Are Your Friends Using You?

The pattern: they appear when they need something (rides, money, emotional labor, an audience) and vanish when you do; conversations orbit their life; your favors are expected while theirs are celebrated. Any friendship has uneven weeks — the audit measures whether yours has an uneven direction.

Generosity is a choice that gets reciprocated over time, in their currency if not yours. Being used is generosity that's been converted into an expectation — where giving less triggers guilt-tripping or withdrawal. The test scores exactly that reciprocity gap.

Drop the availability to normal levels and watch what happens. Real friends adjust; extractive friends escalate, guilt-trip, or disappear. That response is the clearest diagnostic there is — and the result gives you scripts for each reaction.