If you’re counting who paid for snacks last, you’re not in a friendship. You’re in a tab.

Scorekeeping quietly changes what a friendship is for. Once you are tracking who owes whom, generosity becomes a transaction and every kindness carries an invoice you both pretend not to see. Closeness runs on a rough and forgiving average instead of an exact ledger. The counting usually starts when something else already feels unequal.

If you have been keeping count, ask what the count is standing in for. Sometimes it really is money, and you can say so plainly. More often it is effort or attention, and naming that is the conversation worth having.