If you loved your planner friend, they wouldn’t be your planner friend.
Relationships of all types are often rooted in concepts like reciprocity, fairness, and community. Yet behind nearly every family dinner, friend trip, and coffee date, there is often a singular person who finds themselves the sole project manager behind every group activity.
While this person is often pinned into this role for simply being organized, or demonstrating good planning skills, over time – every planner friend must start to consider whether the labor of planning (that’s saddling their relationships) is worth carrying at all.
But what is the risk for the rest of the friend group? Ignoring your planner friend, neglecting to appreciate them for what they do, and refusing to share the logistical load can risk both the experience being planned and your relationship altogether.
Are YOU the Planner Friend?
They’re the one with their Google Maps open. They’re the one whose name the reservation is under. They’re the one with the travel credit card that books everything so they can get their points, and asks you to pay them back according to a carefully curated payment schedule.
They are the event planners, travel coordinators, and communications associates for their friend groups and families, often with little to no support, and certainly no compensation beyond the occasional “thanks!” to glean from their labor.
Elecia Allen, a 29-year-old UX researcher based in Atlanta, would simply define the planner friend as “a person that gets relied on by the rest of the group.”
“You tend to be the person that makes shit happen. One friend might mention doing something for dinner and you’re the one bringing out a list of restaurants. You’re confirming all the smaller things that no one else wants to do. And people love you for it because they don’t have to do it, ” Elecia explains.
When things require logistical or analytical thinking, the planner friend is the only one left standing after a chorus of “I don’t care” rings out. When they do in fact make a decision, they’re called “particular”– a word they would never use to describe themselves.
The truth of the matter is that these hard-working individuals are not particular or “picky” at all. It is that they indeed do care, even when others don’t, about having a good experience. This could be misconstrued as “needing it to go a certain way,” but in reality things go their way because there’s never any other input. They are the ones who are making the way.
There is often a singular person that has, whether out of need or initially out of generosity, found themselves deep in a hole of expectation that is difficult to climb out of. They’ve become: the planner friend.
Truth is They’re Tired!
Fatigue is a large contributor to the planner friend to solo traveler pipeline. Your friend isn’t resentful or angry at you, they’re just tired of planning brunch and find it easier to eat alone.
Erika Anderson, a 28-year-old former coordinator based in Mexico City, has quietly resigned from the planner friend role in her friend group due to the decision fatigue that came with being the only person who could be decisive when it mattered.
“I don’t think it’s that they’re bad planners, they’re just bad communicators and so they’re slow to process things to make decisions. And so I realized that with my friends, they’re not good decision makers. Not like their lives are a shambles, that type of thing, but as in if you gave them two restaurants, they’d still be like ‘Ah, I don’t know’!”
Everyone wants to turn their brain off on a vacation or an outing, even your friend who plans for the group. And when no one else is making contributions to the itinerary, the load is much heavier on that one person.
What’s also difficult is the tension this dynamic causes in relationships, even outside the ones we expect. Erika’s service as the planner friend in her friend group has spilled over to her dating experiences and has impacted how she’s able to show up in her romantic relationships.
“If we were looking into gender roles as in regards to a man being a leader, no one could lead me because they are always asking me what to do and what time to get to the airport and all these things. They want to be the leader, but then we almost miss our flights and that would frustrate me even more than in a friendship. I won’t say it makes me step into my masculinity, but it does make me feel like I always have to handle things here,” she said.
Holding this Title is Often Rooted in Something Deeper
Aaron Greene, a 25-year-old media professional in Atlanta, isn’t a planner friend because he was never given the agency to try as a child. As a result, there’s a four-year-old fishing trip sitting in his group chat, never having seen the light of day.
“I’m not a planner friend because when I was growing up, I wasn’t allowed to really do too much. I had a really guarded mom, so she was planning everything. She wasn’t letting me do anything I could plan myself, so I didn’t have that freedom. Then, seeing her kind of made me not want to have that responsibility at all. I’ve just seen how planners are sometimes unappreciated and it’s just too much work to be the planner friend. And I’m not that organized, I’m goin’ be 100.”
They’re not just destined to be “the parent” of the group, but likely fall into it as a result of experience – voluntary or involuntary. Black women, specifically, have long been burdened with more responsibility at a younger age and have forcefully adapted extreme resourcefulness from those experiences. And then as adults, Black women face “superwoman syndrome”, falling into that same category.
