretty great strategy.

3 strikes - Sounds brutal but I have a 3 strike rule. If someone has cancelled last minute, been over 20 minutes late or behaved in a flakey or a way against my values up to a max of 3 times, I take space from the friendship. I don’t cut them off, rather, I just stop investing energy and effort into it.

The biggest shift, though, has been admitting that being capable doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be tired. The friend who always plans is also a friend, and she needs to be planned for sometimes too.

Amy