essay on end of friendship

Friday essay: on the ending of a friendship

Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, The University of Melbourne

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Kevin John Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Friendship is an incomparable, immeasurable boon to me, and a source of life — not metaphorically but literally.

• Simone Weil

About eight years ago, I went to dinner with a dear friend I had known for more than 40 years. It would be the last time we would see each other and by the end of that evening I was deeply shaken. But more lasting and more unsettling than this has been the feeling of loss without his friendship. It was a sudden ending but it was also an ending that lasted for me well beyond that evening. I have worried since then at what kind of friend I am to my friends, and why a friendship can suddenly self-destruct while others can so unexpectedly bloom.

My friend and I were used to going to dinner together, though it had become an increasingly tricky matter for us. We had been seeing each other more infrequently, and our conversations had been tending towards repetition. I still enjoyed his passion for talk, his willingness to be puzzled by life’s events, our comically growing list of minor ailments as we entered our sixties, and the old stories he fell back on — usually stories of his minor triumphs, such as the time his car burst into fire, was declared a write-off by insurance, and ended in an auction house where he bought it back with part of the insurance payout and only minor repairs to be made. There were stories of his time as a barman in one of Melbourne’s roughest pubs. I suppose in a lot of long-lasting friendships it is these repeated stories of the past that can fill the present so richly.

Nevertheless, both his opinions and mine seemed to have become too predictable. Even his desire to come up with the most unpredictable viewpoint on any problem was a routine I expected from him. Each of us knew the weaknesses in the other’s thinking, and we had learned not to go too far with some topics, which were of course the most interesting and important ones.

He knew how politically correct I could be, and shrewdly enough he had no time for my self-righteousness, the predictability of my views on gender, race and climate. I understood this. He knew too that his fiercely independent thinking was often just the usual rant against greenies or lefties. Something had begun to fail in our friendship, but I could not properly perceive this or speak of it.

We were a contrasting pair. He was a big man with an aggressive edge to his gregarious nature, while I was lean, short and physically slight next to him, a much more reserved person altogether. I liked his size because big men have been protective figures in my life. At times when I felt threatened I would ask him to come with me to a meeting or a transaction, and just stand next to me in his big way. During one long period of trouble with our neighbours he would visit when the tension was high to show his formidable presence and his solidarity with us.

I was always reading and knew how to talk books, while he was too restless to read much. He knew how to sing, bursting into song occasionally when we were together. He had been unable to work professionally since a breakdown that was both physical and mental. By contrast, I was working steadily, never quite as free with my time as he was.

Nearly two years before our last dinner together his wife had suddenly left him. As it turned out, she had been planning her departure for some time, but when she went he was taken by surprise. I saw a more confused and fragile side of him during those months when we would meet and talk through how he was dealing with their counselling sessions, and then how the negotiations were proceeding over belongings and finally the family house. He was learning to live alone for the first time since he had been a young man, and was exploring what it might be like to seek out new relationships.

Read more: Research Check: is it true only half your friends actually like you?

A safe haven

We had met when I was a first-year university student boarding at my grandmother’s home in an inner Melbourne suburb. I was studying for a Bachelor of Arts, staying up through the nights, discovering literature, music, history, cask wine, dope, girls and ideas.

He lived in a flat a few doors away in a street behind my grandmother’s place, and I remember it was the local parish youth group, or the remnants of one, that used to meet in his flat. In my friend’s flat we would lie around the floor, half a dozen of us, drinking, flirting, arguing about religion or politics until the night was strung out in our heads, tight and thin and vibrating with possibilities. I loved that sudden intimate and intellectually rich contact with people my own age.

My friend and I started up a coffee lounge in an old disused shopfront as a meeting place for youth who would otherwise be on the street. I was the one who became immersed in the chaotic life of the place as students, musicians, misfits, hopeful poets and petty criminals floated through the shop, while my friend kept his eye on the broader picture that involved real estate agents, local councils, supplies of coffee, income and expenditure.

Perhaps the experience helped delay my own adulthood, allowing me time to try out a bohemian, communal alternative lifestyle that was so important to some of us in the early 1970s. My friend, though, was soon married. It was as if he had been living a parallel life outside our friendship, outside the youth group, coffee shop, jug band, drugs and misadventures of our project.

This did not break us up, and in fact after his marriage he became another kind of friend. I was at times struggling to find some steady sense of myself. Sometimes in those years I would not be able to talk or even be near others, and I remember once when I felt like this I went to my newly married friend’s home, and asked if I could lie on the floor in the corner of their lounge room for a few days until I felt better.

They indulged me. I felt it was this haven that saved me then, giving me the time to recoup and giving me a sense that there was somewhere I could go where the world was safe and neutral.

In time, and more bumpily and uncertainly than my friend, I was with a partner raising a family. He was often involved in our children’s birthdays, other celebrations, our house-moving, and just dropping in on family meals. It worked for us. I remember him lifting our cast iron wood-burning stove into its place in our first renovated Brunswick cottage. He lived in a more sprawling home near bushland on the edge of Melbourne, so one of my pleasures became the long cycling trips out to see him.

My partner and I were embraced by a local community thanks to the childcare centre, kinders, schools and sport. Lasting friendships (for us and for our children) grew in the tentative, open-ended, slightly blindly feeling way of friendships. Through this decade and a half though, the particular friendship with my songful friend held, perhaps to the surprise of both of us.

‘Tolerating much, for the sake of best intentions’

In his thoroughly likeable 1993 book on friendship , the political scientist Graham Little wrote under the bright light of writings by Aristotle and Freud, that the purest kind of friendship “welcomes the different ways people are alive to life and tolerates much in a friend for the sake of best intentions”.

Here perhaps is the closest I have seen to a definition of friendship at its best: a stance imbued with sympathy, interest and excitement directed at another despite all that otherwise shows we are flawed and dangerous creatures.

On that evening, the evening of the last time we went out to dinner together, I did push my friend towards one of the topics we usually avoided. I had been wanting him to acknowledge and even apologise for his behaviour towards some young women he had spoken to, I thought, lewdly and insultingly nearly a year before in my home at a party. The women and those of us who had witnessed his behaviour felt continuing tension over his refusal to discuss the fact that he had wanted to speak so insultingly to them and then had done it in our home in front of us. For me, there was some element of betrayal, not only in the way he had behaved but in his continued refusal to discuss what had happened.

The women were drunk, he said, just as he had said the last time I tried to talk to him about this. They were wearing almost nothing, he said, and what he’d said to them was no more than they were expecting. My friend and I were sitting in a popular Thai restaurant on Sydney Road: metal chairs, plastic tables, concrete floor. It was noisy, packed with students, young couples and groups out for a cheap and tasty meal. A waitress had put menus, water and beer on our table while she waited for us to decide on our meals. Wanting to push finally past this impasse, I pointed out to him that the women had not insulted him, he had insulted them.

If that’s the way you want it, he replied, and placed his hands on each side of the table, hurling it into the air and walking out of the restaurant as table, bottles, glasses, water and beer came clattering and smashing down around me. The whole restaurant fell silent. I could not move for some time. The waitress began mopping up the floor around me. Someone called out, “Hey, are you all right?”

This was the last time I saw or heard from him. For many months, I thought of him every day, then slowly I thought of him less often, until now I can think of him more or less at will, and not find myself ashamed of the way I went for him in a conversation where I should have been perhaps more alive to whatever was troubling him.

Improvised, tentative

For some years after this, I felt I had to learn how to be myself without him. I have read articles and essays since then about how pitiful men can be at friendship. We are apparently too competitive, we base our friendships on common activities, which means we can avoid talking openly about our feelings and thoughts. I don’t know about this “male deficit model”, as some sociologists call it, but I do know that the loss of this friendship took with it a big part of my shared personal history at that time. It dented my confidence in ever having properly known this man or understood our friendship — or in knowing how secure any friendship might be.

I was drawn to read and re-read Michel de Montaigne’s gentle and strangely extreme essay on friendship where he was so certain that he knew with perfection what his friend would think and say and value. He wrote of his friend, Etienne de Boëtie, “Not only did I know his mind as well as I knew my own but I would have entrusted myself to him with greater assurance than to myself.”

Against this perfection of understanding between friends, there is George Eliot’s odd excursion into science fiction in her 1859 novel, The Lifted Veil . Her narrator, Latimer, finds he can perceive perfectly clearly the thoughts of all the people around him. He becomes disgusted and deeply disturbed by the petty self-interest he apparently discovers within everyone.

After 40 years of shared history, there was not the disgust Eliot writes of, nor Montaigne’s perfect union of mind and trust between me and my burly friend, but there was, I had thought, a foundation of knowledge whereby we took each other’s differences into ourselves, as well as our common histories of the cafe we had run, and as it happened our common serving of time in semi-monastic seminaries before we’d met — differences and similarities that had given us, I thought, ways of being in sympathy with each other while allowing for each other.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne's Essays

Montaigne’s dearest friend, Etienne, had died, and his essay was as much about the meaning of this loss as about friendship. His big idea was loyalty, and I think I understand that, though not in the absolute way Montaigne wrote of it.

Loyalty is only real if it is constantly renewed. I worry that I have not worked enough at some friendships that have come into my life, but have let them happen more passively than the women I know who spend such time, and such complicated time, exploring and testing friendships. The sudden disappearance of my friend left me with an awareness of how patched-together, how improvised, clumsy and tentative even the most secure-seeming friendship can be.