They’re Conflicted, & Can Sometimes Feel Resentful
Cognitive dissonance really be swinging on the planner friend. It’s quite difficult to reconcile ideas like these:
- I paid for a relaxing trip just like everyone else, yet I’m using so much time and mental energy to navigate for this group that I feel more like a tour guide than an actual part of this group.
- I love spending time with my family, but it drains me mentally because I have to facilitate every detail of the family function.
- I love my friends and the traditions we’ve built, but I no longer have the capacity to single-handedly uphold these parts of our relationship. But if I let it go, I don’t know if anyone is going to pick it up.
- I just want to have a good time, but I’m not confident that it will happen if I don’t make it happen.
From dating to career to everything in between, the stress of being the planner friend is oftentimes not isolated to one particular relationship. It bleeds onto other things and into other spheres of their lives.
How To Help your Planner Friend:
Initiate Contact & Share the Planning Burden
Communication is the single best tool we have to resolve conflict in our relationships. And while there is an onus on the planner friend to communicate to their friends when they’re feeling undervalued or overworked, their friends in turn must be receptive and capable of having a constructive conversation. So before implementing any of these suggestions, the first thing you need to do is talk to your friend. Ask them what they need, how they are feeling, and what would make them feel valued, supported, and considered.
Elecia’s been extremely intentional about creating a friend group around her that can communicate with her and support her to make the planner friend load a bit lighter.
“I’ve built out a really good one of like 4-5 really awesome women and one really good guy friend as well. When we hang out, I do plan a lot of things for us to actively do, but they’ve been really great about also reaching out to me and planning stuff out. And they bring me up to me like, ‘Hey, I’m planning on going to this thing. You want to come with me? Do you want to do this with me?’ And they’ve already built out the details.”
Imagine the relief your planner friend would feel if you invited them to something already all planned out (even if you weren’t the one who planned it).
Just a week ago, after months of having difficult conversations with my family and friends about how I was resigning as the planner friend/sister, I was met with a huge, fully planned surprise party for my birthday. It was an affirmation to me that when I speak up about how I feel, my community will hear me and respond accordingly. If your planner friend tells you how they feel, listen and consider what ways you can help.
Be Accountable & Match their Energy
If you find yourself to be a “go with the flow” person, consider whose flow you’ve been going with all this time. If you’ve considered yourself a spontaneous traveler, ponder whether it’s actual spontaneity or if you just never opened the itinerary your friend emailed you a month ago.
There are certainly more relaxed ways to travel, but don’t allow that to mask the actual work someone else is doing. The labor one of your friends is putting in to get this trip off the ground and out of the group chat requires a flow. They know this and they create it because they know if they don’t, you won’t either.
I’m certainly not saying you need to become a travel agent or concierge overnight, but I’m simply suggesting that if you’re going on a week-long vacation, offer to plan part of the itinerary. It could be as small or as large as committing to be responsible for timekeeping or finding a restaurant or booking an excursion.
“Take small initiatives,” Erika suggests. “Take some stuff off their plate. If it’s, you know, just researching the hotel or something, do little tasks because this is a whole thing: restaurants, hotels, activities, transportation. There’s a lot that goes into this. It doesn’t have to be the whole trip, but if you could help me find five Airbnbs, that’d be great.”
Be Proactive and Responsive
When your friend asks for feedback, give it. When they send something in the group chat, respond as soon as you can. You likely care a lot more about things than you think. Even when you don’t think you have an opinion about something, realize that not giving an opinion at all is worse. Have a preference and communicate that in a timely manner to your planner friend.
“I think a lot of my friends are people pleasers and so they go with the flow. A lot of times I would hear ‘whatever you want to do.’ And then it’s like, OK, if I plan this, you’re going to have to be OK with what I do.’ And then they’re not,” said Erika.
Remember to Love your Planner Friend in Real Life
Your planner friend (sibling, cousin, whatever) probably loves you very much. But when you treat them as an unpaid travel agent, or exploit their planning skills without any care for how it’s impacting them, you are not showing them the appreciation they likely deserve. I’m not suggesting everyone take the lead on every single activity. I’m saying that if you don’t give your planner friend a break, or listen to them when they share their feelings, you may find yourself suddenly seeing them less than you might have liked.
Relationships are difficult, as is planning complex activities for adults with acrobatic schedules. But where there is friendship, there ought to be love. And where there is love, there ought to be enough care to ensure that everyone’s needs are being met.
