When Did It Become So Hard to Make Plans With Friends?

—aelitta—Getty Images I don’t expect anything of my friends that I don’t expect of myself.

But lately, I’ve found myself disproportionately annoyed by tiny breaches of friendship etiquette.

If I ask a friend to dinner and they say they’re busy without suggesting another date, I feel slighted.

If I introduce two friends and they start hanging out without me, I wonder why neither thought to include me.

Then I wonder: am I holding my friends to an outdated social code? Today, it is common to say “let’s catch up soon” without making plans, leave invitations unanswered, and allow one person to become the permanent initiator.

My theory: Technology lets us remain constantly in touch while making the obligations of friendship increasingly ambiguous.

When you think about it, an invitation is more than a logistical question, says Dr.

Jeff Katzman , a psychiatrist at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn., who extensively studies human relationships.

It’s a small relational bid: something close to, “I’d like to spend time with you.

Would you like to spend time with me?” When that second part is missing, we’re left with ambiguity, and we fill in the blanks.

“From an attachment perspective, we’re continually looking for signals about whether the people we care about are available and responsive,” says Katzman.

“When I reach toward you, is somebody there? We also bring our own histories to these moments.” Someone who has experienced rejection or exclusion may experience the same unanswered invitation quite differently from someone who has generally experienced other people as reliable.

Katzman points out that we do our best to infer other people’s minds from very small pieces of behavior.

“A text goes unanswered, and the human mind is remarkably good at writing the rest of the story: ‘She doesn't really care about me.