When the philosopher and brilliant essayist, Simone Weil wrote shortly before she died in 1943,

I may lose, at any moment, through the play of circumstances over which I have no control, anything whatsoever that I possess, including things that are so intimately mine that I consider them as myself. There is nothing that I might not lose. It could happen at any moment ….

she seemed to be touching on the difficult truth that we run on luck and hope and chance much of the time. Why haven’t I worked harder at friendships, when I know that they provide the real meaning in my life?

Some years ago, when I was told by a medical specialist that I had a 30% chance of having cancer, as I waited for the results of a biopsy, I remember that in response to these dismal odds I had no desire to go back to work, no desire to even read — all I wanted to do was spend time with friends.

Inner worlds laid waste

To know what it is we care about, this is a gift. It should be straightforward to know this and keep it present in our lives, but it can prove to be difficult. Being the reader that I am, I have always turned to literature and fiction for answers or insights into those questions that seem to need answering.

I realised some time after the ending of my friendship that I had been reading novels dealing with friendship, and was not even sure how consciously I had chosen them.

For instance, I read The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber, a novel about a Christian preacher, Peter Leigh, sent to convert aliens in a galaxy ludicrously far from earth on a planet with an equally unlikely atmosphere benign to its human colonisers.

It is a novel about whether Leigh can be any kind of adequate friend to his wife left behind on Earth, and whether his new feelings for these aliens amounts to friendship. Though my suspension of disbelief was precarious, I found myself caring about these characters and their relationships, even the grotesquely shapeless aliens. Partly I cared about them because the book read like an essay testing ideas of friendship and loyalty that were important and urgent to the writer.

I also read at that time Haruki Murakami’s novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage , a book that came with a little game of coloured cards and stickers, and I found that I cared about Tsukuru Tazaki too, for I felt all along that Murakami’s character was a thin and endearing disguise for himself (what a beautiful word that is, “en-dearing”).

The novel centred on lost friendships. I heard a tone in its voice that was the oddly flat, persistent, vulnerable and sincere searching of a man for connection with others. If Murakami’s novel has a proposition it wishes to test it would be that we only know ourselves in what images of ourselves we receive back from our friends. Without our friends we become invisible, lost.

In both those novels, the friendships are crashing to pieces in slow motion in front of the reader’s helpless eyes. I wanted to shake those characters, tell them to stop and think about what they were doing, but at the same time I saw in them mirrors of myself and my experiences.

I read John Berger too , on the way a human looks across an abyss of incomprehension when looking at another animal. Though language seems to connect us, it might be that language also distracts us from the actual abyss of ignorance and fear between all of us as we look, across, at each other. In his book on the savage mind , Lévi-Strauss quotes a study of Canadian Carrier Indians living on the Bulkley River who were able to cross that abyss between species, believing they knew what animals did and what their needs were because their men had been married to the salmon, the beaver and the bear.

I have read essays by Robin Dunbar on the evolutionary limits to our circles of intimacy , where he suggests that for most of us there needs to be three or maybe five truly close friends. These are the ones we lean towards with tenderness and open ourselves to with endless curiosity — those in whom we seek only the good.

My partner can name quickly four friends who qualify for her as part of this necessary circle. I find I can name two (and she is one of them), then a constellation of individual friends whose closeness to me I can’t easily measure. It is this constellation that sustains me.

Recently I was away from home for three months. After two weeks away I wrote a list in the back of my diary of the friends I was missing. A little more than a dozen of these were the friends, men and women, with whom I need contact, and with whom conversations are always open-ended, surprising, intellectually stimulating, sometimes intimate, and often fun. With each of them I explore a slightly different but always essential version of myself. Graham Little wrote that “ideal soulmates are friends who are fully aware that each has himself as his main life project”.

To live this takes some effort of imagination, and with my friend at dinner that night I might in myself have been refusing to make this effort.

There are also, it occurs to me, the friends who came as couples, with whom my partner and I share time as couples. This is itself another manifestation of friendship, one that crosses over into community, tribe and family — and no less precious than the individual intimacy of a personal friendship. For reasons I can’t properly fathom, the importance of this kind of time with coupled friends has deepened as I have grown through the decades of my fifties and sixties.

Perhaps it is that the dance of conversation and ideas is so much more complex and pleasurable when there are four or more contributing. It could be too that I am absolved from the responsibility of really working at these friendships in the way one must when there are two of us. Or it might be the pang and stimulus of the knowledge that opportunities to be together are brutally diminishing as we grow older.

But to lose an individual friend from one’s closest circle is to have large tracts of one’s inner world laid waste for a time. My feelings over the end of this particular friendship were a kind of grief mixed with bewilderment.

It was not that the friendship was necessary to my existence, but that perhaps through habit and sympathy it had become a fixed part of my identity. Robin Dunbar would say that by stepping away from this friendship I had made room for someone else to slip in to my circle of most intimate friends, but isn’t it the point of such close friends that they are in some important sense irreplaceable? This is the source of much of our distress when such friendships end.

Still learning

When I told people about what had happened in the restaurant that night, they would say, reasonably, “Why don’t you patch things up and resume your friendship?”

As I imagined how a conversation might go if I did meet my friend again, I came to understand that I had been a provocation to him. I had ceased to be the friend he needed, wanted or imagined.

What he did was dramatic. He might have called it merely dramatic. I felt it as threatening. Though I cannot help but think I provoked him. And if we had “patched” a friendship back together, on whose terms would this have been conducted? Would it always be that I would have to agree not to press him on questions that might lead him to throw over some table between us again?

Or worse, would I have to witness his apology, forgive him myself, and put him on his best behaviour for the rest of our friendship?

Neither of those outcomes would have patched much together. I had been hurting too over what I saw as his lack of willingness or interest to understand the situation from my point of view. And so it went inside me as the table and the water and the beer and the glasses came crashing down around me. I had been, in a way, married to my friend, even if he was a salmon or a bear — a creature across an abyss from me. Perhaps this was the only way out of that marriage. Perhaps he had been preparing for (moving towards?) this moment more consciously than I had been.

The ending of this friendship, it is clear, left me looking for its story. It was as if all along there must have been a narrative with a trajectory carrying us in this direction. A story is of course a way of testing whether an experience can take on a shape. Murakami’s and Faber’s novels are not themselves full-blown stories, for there is almost no plot, no shape, to their stumbling episodic structures, and oddly enough in both books the self-doubting lovers might or might not find that close communion with another somewhere well beyond the last page of each novel.

These novels cohere round a series of questions rather than events: what do we know and what can we know about others, what is the nature of the distance that separates one person from another, how provisional is it to know someone anyway, and what does it mean to care about someone, even someone who is a character in a novel?

When an Indian says he is married to a salmon, this can be no stranger than me saying I spent a couple of weeks on a humid planet in another galaxy with an astronaut who is a Christian preacher and an inept husband, or I spent last night in Tokyo with an engineer who builds railway stations and believes himself to be colourless, though at least two women have told him he is full of colour. But do I go to this story-making as a way of keeping my experiences less personal and more cerebral?

When I got home that night eight years ago, I sat at my kitchen table, shaking, hugging myself, talking to my grown-up children about what happened. It was the talking that helped — a narrative taking shape.

Dunbar, like me, like all of us, worries at the question of what makes life so richly present to us, and why friendships seem to be at the core of this meaningfulness. He has been surveying Americans with questions about friendship for several decades, and he concludes that for many of us the small circle of intimate friendships we experience is reducing.

We are apparently lucky now, on average, if there are two people in our lives we can approach with tenderness and curiosity, with that assumption that time will not matter as we talk in a low, murmuring, hive-warm way to a close friend.

My friend cannot be replaced, and it might be that we did not in the end imagine each other fully enough or accurately enough as we approached that last encounter. I don’t know precisely what our failure was. The shock of what happened and the shock of the friendship ending has over the time since that dinner become a part of my history in which I remember feeling grief but am no longer caught in confused anger or guilt over it. The story of it might not have ended but it has subsided.

Perhaps in all friendships we are not only, at our best, agreeing to encountering the unique and endlessly absorbing presence of another person, but unknown to us we’re learning something about how to approach the next friendship in our lives. There is something comically inept and endearing about the possibility that one might still be learning how to be a friend right up to the end of life.

• Friday essay
• Michel de Montaigne
• Peer relationships

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Need to end a friendship here's how to do it in a healthy & mature way.

Friendships are a source of joy and community in our lives—when we're friends with the right people, that is. But once in a while, you might start realizing a friendship isn't serving you, and when that happens, it's important to know how to end it.

Here are some telltale signs it's time to end a friendship, plus the do's and don'ts of going about it, according to relationship experts.

Why do friendships end?

There are innumerable reasons a friendship might end or fizzle out, and those reasons aren't always personal. Of course, sometimes they are personal, but in either case, ending a friendship that isn't working out is still valid.

As psychotherapist  Annette Nuñez, Ph.D., LMFT , tells mindbodygreen, we all crave human connection, but when that connection doesn't feel reciprocated, for instance, you might want to end the friendship. A friend could also feel draining to be around or bring out the worst in you, and that would be another reason, she explains.

But then there are times when the issue is less black and white, such as when two friends start moving in different directions (literally or figuratively).

