Turning up, remembering birthdays, never making it all about you. Lovely qualities, until being thoughtful quietly becomes never saying no. We are both prone to people pleasing, and we both know the small, furious voice that arrives later asking: what about me? Some of our most familiar coping patterns look remarkably like being nice. Here is how to tell the difference between caring about a friend and disappearing inside the friendship.

There was, for example, Gibraltar. Our friendship has survived rows, distance, small children and one threat to emigrate. It has also changed, as most midlife friendships do. Social worlds shrink quietly. People move, jobs change, weekends get complicated. So perhaps the question is not whether you need a dramatic friendship cull, but what you actually need from friendship now, and whether the relationships in your life are giving you enough of it.