Danielle Nelson is a practicing therapist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) who focuses on sexual health and wellness, trauma and recovery, self-esteem and resilience building, and general mental health concerns. Though Danielle is a trained professional, this column is not a substitute for advice or care provided by your licensed medical or healthcare professional.
I’ve had two different close friend groups implode in the last six months. I’m struggling to adjust to the sudden loss of community, and I can’t shake the sense that people are chaotic and untrustworthy. For context, I’ve historically been the type of person who has 1-2 strong friendships, so I’ve gotten really good at thriving solo over the years. But I’ve always wanted a bigger community, and one of the reasons I love New Orleans is because that feels possible here. Both of these friend group implosions have come seemingly out of nowhere, and it feels daunting to try to rebuild my community yet again. Am I doing something wrong? Is chaos and drama just a part of being in community with other humans? How do I find the motivation to keep putting myself out there when all I want to do is be a hermit in my house?
The heartache of an unravelling friendship deserves way more cultural attention. There are no casseroles for the group chat going silent. There are no sympathy flowers when everyone begins watching each other’s Instagram stories like detectives working surveillance.
But this is grief. Real grief. You lost familiarity, ritual, and the hopeful possibility of belonging.
Your desire to abandon human connection and focus instead on becoming a kept housecat makes total sense. You’re in pain. You didn’t just lose people, you lost possibility. You lost the fantasy that maybe you’d finally cracked the code on that elusive thing we all want to feel: belonging.
In New Orleans, it is easy to believe community happens organically. People don’t hang out—they fold into each other’s lives. Neighbors become co-conspirators. Bartenders become family. Someone you met outside smoking is the person who helps you move a mattress three months later. The city can make belonging feel atmospheric, as if proximity alone creates intimacy. It’s a lovely notion, but at the end of the day, community isn’t ambient—community is infrastructure. And as New Orleanians know all too well, infrastructure is fragile.
I’d like to gently push back on whether or not the implosions came “out of nowhere.” I’m not saying you missed red flags or caused the collapse. Far from it. I’m saying groups rarely combust spontaneously. Rifts and tensions accumulate quietly: conflict avoidance, uneven emotional investment, romantic entanglements, unresolved resentments. Usually, by the time the explosion happens, everyone has been secretly smelling smoke for months.
This brings me to the question within your question: Am I doing something wrong? Probably not in the catastrophic way your brain might be telling you, but there is something worth examining here: If you’ve traditionally been in one or two-person friendships, larger community dynamics can be emotionally disorienting, as the rules are different.
Dyads tend toward clarity and directness. Groups run on ambiguity. People perform different versions of each other depending on who is present. Alliances shift. Some people want emotional intimacy, some just want proximity, entertainment, or somewhere to be on a Friday night.
I suspect one aspect of your pain comes from entering a community with expectations for intimate friendship. And why wouldn’t you? You wanted solidarity and mutual care. You wanted something durable. But for some, that might not have been the case.
There’s another thing I want to say, and I mean this lovingly: The impulse to hermit might feel right, but it will lie to you. Isolation almost always markets itself as peace. It says: Look how calm it is here. You can’t be betrayed if you can’t be reached. And for a while, that can seem regulating—especially after relational chaos. Your nervous system wants fewer variables, fewer disappointments and group chats where someone passive-aggressively hearts the wrong comment and leaves everyone wondering what they’ve missed.
A resilient community consists of several layers. It isn’t one giant inseparable friend group that has the ability to survive every rupture. Healthy social lives and resilient communities are more often built on close friendships, situational friends, familiar faces, recurring spaces, and connections that don’t all collapse at once. In other words: diversification, baby.
What might serve you best in this moment is less intensity and more texture. Lower stakes and more repetition. New Orleans is excellent for this. Become a regular somewhere. Volunteer. Keep showing up to the weird niche thing. Not because you’re looking for your soul family, but because repeated, low-pressure contact is how genuine attachment forms.
Not every relationship has to be profound to matter. Some people are porch friends, thrifting friends, “Help me move this bookshelf” friends. Some are only meant for one strange season of your life. The goal isn’t finding chaos-free people. Those don’t exist. It’s finding people capable of repair. People who can tolerate disappointment without retreating into exile.
So, no. You’re not failing at community. You’re learning the difference between belonging and fantasy. Unfortunately, grief is the fee for that lesson.
I think the task in front of you is actually smaller than “putting yourself out there.” Maybe it’s just leaving the house. Answering the text. Going somewhere twice.
You don’t need to become fully trusting or wildly optimistic about humanity. Right now, just try to resist the urge to turn disappointment into your identity. The moment cynicism hardens into personality, loneliness stops being something that happened to you and becomes something you subconsciously protect. And if you can stay open to it, you may find that your next friendship arrives more quietly, but also perhaps more sturdily, than the ones that broke before.
If you need to speak to someone right away, call 504-269-COPE (2673). The COPE crisis line provides free, confidential crisis counseling, suicide prevention and information, and mental health referral services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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