How do I avoid crazy fees

Hey, thank you for any advice in this post. So the other day I bought $116 of ethereum on cryptocom and of that amount I got $110 worth in my account. I then sent two seperate payments to my friend. One was $50, and she received $36 of it. Then I sent $62.71 and she received $48. It was night time in the USA so I don’t think the gas rates were crazy. But it’s wild that I bought $116 worth and she only received $84. Where did the $32 go? How can I avoid paying this much in fees everytime I want to send crypto. Why do people use crypto if you only keep 73% of your money?