There is a reason many of us grew up feeling like we had more than two parents. There were aunties who could scold us without being related to us, uncles who showed up at our birthdays with gifts we had not asked for, family friends who were always welcome in our homes, and neighbours who knew far too much about our business but would be the first to notice when something was wrong. These were people who were not necessarily family by blood but were family in every way that mattered.
Our parents seemed to have mastered something we are still struggling to figure out: how to build friendships that survive decades, distance, changing circumstances and the occasional disagreement. Even now, many of our millennial parents remain in touch with friends they made in secondary school, university or their first jobs. These are people who have attended their weddings, held their children and probably have enough embarrassing stories to ruin their reputations at any family gathering.
Meanwhile, many of us struggle to keep friendships alive beyond liking an Instagram story, sending birthday messages and occasionally promising to hang out when our schedules align. We complain that making friends as adults is difficult. We talk about how lonely it can be to move to a new city and how hard it is to find our people. But perhaps there is an uncomfortable question we are not asking ourselves enough: what if some of the loneliness we complain about is the cost of the convenience we have come to demand from every relationship?
Recently, an internet debate about whether it is acceptable to ask a friend if you can stay at their house when you are new to a city caught my attention. I was surprised by how many people considered the request inappropriate, even when the person asking was a genuine friend and the arrangement was temporary. Of course, nobody is entitled to another person’s home. Having a spare room, or even a spare corner of the sitting room, does not automatically make someone responsible for accommodating you. People have different living arrangements, financial circumstances, personal boundaries and reasons for preferring not to host. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to say no. But what struck me was the idea that asking in the first place was somehow an unreasonable imposition. When did the possibility of inconveniencing a friend become so offensive that we would rather navigate a difficult situation alone than ask someone we supposedly care about for help?
The debate reminded me of a conversation I had with my dad when I was preparing to travel to a new city. He suggested that I stay with a family friend. I remember thinking that her house was small and accommodating me would probably be inconvenient for her. When I explained that I did not want to impose, my dad looked at me with genuine bewilderment. “They will manage,” he said matter-of-factly, explaining that when it was my turn, I should be willing to help them out too.
It was such a simple statement, but it captured an entire philosophy of relationships that I fear we are gradually losing. The assumption was not that our family friend had unlimited space or that my presence would be entirely effortless. It was that people who cared about one another could find a way to make things work. Today, she might make room for me. Tomorrow, I might be the one making room for her. Sadly, somewhere between our parents’ generation and ours, we seem to have become less comfortable with the idea of making room.
The Village That Raised Us
One of the most beautiful things about many African societies is the communal understanding of life. We grow up hearing that it takes a village to raise a child, but the village does more than raise children. It helps us navigate adulthood, find opportunities, celebrate milestones and recover when life does not go according to plan.
In many Nigerian homes, community was not an abstract concept. It was a lived experience. Your parents’ friends were familiar faces, sometimes so familiar that you wondered whether they paid rent in your house. People shared food, information, childcare, connections and responsibilities. When a young person needed somewhere to stay while looking for work, a relative or family friend might help them settle in. When someone was getting married, welcoming a baby or mourning a loved one, there was often a network of people willing to contribute their time, money or presence.You were not expected to be entirely self-sufficient at every point in your life. There was room to be the person who needed help, just as there was an expectation that you would help when you could.
Of course, communal living was not always idyllic. It could come with intrusive questions, gossip, excessive expectations and little privacy. Sometimes, the language of community was used to justify taking advantage of people’s generosity. We should not romanticise the past or pretend that boundaries were unnecessary.
But beneath those imperfections was something worth preserving: people understood that their lives were connected, and that connection came with responsibilities.
Today, however, we seem increasingly drawn to a model of adulthood in which the ideal person is independent, self-contained and capable of handling everything without troubling anyone else. While there is nothing wrong with independence, we have sometimes confused it with the absence of interdependence. We have become so determined not to need anyone that we are forgetting how ordinary it is to need people.
We Want Deep Friendships, But Are We Willing To Do The Work?
Modern life gives us plenty of reasons to protect our time and energy. We work long hours, navigate rising living costs and try to maintain some semblance of a personal life. For many young Nigerians, even hosting a friend for a few days can mean adjusting a tight budget, rearranging a small apartment or sacrificing the little privacy they have. But there is a difference between recognising our limitations and treating every request as an unreasonable demand. A friend asks if they can stay with us, and we immediately think about the disruption to our routine. Someone needs help moving house, and we think about losing our Saturday. A friend going through a difficult period calls more frequently than usual, and we wonder whether they are becoming emotionally demanding. We have become very good at measuring the cost of showing up for people. We are less inclined to consider what showing up might build. We want friendships that do not interfere with our routines, require too much emotional labour, disrupt our plans or place us in situations where we might have to make a sacrifice. We want the warmth of community without the inconvenience of participating in one.