As licensed therapist  De-Andrea Blaylock-Solar, MSW, LCSW-S, CST , notes, ending a friendship doesn't have to be a dramatic, vindictive process, but rather two people sharing honestly about the impact the friendship has on them and how to move forward in a way that's healthy for both people.

That said, here are some more definitive signs a friendship isn't serving you and should end.

Signs it's time to end a friendship:

• They compete with you on various aspects in life and struggle to be happy for you.
• They engage in behavior that makes you feel unsafe or disrespected.
• They only call or ask to hang out when they need something (aka a "one-sided friend" ).
• You dread seeing their name pop up on your phone.
• You feel like they bring out the worst in you.
• They violate your boundaries.
• You find yourself making excuses to get out of hanging out with them.
• Your growth is negatively affected by the friendship.
• The conversations feel forced.
• You feel drained after hanging out with them.
• They are possessive, jealous, and controlling.
• You resent them.
• They emotionally dump on you all the time.
• They never ask or seem to care how you're doing.
• They guilt-trip you or use other manipulation tactics .
• They display narcissistic qualities .
• You can't get a word in around them.
• Their presence makes you feel physically ill.
• They take jabs at you in front of other people or sabotage you.
• They expect you to read their mind—and get upset when you can't.
• They don't accept you.
• You enable each other or engage in codependent dynamics.
• You don't have any common ground, interests, or hobbies.
• You've outgrown them.

9 do's and don'ts for ending friendships:

Do plan what you want to say..

Ending a friendship can be a heavy task, and those kinds of confrontations are rarely easy. As such, Blaylock-Solar recommends planning ahead what you'd like to say, even if that means coming up with a script beforehand or opting to write a letter instead.

"If you're not feeling comfortable with talking it out, maybe writing a letter, email, or text would be a good idea. But beyond that, even writing out your thoughts and your feelings before the conversation can help you have an idea of what you want to say," Blaylock-Solar tells mindbodygreen, adding, "And you can decide if you want to hit send or not."

Don't ghost them.

It can be tempting to take the easy way out and ghost your friend to avoid having a conversation altogether, but that wouldn't be the mature thing to do, according to Nuñez.

As she tells mindbodygreen, ignoring a person isn't going to get a good reaction or make you feel any better, and research actually shows that ghosting friends is associated with depressive symptoms . So try to avoid the urge to ghost, and be sure to extend compassion to your friend if you want the "breakup" to go smoothly, she advises.

Do open up the conversation.

Speaking of extending compassion, when you open up the conversation, remember that people react a lot better when you're open and honest with them about your feelings, as opposed to telling them all the things you can't stand about them.

As Nuñez explains, you can broach the conversation in a way that explains your stance without being mean, focusing on the fact that you're prioritizing your energy and growth and need space from the friendship.

Don't create unnecessary drama.

Just like romantic breakups, friendship breakups can come with drama, especially if the two of you have mutual friends. But according to Blaylock-Solar, your best bet is to mitigate as much drama as possible by keeping it between you and your friend.

"Of course, you may reach out to others for advice, but you're not rallying the troops to be on your side," she says, adding to avoid involving other people unless you have to and definitely not posting about it on social media.

Do set boundaries.

Breakups come with boundaries , whether that's telling your friend you don't want to be in contact anymore or telling them you can't be there to support them as you have in the past.

Of course, you can't control how this friend will react to your boundaries, but you can control your responses to your friend's reaction—and that looks like not backing down. As Nuñez explains, going back on your boundaries can exacerbate an already toxic dynamic that breeds resentment, and the onus is on you not to back down once a boundary has been set.

Don't feel guilty.

Speaking of not going back on boundaries, one of the main reasons people cave on their boundaries amid a friendship breakup is because of guilt. And as Nuñez says, you should never feel guilty for doing what's best for your well-being.

"It's really important that you're not taking on some of their negative feelings, or even feeling guilty, because oftentimes when people don't take it well, we feel guilty and then we cave," she explains, adding, "You have to come to terms with the fact that people won't always like your choices."

Do allow the friendship phase out.

As aforementioned, friendship breakups don't have to be a dramatic blowout, and oftentimes end up fizzling out on their own as contact becomes less and less frequent. For instance, Nuñez says, "Maybe your friendship turns into reaching out on the holidays, wishing them happy birthday, and you become acquaintances more than friends," adding that this is totally OK.

If you want to go this route, simply reaching out or hanging out less frequently can be a nonconfrontational way for them to get the message. Of course, depending on the friend, they might need a more direct conversation, so this process might involve some trial and error.

Don't focus on blaming them.

When you do have a conversation with your friend about ending the friendship, as aforementioned, you want to focus on your feelings and reasons for ending the friendship but in a way that doesn't provoke defensiveness.

As Blaylock-Solar explains, sticking with "I feel—" statements (i.e., I feel disrespected when you cancel our plans last minute helps you to explain your position without calling their character into question. Try to get specific, she adds, using actual emotions and naming a specific thing that happened between you two.

Do end the friendship immediately if it's causing significant distress.

There's a difference between a friendship that's not serving your growth and a friendship that's significantly and negatively impacting your quality of life. If a friend has been abusive in any way or is engaging in behaviors that make you feel unsafe or violated, don't hesitate to cut off contact immediately.

In these cases, a compassionate letter or setting boundaries isn't going to help, and you'd likely be better off walking away indefinitely.

Moving forward after the friendship ends

Friendship breakups can be just as difficult as romantic breakups, especially if you and this friend were close or have been friends a long time.

But according to Nuñez, good friends help you be a better person and bring out the best in you, so be sure to remind yourself of that if you start missing the companionship you found in this friend.

When you no longer have this person draining your time or energy , you'll have more space in your life to find friends who do bring out the best in you—and those are the friends you want, after all.

It could also be worthwhile to work with a mental health professional if the friendship breakup is causing you significant distress or you're struggling to find healthy friendships.

How do you know when it's time to end a friendship?

There are many reasons you might want to end a friendship, but in short, if a friend drains you or brings out the worst in you, it's probably not a healthy friendship.

Is it normal to end friendships?

Yes, it is perfectly normal (and healthy) to end a friendship that is no longer serving you and your growth.

What is the main cause of friendship ending?

While some friendships can end because of a falling out or personal differences, most friendships naturally phase out as people drift apart.

What is the nicest way to end a friendship?

The nicest way to end a friendship is to explain to your friend that while you have valued their place in your life, you no longer feel the friendship is a healthy or supportive connection for you.

The takeaway

It's never easy to realize a friend isn't being the friend you need them to be, and it's even more difficult to realize you have to walk away. But at the end of the day, friends are meant to support us , not drain us—and anything less isn't worth your well-being.

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I t is an insolent cliché , almost, to note that our culture lacks the proper script for ending friendships. We have no rituals to observe, no paperwork to do, no boilerplate dialogue to crib from.

Yet when Elisa Albert and Rebecca Wolff were in the final throes of their friendship, they managed, entirely by accident, to leave behind just such a script. The problem was that it read like an Edward Albee play—tart, unsparing, fluorescent with rage.

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I met Elisa one evening in 2008, after an old friend’s book reading. She was such mesmerizing company that I rushed out to buy her debut novel, The Book of Dahlia , which had been published a few months earlier. I was instantly struck by how unafraid of darkness and emotional chaos she was. The same articulate fury suffused After Birth , her follow-up; her next book, Human Blues (her “monster,” as she likes to say), comes out in July.

Rebecca is someone I knew only by reputation until recently. She’s the founding editor of the literary magazine Fence , a haven for genre-resistant writing and writers that’s now almost 25 years old. She’s also the author of a novel and four poetry collections, including Manderley , selected by the National Poetry Series; she has a fifth coming out in the fall.

The two women became close more than a decade ago, spotting in each other the same traits that dazzled outsiders: talent, charisma, saber-tooth smarts. To Rebecca, Elisa was “impossibly vibrant” in a way that only a 30-year-old can be to someone who is 41. To Elisa, Rebecca was a glamorous and reassuring role model, a woman who through some miracle of alchemy had successfully combined motherhood, marriage, and a creative life.

It would be hard to overstate how much that mattered to Elisa. She was a new mother, all alone in a new city, Albany, where her husband was a tenured professor. (Albany! How does one find friends in Albany?) Yet here was Rebecca—the center of a lush social network, a pollinating bee—showing up on campus at Fence ’s office every day.

Read: Why making friends in midlife is so hard

The two entered an intense loop of contact. They took a class in New York City together. They sometimes joked about running away together. And, eventually, they decided to write a book together, a collection of their email and text correspondence about a topic with undeniably broad appeal: how to live in the world and be okay. They called this project The Wellness Letters .

I read the manuscript in one gulp. Their exchanges have real swing to them, a screwball quality with a punk twist. On page 1:

R: Anything you haven’t done? E: Affair. Acid. Shrooms. Second child. Death. Ayahuasca. R: “Bucket List.” E: “Efforts at Wellness.” R: I just started writing something called Trying to Stay Off My Meds … E: U R A STRONG WOMAN.

But over time, resentments flicker into view. Deep fissures in their belief systems begin to show. They start writing past each other, not hearing each other at all. By the end, the two women have taken every difficult truth they’ve ever learned about the other and fashioned it into a club. The final paragraphs are a mess of blood and bone and gray guts.

