Throughout my life I have seen many examples of people “backing out” of friendships when they sense it is getting too serious. Friendships are a social contract and it means that you have a certain responsability with the other person. This responsibility varies greatly in each relationship, but I sense that nowadays people are scared to go there. Maybe we are more guarded.
The beauty of a friendship is when you show your appreciation for someone by going out of your way because you know they would do the same for you. Supporting in the good times and the hard times!
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It depends on the personality type, I see three main types. One group of people are more surface level and hedonistic- weed, beach day and partying type. The second group are high intensity individuals that don’t find fulfilment with the first crowd as their relationships have strong substance. The second group can get very philosophical and pour their heart out to each other, but like you mentioned, it takes a level of humility to empathise effectively with someone else’s life as you actually need to simulate their pain in your mind to attempt to understand and help them. Not everyone has the spiritual fortitude to fall into the second group and even those who do may not expend their mental energy on just anyone until you earn it. However there is a third group, people who usually practice forms of mindfulness, meditation, or tai chi etc. This group somehow isn’t emotionally needy, can manage to be lighthearted and have goofy, have surface level fun but plunge into the depths of the existential abyss wholeheartedly. Third group is the best to be around. You just gotta find the right people.
I’m in my early 30s, and I think in the past people were so much more guarded and scared of close friendships than they are now.
I do think people now have a really big problem of ghosting each other, but also it’s so so much easier with online how it is to find people who are willing to open up and be honest about who they are, and to provide emotional support to each other and things like that. I’m not around zoomers in real life often but it seems like it’s like growing up in a totally different world from the extremely-repressed one I did.