Loyalty that only flows in one direction isn’t loyalty. It’s a leak.

A one-way arrangement can look like devotion from the inside, especially if you are the one giving. You defend them, keep their secrets, rearrange your week, and the accounting never runs the other way. Loyalty needs two ends to be loyalty at all. With one end it is simply something draining out of you.

Think about the last three times something was hard for you and who was there. Not who would say the right thing, who did something. If the answer keeps being nobody for a particular friendship, you can give it less without announcing anything or ending it.