In real time, Elisa and Rebecca enact on the page something that almost all of us have gone through: the painful dissolution of a friendship.

The specifics of their disagreements may be unique to them, but the broad outlines have the ring and shape of the familiar; The Wellness Letters are almost impossible to read without seeing the corpse of one of your own doomed friendships floating by.

Elisa complains about failures in reciprocity.

Rebecca implies that Elisa is being insensitive, too quick to judge others.

Elisa implies that Rebecca is being too self-involved, too needy.

Rebecca implies: Now you’re too quick to judge me.

Elisa ultimately suggests that Rebecca’s unhappiness is at least partly of her own unlovely making.

To which Rebecca more or less replies: Who on earth would choose to be this unhappy?

To which Elisa basically says: Well, should that be an excuse for being a myopic and inconsiderate friend?

E: The truth is that I am wary of you … R: When you say that you are wary of me, it reminds me of something … oh yes, it’s when I told you that I was wary of you … wary of your clear pattern of forming mutually idolatrous relationships with women who you cast in a particular role in your life only to later castigate.

Their feelings were too hot to contain. What started as a deliberate, thoughtful meditation about wellness ended as an inadvertent chronicle of a friendship gone terribly awry.

The Wellness Letters , 18 months of electrifying correspondence, now sit mute on their laptops.

I first read The Wellness Letters in December 2019, with a different project in mind for them. The pandemic forced me to set it aside. But two years later, my mind kept returning to those letters, for reasons that at this point have also become a cliché: I was undergoing a Great Pandemic Friendship Reckoning, along with pretty much everyone else. All of those hours in isolation had amounted to one long spin of the centrifuge, separating the thickest friendships from the thinnest; the ambient threat of death and loss made me realize that if I wanted to renew or intensify my bonds with the people I loved most, the time was now, right now.

Want to explore more of the ideas and science behind well-being? Join Atlantic writers and other experts May 1–3 at The Atlantic ’s In Pursuit of Happiness event. Learn more about in-person and virtual registration here .

But truth be told, I’d already been mulling this subject for quite some time. When you’re in middle age, which I am (mid-middle age, to be precise—I’m now 52), you start to realize how very much you need your friends. They’re the flora and fauna in a life that hasn’t had much diversity, because you’ve been so busy— so relentlessly, stupidly busy —with middle-age things: kids, house, spouse, or some modern-day version of Zorba’s full catastrophe. Then one day you look up and discover that the ambition monkey has fallen off your back; the children into whom you’ve pumped thousands of kilowatt-hours are no longer partial to your company; your partner may or may not still be by your side. And what, then, remains?

With any luck, your friends. According to Laura Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, I’ve aged out of the friendship-collecting business, which tends to peak in the tumbleweed stage of life, when you’re still young enough to spend Saturday evenings with random strangers and Sunday mornings nursing hangovers at brunch. Instead, I should be in the friendship-enjoying business, luxuriating in the relationships that survived as I put down roots.

And I am luxuriating in them. But those friendships are awfully hard-won. With midlife comes a number of significant upheavals and changes, ones that prove too much for many friendships to withstand. By middle age, some of the dearest people in your life have gently faded away.

You lose friends to marriage, to parenthood, to politics—even when you share the same politics. (Political obsessions are a big, underdiscussed friendship-ender in my view, and they seem to only deepen with age.) You lose friends to success, to failure, to flukish strokes of good or ill luck. (Envy, dear God—it’s the mother of all unspeakables in a friendship, the lulu of all shames.) These life changes and upheavals don’t just consume your friends’ time and attention. They often reveal unseemly characterological truths about the people you love most, behaviors and traits you previously hadn’t imagined possible.

Those are brutal.

And I’ve still left out three of the most common and dramatic friendship disrupters: moving, divorce, and death. Though only the last is irremediable.

The unhappy truth of the matter is that it is normal for friendships to fade, even under the best of circumstances. The real aberration is keeping them. In 2009, the Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst published an attention-grabber of a study that basically showed we replace half of our social network over the course of seven years, a reality we both do and don’t intuit.

R: I’m worried once we wrap up our dialogue our friendship will be useless, therefore done. E: Nope. We r deeply in dialogue for long run I think. Unless U want  to not b. Does our friendship feel useless?? … R: No I want to be friends forever E: Then we will b

Were friendships always so fragile? I suspect not. But we now live in an era of radical individual freedoms. All of us may begin at the same starting line as young adults, but as soon as the gun goes off, we’re all running in different directions; there’s little synchrony to our lives. We have kids at different rates (or not at all); we pair off at different rates (or not at all); we move for love, for work, for opportunity and adventure and more affordable real estate and healthier lifestyles and better weather.

From the November 2019 issue: Why you never see your friends anymore

Yet it’s precisely because of the atomized, customized nature of our lives that we rely on our friends so very much. We are recruiting them into the roles of people who once simply coexisted with us—parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, fellow parishioners, fellow union members, fellow Rotarians.

It’s not wholly natural, this business of making our own tribes. And it hardly seems conducive to human thriving. The percentage of Americans who say they don’t have a single close friend has quadrupled since 1990, according to the Survey Center on American Life.

One could argue that modern life conspires against friendship, even as it requires the bonds of friendship all the more.

When I was younger, my friends had as much a hand in authoring my personality as any other force in my life. They advised me on what to read, how to dress, where to eat. But these days, many are showing me how to think, how to live .

It gets trickier as you age, living. More bad things happen. Your parents, if you’re lucky enough to still have them, have lives so different from your own that you’re looking horizontally, to your own cohort, for cues. And you’re dreading the days when an older generation will no longer be there for you—when you’ll have to rely on another ecosystem altogether for support.

Yet for the past decade or so, I’ve had a tacit, mutual understanding with many of the people I love most, particularly fellow working parents: Look, life’s crazy, the office has loaded me up like a pack animal, we’ll catch up when we catch up, love you in the meantime . This happens to suit a rotten tendency of mine, which is to work rather than play. I could give you all sorts of therapized reasons for why I do this, but honestly, at my age, it’s embarrassing. There comes a point when you have to wake up in the morning and decide that it doesn’t matter how you got to whatever sorry cul-de-sac you’re circling; you just have to find a way out.

I think of Nora Ephron, whose death caught virtually all of her friends by surprise . Had they known, they all said afterward—had they only known that she was ill—they’d have savored the dinners they were having, and they certainly wouldn’t have taken for granted that more of them would stretch forever into the future. Her sudden disappearance from the world revealed the fragility of our bonds, and how presumptuous we all are, how careless, how naive.

Read: Nora Ephron’s rules for middle-age happiness

But shouldn’t this fragility always be top of mind? Surely the pandemic has taught us that?

I mean, how long can we all keep postponing dinner?

When I began writing this story, my friend Nina warned me: Do not make this an occasion to rake through your own history and beat yourself up over the state of your own friendships . Which is something that only a dear friend, armed with protective instincts and a Spidey sense about her friend’s self-lacerating tendencies, would say.

Fair enough. But it’s hard to write a story about friendship in midlife without thinking about the friends you’ve lost. “When friendship exists in the background, it’s unremarkable but generally uncomplicated,” wrote B. D. McClay , an essayist and critic, in Lapham’s Quarterly last spring. “But when friendship becomes the plot, then the only story to tell is about how the friendship ended.”

Friendship is the plot of this article. So naturally I’m going to write at least a little about those I’ve lost—and my regrets, the choices I’ve made, the time I have and have not invested.

On the positive side of the ledger: I am a loyal friend. I am an empathetic friend. I seldom, if ever, judge. Tell me you murdered your mother and I’ll say, Gee, you must have been really mad at her . I am quick to remind my friends of their virtues, telling them that they are beautiful, they are brilliant, they are superstars. I spend money on them. I often express my love.

On the negative side: I’m oversensitive to slights and minor humiliations, which means I’m wrongly inclined to see them as intentional rather than pedestrian acts of thoughtlessness, and I get easily overwhelmed, engulfed. I can almost never mentally justify answering a spontaneous phone call from a friend, and I have to force myself to phone and email them when I’m hard at work on a project. I’m that prone to monomania, and that consumed by my own tension.

What both of these traits have in common is that I seem to live my life as if I’m under siege. I’m guessing my amygdala is the size of a cantaloupe.

Most of my withered friendships can be chalked up to this terrible tendency of mine not to reach out. I have pals in Washington, D.C., where I started my professional life, whom I haven’t seen in years, and friends from college I haven’t seen since practically graduation—people I once adored, shared my life with, couldn’t have imagined living for two seconds without.

And yet I do. I have.

This is, mind you, how most friendships die, according to the social psychologist Beverley Fehr: not in pyrotechnics, but a quiet, gray dissolve. It’s not that anything happens to either of you; it’s just that things stop happening between you. And so you drift.

It’s the friendships with more deliberate endings that torment. At best, those dead friendships merely hurt; at worst, they feel like personal failures, each one amounting to a little divorce. It doesn’t matter that most were undone by the hidden trip wires of midlife I talked about earlier: marriage, parenthood, life’s random slings and arrows. By midlife, you’ve invested enough in your relationships that every loss stings.

Read: The Friendship Files

You feel bereft, for one thing. As if someone has wandered off with a piece of your history.

And you fear for your reputation. Friends are the custodians of your secrets, the eyewitnesses to your weaknesses. Every confession you’ve made—all those naked moments—can be weaponized.