But what exactly is a friendship that only survives when it is convenient? What happens when your friend loses a job, relocates, has a baby or goes through a period when they are not particularly fun to be around? What happens when life demands more from them than they can give you? Real life rarely leaves our friendships undisturbed. The very things that make us human are the things that sometimes make us inconvenient to one another.
Lasting friendships are built through repeated acts of attention, generosity, forgiveness and presence. Sometimes, friendship is a long phone call when you would rather be watching television. Sometimes, it is travelling across town to attend a friend’s small celebration because you know it matters to them. Sometimes, it is listening to the same story for the third time because your friend is still trying to make sense of what happened. And sometimes, it is offering someone your couch, sharing your bathroom and figuring out how two adults can coexist in a space clearly designed for one.None of these acts is particularly glamorous. They may not make it into the photographs we post online or the birthday tributes we write about our friends. But they are often the things that make a relationship sturdy enough to withstand the more difficult seasons of life.
There is a reason our parents’ generation often speaks about friendships in terms of history. They remember who visited them in the hospital, who helped them when they were broke and who gave them somewhere to stay when they were starting out. Their relationships were built not only on shared interests but also on the knowledge that they had been there for one another.
This does not mean friendship should become an accounting exercise. You should not have to calculate whether your friend has spent as much money on you as you have spent on them. People have different capacities at different points in their lives. One person might offer financial assistance while another provides emotional support or practical help. Reciprocity is not always immediate or identical. It is the underlying willingness to care, contribute and recognise that the relationship belongs to both people.
Making Room For Each Other
Perhaps the real danger of our growing individualism is that we are becoming so determined to build lives in which we do not need anyone that we are forgetting how much richer life can be when we allow ourselves to depend on others. We may have beautiful homes but nobody we feel comfortable asking to sit with us in them. We may have successful careers but no one to call when we are overwhelmed. We may be surrounded by people at events and still lack the relationships that make us feel supported when the audience goes home. We risk becoming people who want support but are reluctant to provide it, who want to be understood but have little patience for the struggles of others, and who desire deep connection while resisting the obligations that connection brings. And then we wonder why we feel lonely.
Of course, we must not confuse community with the absence of boundaries. Some people have been taken advantage of by friends and relatives who treated their generosity as an entitlement. Others have sacrificed their comfort and wellbeing trying to meet unreasonable expectations. We should be able to ask a friend if we can stay with them without assuming they owe us a bed. We should also be able to decline a request without being made to feel like terrible people. A request is not a demand. A boundary is not necessarily a rejection. And a little inconvenience is not automatically an injustice.
The goal is not to return to a time when everyone had unlimited access to our lives. It is to recover the generosity and mutual responsibility that made those relationships meaningful while retaining the boundaries that protect our wellbeing. Beyond asking what kind of friends we want to find, perhaps we need to ask what kind of friends we are becoming. Do we check in when there is no particular occasion? Do we make the journey to see someone, or insist that every meeting happen somewhere convenient for us? When a friend is struggling, are we willing to offer what we reasonably can, whether that is money, time, a listening ear or a place to stay? We cannot keep asking where our village has gone without asking whether we are willing to be part of one.
Building meaningful friendships requires us to participate in other people’s lives, celebrate their successes, listen when we are tired and make adjustments when circumstances demand them. It also requires us to allow ourselves to need people. When we always insist that we are fine, we may unintentionally prevent others from experiencing the intimacy that comes with showing up for someone they love.
Not every friendship will survive, and not everyone will reciprocate our kindness. We cannot force people to care about us, and we should not keep pouring into relationships that consistently harm us. But we can decide that convenience will not be the sole condition on which we build our relationships.
No Woman Is An Island
I keep thinking about my dad’s response when I worried about inconveniencing our family friend: “They will manage.” There was no elaborate theory of friendship behind those words. Just the understanding that sometimes, when people care about one another, they find a way. They adjust, they share, they make room. And when their circumstances change, they trust that someone else might do the same for them.
Today, you might be the person sleeping on a friend’s couch; tomorrow, you might be the one opening your door. Today, you might need someone to listen; tomorrow, you might be the person someone calls when they have nowhere else to turn. The village is not built by people who never need help. It is built by people who understand that their turn to give and their turn to receive may come at different points in their lives.
So, yes, protect your peace. Have boundaries. Respect your capacity. But do not become so committed to a life without inconvenience that you leave no room for the people you say you want in it. Perhaps it is time to start building our village again, one friendship, one favour and one inconvenient act of love at a time. The cost of community is inconvenience. But the cost of having no community at all may be far greater.