There was the friend I lost to parenthood, utterly, though I was also a parent. Her child shortly consumed her world, and she had many child-rearing opinions. These changes alone I could have handled; what I couldn’t handle was her obvious disapproval of my own parenting style (hands-off) and my lack of sentimentality about motherhood itself (if you don’t have something nice to say about raising kids, pull up a chair and sit next to me).

There was no operatic breakup. She moved away; I made zero effort to stay in touch. But whenever I think of her, my stomach chirps with a kind of longing. She showed me how cognitive behavioral therapy worked before I even knew it was a thing, rightsizing my perspective each time I turned a wispy cirrus into a thunderhead. And her conversation was tops, weird and unpredictable.

I miss her. Or who she was. Who we were.

I lost a male friend once to parenthood too, though that situation was different. In this instance, I was not yet a mother. But he was a dad, and on account of this, he testily informed me one day, he now had higher moral obligations in this world than to our friendship or to my feelings, which he’d just seriously hurt (over something that in hindsight I’ll confess was pretty trivial). While I knew on some level that what he said was true, I couldn’t quite believe he was saying it out loud, this person with whom I’d spent so many idle, gleeful hours. I miss him a lot, and wonder to this day whether I should have just let the comment go.

Yet whenever I think of him, a fiery asterisk still appears next to his name.

Mahzad Hojjat, a social-psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, once told me that people may say that friendship betrayals aren’t as bad as romantic betrayals if they’re presented with hypothetical scenarios on a questionnaire. But that’s not how they experience friendship betrayals in real life . This doesn’t surprise me. I still have sense-memories of how sickened I was when this friend told me I’d been relegated to a lower league—my heart quickening, the blood thumping in my ears.

Then there was the friend who didn’t say anything hurtful to me per se; the problem was how little she said about herself at all. According to Hojjat, failures of reciprocity are a huge theme in broken friendships. That stands to reason—asymmetries of time and effort can continue for only so long before you feel like you’ve lost your dignity. (I myself have been criticized for neglect and laziness, and rightly. It’s shitty.) But there’s a subtler kind of asymmetry that I think is far more devastating, and that is a certain lopsidedness in self-disclosure. This friend and I would have long lunches, dinners, coffees, and I’d be frank, always, about my disappointments and travails. I consider this a form of currency between women: You trade confidences, small glass fragments of yourself.

But not with her. Her life was always fine, swell, just couldn’t be better, thanks. Talking with her was like playing strip poker with someone in a down parka.

Read: How friends become closer

I mentioned this problem to Hojjat. She ventured that perhaps women expect more of their female friends than men do of their male companions, given how intimate our friendships tend to be. In my small, unscientific personal sample of friends, that’s certainly true.

Which brings me to the subject of our Problem Friends. Most of us have them, though we may wish we could tweeze them from our lives. (I’ve had one for decades, and though on some level I’ll always love her, I resolved to be done with her during this pandemic—I’d grown weary of her volatility, her storms of anger.) Unfortunately, what the research says about these friends is depressing: It turns out that time in their company can be worse than time spent with people we actively dislike. That, at any rate, is what the psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad discovered in 2003, when she had the inspired idea to monitor her subjects’ blood pressure while in the presence of friends who generated conflicted feelings. It went up—even more than it did when her subjects were in the presence of people with whom they had “aversive” relationships. Didn’t matter if the conversation was pleasant or not.

You have to wonder whether our bodies have always known this on some level—and whether the pandemic, which for a long while turned every social interaction into a possible health risk, made all of our problem friends easier to give the slip. It’s not just that they’re potentially bad for you. They are bad for you. And—alas—always were.

A brief word here about the scholarship devoted to friendship: I know I’ve been citing it quite a bit, but the truth is, there’s surprisingly little of it, and even less that’s particularly good. A great deal is dime-store wisdom crowned in the laurels of peer review, dispatches from the Empire of the Obvious. (When I first wrote to Elisa about this topic, she replied with an implicit eye roll. “Lemme guess: Long term intimate relationships are good for u!”)

You have perhaps heard, for instance, of Holt-Lunstad’s 2010 meta-analysis showing that a robust social network is as beneficial to an individual’s health as giving up cigarettes. So yes: Relationships really are good for u.

Read: How friendships change in adulthood

But friendship, generally speaking, is the redheaded stepchild of the social sciences. Romantic relationships, marriage, family—that’s where the real grant money is. They’re a wormy mess of ties that bind, whether by blood, sex, or law, which makes them hotter topics in every sense—more seductive, more fraught.

But this lacuna in the literature is also a little odd, given that most Americans have more friends than they do spouses. And one wonders if, in the near future, this gap in quality scholarship may start to fill.

In a book published in the summer of 2020, Big Friendship , Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, the hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend , argued that some friendships are so important that we should consider assigning them the same priority we do our romantic partnerships. They certainly view their own friendship this way; when the two of them went through a rough patch, they went so far as to see a therapist together.

I mentioned this to Laura Carstensen. Her first reaction was one of utter bewilderment: “But … it’s the whole idea that friendships are voluntary that makes them positive.”

Practically everyone who studies friendship says this in some form or another: What makes friendship so fragile is also exactly what makes it so special. You have to continually opt in. That you choose it is what gives it its value.

But as American life reconfigures itself, we may find ourselves rethinking whether our spouses and children are the only ones who deserve our binding commitments. When Sow and Friedman went into counseling together in their 30s, Sow was unmarried, which hardly made her unusual. According to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly a quarter of American adults ages 30 to 49 are single —and single here doesn’t just mean unmarried; it means not dating anyone seriously. Neither woman had (or has) children, either, a fact that could of course change, but if it doesn’t, Sow and Friedman would scarcely be alone. Nearly 20 percent of American adults ages 55 to 64 have no children , and 44 percent of current nonparents ages 18 to 49 say they think it’s unlikely they ever will .

“I have been with family sociologists who think it’s crazy to think that friends could replace family when you realize you’re in real trouble,” Carstensen told me. “  Yeah , they say, they’ll bring you soup when you have the flu, but they’re unlikely to care for you when you have dementia . But we could reach a point where close friends do quit their jobs to care for you when you have dementia.”

Friendship is the rare kind of relationship that remains forever available to us as we age . It’s a bulwark against stasis, a potential source of creativity and renewal in lives that otherwise narrow with time.

“I’ve recently built a whole community of people half my age,” says Esther Perel, 63, the psychotherapist and host of the immensely popular podcast Where Should We Begin? , in which she conducts a one-off couples-therapy session with anonymous clients each episode. “It’s the most important shift in my life, friendship-wise. They’re at my dinner table. I have three friends having babies.” These intergenerational friendships, she told me, are one of the unexpected joys of middle age, giving her access to a new vocabulary, a new culture, a new set of mores—at just the moment when the culture seems to have passed her generation by.

When we spoke, Perel was also preparing for her very first couples-therapy session with two friends, suggesting that Sow and Friedman were onto something. “The pandemic has taught us the importance of mass mutual reliance,” Perel said. “Interdependence has to conquer the lonely, individualistic nature of Americans.” As a native of Belgium, Perel has always found this aspect of American life a little baffling, particularly when she was a new mother. “In my culture, you ask a friend to babysit,” she told me. “Here, first you try to hire someone; then you go and ‘impose.’ And I thought: This is warped. This has got to shift. ”

Might it now? Finally?

Elisa and Rebecca nurtured each other as if they were family—and often in ways their own families did not. When they met, Elisa was a new mother, and her parents were 3,000 miles away. Rebecca became her proxy parent, coaching her through breastfeeding and keeping her company; she even smelled like Elisa’s mom. “I can’t describe the smell, but it’s YOU, and it’s HER; it’s no cosmetic,” Elisa later wrote in The Wellness Letters , adding,

and your birthdays are adjacent and you are very much like her in some deep, meaningful ways, it seems to me. There is no one I can talk to the way I can talk to her, and to you. Her intelligence is vast and curious and childlike and insatiable and transcendent, like yours.

When they met, Rebecca was still married. While Rebecca’s marriage was falling apart, it was Elisa who threw open her doors and gave Rebecca the run of her downstairs floor, providing a refuge where she could think, agonize, crash. “We were sort of in that thing where you’re like, ‘You’re my savior,’ ” Rebecca told me. “Like, you cling to each other, because you’ve found each other.”

So what, ultimately, undid these two spit sisters?

On one level, it appeared to be a significant difference in philosophy. Namely: how they each thought about depression.

Rebecca struggles with major depression. Elisa has had experiences with the black dog too, going through long spells of trying to bring it to heel. But she hates this word, depression , thinks it decanted of all meaning, and in her view, we have a choice about how to respond to it.

R: When I’m really depressed I feel, and therefore am, at a painful remove from “life” … Even as I was aware that I was doing it all the time, this thing called “being a human being” … it was not what I imagined living to feel like. And I have spent years essentially faking it, just reassuring myself that at least from the outside I look like I’m alive … E: Jesus Christ, dude, first thought: you must chill. You must CHILL. This is not particularly empathetic, I’m sorry. I just want to get you down on the floor for a while. I want to get you breathing. I want to get you out of your head and into your hips, into your feet. I want to loosen you up. That is all.

To Elisa, women have been sold a false story about the origins of their misery. Everyone talks about brain chemistry. What about trauma? Screwy families? The birth-control pills she took from the time she was 15, the junk food she gorged on as a kid?

E: THE BODY, dude. All I care about is THE BODY. The mind is a fucking joke … Remind me to tell you about the time they prescribed me Zoloft in college after my brother died. Pills for grief! I am endlessly amused by this now.

But pills for grief—that is, in fact, exactly what Rebecca would argue she needed.

Around and around the two went. The way Elisa saw it, Rebecca was using her depression as an excuse for bad choices, bad behavior. What Rebecca read in Elisa’s emails was a reproach, a failure to grasp her pain. “If there’s no such thing as depression,” she wrote in The Wellness Letters , “what is this duck sitting on my head?”

It’s a painfully familiar dynamic in a friendship: One friend says, Get a grip already . And the other one says, I’m trying. Can’t you see I’m trying? Neither party relishes her role.

Eventually, Rebecca started taking medication. And once she did, she pulled away, vanishing for weeks. Elisa had no idea where she’d gone.

E: Well, our dialogue has turned into a monologue, but I am undaunted. Are you unmoved to write to me because your meds have worked so well that you’re now perfectly functional, to the extent that you need not go searching for ways to narrate/make sense of your internal landscape?

Weirdly, this explanation was not far off. When Rebecca eventually did reply, the exchange did not end well. Elisa accused her of never apologizing, including for this moment. She accused Rebecca of political grandstanding in their most recent correspondence, rather than talking about wellness. But Elisa also confessed that perhaps Rebecca happened to be catching her on a bad day—Elisa’s mother had just phoned, and that call had driven her into a rage.

This last point gave Rebecca an opening to share something she’d clearly been wanting to say for a long time: Elisa was forever comparing her to her mother. But Elisa was also forever complaining about her mother, saying that she hated her mother. Her mother was, variously, “sadistic,” “untrustworthy,” and “a monster.” So finally Rebecca said:

In all the ways you’ve spoken about your mother, I don’t recall you ever describing to me the actual things she’s done, what makes you feel so destroyed by her.

To which Elisa replied that this was exactly the manipulative, hurtful type of gaslighting in which her mother would indulge.

It was at this moment that I, the reader, finally realized: This wasn’t just a fight over differences in philosophy.

If our friends become our substitute families, they pay for the failures of our families of origin. Elisa’s was such a mess—a brother long dead, parents long divorced—that her unconscious efforts to re-create it were always going to be fraught. And on some level, both women knew this. Elisa said it outright. When she first wrote in The Wellness Letters that Rebecca smelled like her mother, Elisa mused:

What’s my point? Something about mothers and children, and the unmothered, and human frailty, and imprinting. Something about friendship, which can and should provide support and understanding and company and a different sort of imprinting.

A different sort of imprinting. That’s what many of us, consciously or not, look for in friendships, isn’t it? And in our marriages too, at least if you believe Freud? Improved versions of those who raised us?

“I have no answers about how to ensure only good relationships,” Elisa concluded in one email to Rebecca. “But I guess practice? Trial and error? Revision?”

That really is the question. How do you ensure them?

Back in the 1980s, the Oxford psychologists Michael Argyle and Monika Henderson wrote a seminal paper titled “The Rules of Friendship.” Its six takeaways are obvious, but what the hell, they’re worth restating: In the most stable friendships, people tend to stand up for each other in each other’s absence; trust and confide in each other; support each other emotionally; offer help if it’s required; try to make each other happy; and keep each other up-to-date on positive life developments.

Read: Arthur C. Brooks on how to make your friendships deeper

It’s that last one where I’m always falling down. Keeping up contact, ideally embodied contact, though even semi-embodied contact—by voice, over the phone—would probably suffice. Only when reading Elisa and Rebecca in atom-splitting meltdown did I realize just how crucial this habit is. The two women had become theoretical to each other, the sum only of their ideas; their friendship had migrated almost exclusively to the page. “The writing took the place of our real-life relationship,” Elisa told me. “I felt like the writing was the friendship.”

In this way, Elisa and Rebecca were creating the conditions of a pandemic before there even was one. Had anyone read The Wellness Letters in 2019, they could have served as a cautionary tale: Our COVID year of lost embodied contact was not good for friendship . According to a September survey by Pew , 38 percent of Americans now say they feel less close to friends they know well.

The problem is that when it comes to friendship, we are ritual-deficient, nearly devoid of rites that force us together. Emily Langan, a Wheaton College professor of communication, argues that we need them. Friendship anniversaries. Regular road trips. Sunday-night phone calls, annual gatherings at the same rental house, whatever it takes. “We’re not in the habit of elevating the practices of friendship ,” she says. “But they should be similar to what we do for other relationships.”

When I consider the people I know with the greatest talent for friendship, I realize that they do just this. They make contact a priority. They jump in their cars. They appear at regular intervals in my inbox. One told me she clicks open her address book every now and then just to check which friends she hasn’t seen in a while—and then immediately makes a date to get together.

Laura Carstensen told me during our chat that good friends are for many people a key source of “unconditional positive regard,” a phrase I keep turning over and over in my mind. (Not hers, I should note—the term was popularized in the 1950s, to describe the ideal therapist-patient relationship. Carstensen had the good sense to repurpose it.) Her observation perfectly echoed something that Benjamin Taylor, the author of the lovely memoir Here We Are , said to me when I asked about his close friendship with Philip Roth . What, I wanted to know, made their relationship work? He thought for so long that I assumed the line had gone dead.

From the May 2020 issue: Benjamin Taylor on Philip Roth’s gift of empathy

“Philip made me feel that my best self was my real self,” he finally said. “I think that’s what happens when friendships succeed. The person is giving back to you the feelings you wish you could give to yourself. And seeing the person you wish to be in the world.”

I’m not the sampler-making sort. But if I were, I’d sew these words onto one.

Perhaps the best book about friendship I’ve read is The Undoing Project , by Michael Lewis. That might be a strange thing to say, because the book is not, on its face, about friendship at all, but about the birth of behavioral economics. Yet at its heart is the story of an exceptionally complicated relationship between two giants of the field. Amos Tversky was a buffalo of charisma and confidence; Daniel Kahneman was a sparrow of anxiety and neuroticism. The early years of their collaboration, spent at Hebrew University in the late 1960s, were giddy and all-consuming, almost like love. But as their fame grew, a rivalry developed between them, with Tversky ultimately emerging as the better-known of the two men. He was the one who got invited to fancy conferences—without Kahneman. He was the one who got the MacArthur genius grant—not Kahneman. When Kahneman told Tversky that Harvard had asked him to join its faculty, Tversky blurted out, “It’s me they want.” (He was at Stanford at the time; Kahneman, the University of British Columbia.)

“I am very much in his shadow in a way that is not representative of our interaction,” Kahneman told the psychiatrist Miles Shore, who interviewed him and Tversky for a project on creative pairs. “It induces a certain strain. There is envy! It’s just disturbing. I hate the feeling of envy.”

Whenever I mentioned to people that I was working on a story about friendship in midlife, questions about envy invariably followed. It’s an irresistible subject, this thing that Socrates called “the ulcer of the soul.” Paul Bloom, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, told me that many years ago, he taught a seminar at Yale about the seven deadly sins. “Envy,” he said dryly, “was the one sin students never boasted about.”

He’s right. With the exception of envy, all of the deadly sins can be pleasurable in some way. Rage can be righteous; lust can be thrilling; greed gets you all the good toys. But nothing feels good about envy, nor is there any clear way to slake it. You can work out anger with boxing gloves, sate your gluttony by feasting on a cake, boast your way through cocktail hour, or sleep your way through lunch. But envy—what are you to do with that?

Die of it, as the expression goes. No one ever says they’re dying of pride or sloth.

Yet social science has surprisingly little to say about envy in friendship. For that, you need to consult artists, writers, musicians. Gore Vidal complained, “Every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies”; Morrissey sang “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.” Envy is a ubiquitous theme in literature, spidering its way into characters as wide-ranging as Lenù and Lila, in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels , and pretty much every malevolent neurotic ever conjured by Martin Amis (the apotheosis being Richard Tull, the failed novelist and minor critic of The Information , who smacks his son when his rival lands on the best-seller list).

In the spring 2021 issue of The Yale Review , Jean Garnett, an editor at Little, Brown, wrote a terrific essay about envy and identical twinship that feels just as applicable to friendship. My favorite line, bar none: “I can be a very generous sister—maternal, even—as long as I am winning.”

With those 15 words, she exposes an uncomfortable truth. Many of our relationships are predicated on subtle differences in power. Rebalance the scales, and it’s anyone’s guess if our fragile egos survive. Underneath envy, Garnett notes, is the secret wish to shift those weights back in our favor, which really means the shameful wish to destroy what others have. Or as Vidal also (more or less) said: “It is not enough to succeed; a friend must also fail.”

At this point, pretty much everyone I know has been kicked in the head in some way. We’ve all got our satchel of disappointments to lug around.

But I did feel envy fairly acutely when I was younger—especially when it came to my girlfriends’ appearances and self-confidence. One friend in particular filled me with dread every time I introduced her to a boyfriend. She’s a knockout, turns heads everywhere; she both totally knows this and doesn’t have a clue. I have vivid memories of wandering a museum with her one afternoon and watching men silently trail her, finding all dopey manner of excuses to chat her up.

My tendency in such situations is to turn my role into shtick—I’m the wisecracking Daria, the mordant brunette, the one whose qualities will age well.

I hated pretending I was above it all.

What made this situation survivable was that this friend was—and still is—forever telling me how great I look, even though it’s perfectly apparent in any given situation that she’s Prada and I’m the knockoff on the street vendor’s blanket. Whatever. She means it when she tells me I look great. I love her for saying it, and saying it repeatedly.

In recent years, I have had one friend I could have badly envied. He was my office spouse for almost two decades—the other half of a two-headed vaudeville act now a quarter century old. We bounced every story idea off each other, edited each other, took our book leaves at the same time. Then I got a new job and he went off to work on his second book, which he phoned to tell me one day had been selected by … Oprah.

“You’re kidding!” I said. “That’s fucking amazing.”

Which, of course, it was. This wasn’t a lie.

But in the cramped quarters of my ego, crudely bound together with bubble gum and Popsicle sticks, was it all that fucking amazing?

No. It wasn’t. I wanted, briefly, to die.

Here’s the thing: I don’t allow myself too many silly, Walter Mitty–like fantasies of glory. I’m a pessimist by nature, and anyway, fame has never been my endgame in life.

But I did kinda sorta secretly hope to one day be interviewed from Oprah Winfrey’s yoga nook.

That our friendship hummed along in spite of this bolt of fortune and success in his life had absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with him, for the simple reason that he continued to be his vulnerable self. (It turns out that lucky, successful people still have problems, just different ones.) It helped that he never lost sight of my own strengths, either, even if I felt inadequate for a while by comparison. One day, while he was busy crushing it, I glumly confessed that I was miserable in my new job. Then go be awesome somewhere else , he said, as if awesomeness were some essential property of mine, how you’d define me if I were a metal or a stone. I think I started to cry.

It helped, too, that my friend genuinely deserved to be on Oprah . (His name is Bob Kolker, by the way; his book is Hidden Valley Road , and everyone should read it, because it is truly a marvel.)

It’s the almost-ness of envy that kills, as Garnett points out in her essay—the fact that it could have or should have been us. She quotes Aristotle’s Rhetoric  : “We envy those who are near us in time, place, age, or reputation … those whose possession of or success in a thing is a reproach to us: these are our neighbors and equals; for it is clear that it is our own fault we have missed the good thing in question.”

And I have no clue what I would have done if Bob hadn’t handled his success with humility and tact. If he’d become monstrously boastful—or, okay, even just a little bit complacent—I honestly think I wouldn’t have been able to cope. Adam Smith noted how essential this restraint is in The Theory of Moral Sentiments . If a suddenly successful person has any judgment, he wrote, that man will be highly attuned to his friends’ envy, “and instead of appearing to be elated with his good fortune, he endeavours, as much as he can, to smother his joy, and keep down that elevation of mind with which his new circumstances naturally inspire him.”

This is, ultimately, what Amos Tversky failed to do with Daniel Kahneman, according to The Undoing Project . Worse, in fact: Tversky refused to address the imbalance in their relationship, which never should have existed in the first place. Kahneman tried, at first, to be philosophical about it. “The spoils of academic success, such as they are—eventually one person gets all of it, or gets a lot of it,” he told Shore, the psychiatrist studying creative pairs. “That’s an unkindness built in. Tversky cannot control this, though I wonder whether he does as much to control it as he should.”

But Kahneman wasn’t wondering, obviously. This was an accusation masquerading as a suspicion. In hindsight, the decisive moment in their friendship—what marked the beginning of the end—came when the two were invited to deliver a couple of lectures at the University of Michigan. At that point, they were working at separate institutions and collaborating far less frequently; the theory they presented that day was one almost entirely of Kahneman’s devising. But the two men still jointly presented it, as was their custom.

After their presentation, Tversky’s old mentor approached them both and asked, with genuine awe, where all those ideas came from. It was the perfect opportunity for Tversky to credit Kahneman—to right the scales, to correct the balance, to pull his friend out from his shadow and briefly into the sun.

Yet Tversky didn’t. “Danny and I don’t talk about these things” was all he said, according to Lewis.

And with that, the reader realizes: Kahneman’s second-class status—in both his own imagination and the public’s—was probably essential to the way Tversky conceived of their partnership. At the very least, it was something Tversky seemed to feel zero need to correct.

Kahneman continued to collaborate with Tversky. But he also took pains to distance himself from this man, with whom he’d once shared a typewriter in a small office in Jerusalem. The ill feelings wouldn’t ease up until Tversky told Kahneman he was dying of cancer in 1996.

So now I’m back to thinking about Nora Ephron’s friends, mourning all those dinners they never had. It’s the dying that does it, always. I started here; I end here (we all end here). It is amazing how the death of someone you love exposes this lie you tell yourself, that there’ll always be time. You can go months or even years without speaking to a dear old friend and feel fine about it, blundering along, living your life. But discover that this same friend is dead, and it’s devastating, even though your day-to-day life hasn’t changed one iota. You’re rudely reminded that this is a capricious, disordered cosmos we live in, one that suddenly has a friend-size hole in it, the air now puckered where this person used to be.

Last spring, an old friend of my friend David died by suicide. David had had no clue his friend was suffering. When David had last seen this man, in September 2020, he’d seemed more or less fine. January 6 had wound him up more than David’s other friends—he’d fulminate volcanically about the insurrection over the phone, practically burying David under mounds of words—but David certainly never interpreted this irritating development as a sign of despair.

But David did notice one curious thing. Before the 2020 election, he had bet this friend $10,000 that Donald Trump would win. David isn’t rich, but he figured the move was the ultimate hedge—if he won, at least he got 10 grand, and if he lost, hey, great, no more Trump. On November 7, when it became official—no more Trump!—David kept waiting for a phone call. It never came. He tried provoking his friend, sending him a check for only $15.99, pointing out that they’d never agreed on a payment schedule.

His friend wrote back a sharp rebuke, saying the bet was serious.

David sent him a check for $10,000.

His friend wordlessly cashed it.

David was stunned. No gloating phone call? Not even a gleeful email, a crowing text? This was a guy who loved winning a good bet.

Nothing. A few months later, he was found dead in a hotel.

The suicide became a kind of reckoning for David, as it would for anyone. Because he’s a well-adjusted, positive sort of fellow, he put his grief to what seemed like constructive use: He wrote an old friend from high school, once his closest friend, the only one who knew exactly how weird their adolescence was. David was blunt with this friend, telling him in his email that a good friend of his had just died by suicide, and there was nothing he could do about it, but he could reach out to those who were still alive, those he’d lost track of, people like him. Would he like to catch up sometime? And reminisce?

David never heard back. Distraught, he contacted someone the two men had in common. It turns out his friend’s life hadn’t worked out the way he’d wanted it to. He didn’t have a partner or kids; his job wasn’t one he was proud of; he lived in a backwater town. Even though David had made it clear he just wanted to talk about the old days, this man, for whatever reason, couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone.

At which point David was contending with two friendship deaths—one literal, the other metaphorical. “You know what I realized?” he said to me. “At this age, if your romantic life is settled”—and David’s is—“it’s your friends who break your heart. Because they’re who’s left.”

What do you do with friendships that were, and aren’t any longer?

By a certain age, you find the optimal perspective on them, ideally, just as you do with so many of life’s other disappointments. If the heartbreak of midlife is realizing what you’ve lost—that sad inventory of dusty shelves—then the revelation is discovering that you can, with effort, get on with it and start enjoying what you have.

The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson made a point of emphasizing this idea in his stages of psychosocial development. The last one, “integrity versus despair,” is all about “the acceptance of one’s one and only life cycle and of the people who have become significant to it as something that had to be.”

An awfully tidy formulation, admittedly, and easier said than done. But worth striving for nonetheless.

Elisa recently wrote to me that what she misses about Rebecca is “the third thing that came from the two of us. the alchemy of our minds and hearts and (dare i say?) souls in conversation. what she brought out in me and what i brought out in her, and how those things don’t exist without our relationship.”

From the July/August 2014 issue: The power of creative pairs

And maybe this is what many creative partnerships look like—volatile, thrilling, supercharged. Some can’t withstand the intensity, and self-destruct. It’s what happened to Kahneman and Tversky. It’s famously what happens to many bands before they dissolve. It’s what happened to Elisa and Rebecca.

Elisa hopes to now make art of that third thing. To write about it. Rebecca remains close in her mind, if far away in real life.

Of course, as Elisa points out (with a hat-tip to Audre Lorde), all deep friendships generate something outside of themselves, some special and totally other third thing. Whether that thing can be sustained over time becomes the question.

The more hours you’ve put into this chaotic business of living, the more you crave a quieter, more nurturing third thing, I think. This needn’t mean dull. The friends I have now, who’ve come all this distance, who are part of my aging plan, include all kinds of joyous goofballs and originals. There’s loads of open country between enervation and intoxication. It’s just a matter of identifying where to pitch the tent. Finding that just-right patch of ground, you might even say, is half the trick to growing old.

This article appears in the March 2022 print edition with the headline “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Relationships

“We’ve both grown, just not together.”

It isn’t always necessary to send a text to end a friendship. If you and a pal have drifted apart, you’ll probably reach out less and less often until it gets to the point where you no longer speak. This is the natural progression of many friendships as people get older, grow, and change — and that’s OK.

There are, however, quite a few circumstances where you may want to break up with a friend so that you can truly move on. In situations where a friendship is no longer in your best interests, it can be tempting to ghost or send an insincere text like, “Hey, I’m super busy but I would love to hang out when things calm down,” says mental health counselor Bernie Crowl, MHC-LP . But if you truly can’t see yourself getting together again, figuring out what texts to send to end a friendship is tough, but can ultimately spare their feelings.

You might also want to end a friendship over text if the person is toxic or draining to be around. Do they pick fights? Bring you down? Or have they betrayed your trust? “Texting can be used as an effective tool for creating a safe boundary as it reduces the ways in which the person can try to manipulate you,” says trauma-informed therapist Dr. Amelia Kelley . “By not being in person, or even on the phone, you can remain more grounded and choose how much of the interaction to participate in.” Once you end the friendship, you can block them and move on.

While it’s never easy to call off a friendship , sometimes it’s for the best. If you’re not sure where to start, these therapist-approved texts can help you break up with your old friend.

“I appreciate the invite, but my interests have shifted in the past few years and I just feel like we’ve drifted apart.”

Let’s say that one of your old party friends is really excited to get back into the bars now that they’re vaccinated, but you’ve come to appreciate quiet nights at home or have decided that you no longer want to drink . If they keep pressuring you to go out, Crowl recommends sending a text like this one to let them know where you stand.

“It’s hard to say this but I have to be honest and put myself first and not continue this friendship.”

If this friend doesn’t build you up like they used to — or if they actively tear you down — don’t hesitate to send this type of text. You don’t have to go into detail, especially if the other person doesn’t mean any harm. According to licensed behavioral therapist Sherese Ezelle, LMHC , you can still gently let them know that you won’t be available to hang out going forward.

“Due to recent conflict, I’m choosing to end this friendship.”

A text breakup like this one makes the most sense following a betrayal or big argument. If you’re feeling hurt or drained, send it and be done. “They may ask for further clarification but it is truly your choice whether or not you want to share anything further,” Kelley says. “No is a complete sentence and a boundary does not have to be justified.”

“I feel like this friendship isn’t healthy for me.”

If you don’t want to go into the details, Kelley says this text may be a good choice. “Again, you’re being clear and concise,” she says. “There is no need to justify why the relationship is hurting you unless you want to share those feelings.” If the friend gives you a hard time or doesn’t respect your boundaries, hit “block”.

“I want to be completely transparent. I’ve been feeling angry since we saw each other. This tends to happen when we spend time together, so I can no longer engage in this friendship.”

Here’s a similar text that’ll help explain where you’re at, says mental health therapist Emily Griffin, MA, LCPC . If the friend keeps pressing you to hang out, you may want to send it as a firm way to call things off once and for all.

The last thing you want is to lead someone on, Griffin says, especially if the person doesn’t realize that they’re tough to hang out with. While you don’t have to list all of their flaws, you can certainly share how you feel and why you need to back away.

“I need space from our friendship. Distance will help both of us understand who and what is important to us."

According to Dr. Easton Gaines , a licensed psychologist, it’s as important to define a friendship as it is to define a relationship . “Knowing how you feel and why you feel that way is paramount,” she tells Bustle. “What is your friend doing or not doing that is bothering you? How is this making you feel? Are you saddened, offended, frustrated?”

Send this text and then take some time to assess. If you do decide to move on, allow yourself to experience any tough emotions that arise. “It is likely that you have been reeling over this decision for quite some time,” Gaines says. “Once processed, which may be helpful with professional guidance, you will have a better appreciation for your limits and essentials.”

“I haven’t heard from you in forever and it really hurt my feelings.”

Sometimes folks have a good reason for going silent. If your friend has been busy dealing with their life, you may find that you’re able to give them space until they’re ready to reach out again. (Remember, think about how you’d want to be treated.)

That said, it’s also completely valid to feel hurt by a friend’s ongoing silence, especially if they left you hanging without explanation. In that case, Ezelle recommends sending a text like this one: “Not talking to you during this time really hurt my feelings, and I feel like in our friendship we should both be important.” Then let them know you’ll be focusing on your own needs going forward.

“We’ve both grown so much, but not together.”

Here’s another gentle way to let a friend know you want to go your separate ways . Ezelle says this is a simple, to-the-point way of calling off a friendship that’ll allow you to move on without leaving your friend to wonder what happened.

“Life has changed so much for me. I’ve done some self-reflecting and I think stepping back out into the world will look different for me.”

According to psychotherapist Lillyana Morales, LMHC , this is a great text to send when you want to shift who you interact with. If you’ve spent some time working on yourself — perhaps by going to therapy — you may realize that some old friendships no longer align with the new you.

You may want to follow up with a longer explanation, Morales says, like this one: “I wanted to reach out to let you know that I thought of you, and if I haven't said it in a while — I've appreciated all of history and memories we've created. I feel [emotion word]. I hope as you navigate these next chapters, you'll find a sense of [happiness, joy, contentment, satisfaction, etc.].”

“I care about you but being in this relationship is not something I’m able to focus on right now.”

If your circumstances have changed, Ezelle suggests sending this text as a way to let an old pal know you’ll be focusing your attention elsewhere.

You don’t have to rub it in or explicitly say you’ve moved on, but you should let them know you won’t be available going forward, especially if you know for sure that you won’t ever see them again.

“I feel like you don’t value me as a friend.”

According to licensed clinical professional counselor Shawnessa Devonish, LCPC, NCC , this text is the ideal way to cut things off with a friend who’s repeatedly let you down. While many friendships are reparable, especially if you have a heart-to-heart conversation, it’s often best to let go of connections that make you feel bad.

“In general, you may want to end a friendship if you experience intense feelings of betrayal or rejection as a result of their actions,” Devonish tells Bustle. “Due to this, it may be best to end the friendship, even if it is through text, to prevent yourself from developing any severe abandonment wounds .”

“I need to spare myself further discomfort.”

If this person is truly toxic , make sure you word the text in a way that can’t be misinterpreted. Relationship expert Sameera Sullivan suggests sending a message like this one: “I am mentally drained and have decided to spare myself from more discomfort by distancing myself from you. The decision has already been made, so please know that nothing can convince me otherwise at this point. Please don’t reach out again."

"I've tried to have this conversation in person many times. But it's clear you aren't hearing me. I don't want to be friends anymore."

Relationship therapist Jordan Pickell, MCP RCC recommends this text if the friend isn’t listening or if they keep crossing boundaries. “Maybe you've tried to talk about your differences face-to-face and they aren't hearing you, so you've decided to switch modes of communication,” she tells Bustle. In this scenario, a text may help them understand.

“I appreciate your patience, but I’m not ready to be around others just yet. I just need a little space. I hope you understand.”

If you’re going through a rough patch in your life, send a text like this one to let a friend know where you stand. “Be upfront and honest with your feelings,” says counselor Brianna Wolf , noting it’ll help them fully understand why you’ve been MIA so they can give you the space and support you need.

While it might feel as if you want to call off the friendship, you may feel a lot better once you take some time to yourself. That’s why there’s no need to be black and white about every connection. Instead, let the friend know you need time to figure things out, then see how you feel in the future.

“I’m down for coffee.”

You may also decide that you’d like to remain friends, just not in the same capacity. “Sometimes a friendship breakup is about changing the level of intimacy,” Pickell says. “Maybe you're OK to attend the same gatherings, but you don't want a one-on-one relationship anymore. Maybe you are open to a relationship in the future. It's helpful to be clear about that.”

Bernie Crowl, MHC-LP , mental health counselor

Dr. Amelia Kelley , trauma-informed therapist

Sherese Ezelle, LMHC , licensed behavioral therapist

Emily Griffin, MA, LCPC , mental health therapist

Dr. Easton Gaines , licensed psychologist

Lillyana Morales, LMHC , psychotherapist

Shawnessa Devonish, LCPC, NCC , licensed clinical professional counselor

Sameera Sullivan , relationship therapist

Jordan Pickell, MCP RCC , relationship therapist

Brianna Wolf , counselor

This article was originally published on May 2, 2021

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It Sucks, But Sometimes Ending a Friendship Is Necessary—Here's How to Do It

Some people just aren't meant to stay in our lives forever

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Carly Snyder, MD is a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist who combines traditional psychiatry with integrative medicine-based treatments.

Verywell / Zoe Hansen

• Reasons for Friend Break-Ups

Healthy Ways to End a Friendship

• What to Expect

Frequently Asked Questions

Let's be honest, friend breakups are sometimes even harder than romantic ones. The bond of a friendship is a unique soul connection that has nothing to do with your looks or expectations of the future.

Friendships are free from many of the rules and qualifiers of a romantic relationship, making them more organic and pure in many ways. And where we are at least somewhat prepared, for a romantic relationship to potentially end, we are generally unprepared for the end of a friendship.

But the reality is that people grow and change throughout their lives and sometimes we are no longer a good fit—sometimes they're no longer a fit for us either. Sometimes our trust is betrayed , or maybe something was said that can't be taken back.

Unlike romantic relationships in which there are clearer precedents about how to break up, the same is not true for friendships. This can leave you in a strange sort of limbo where you no longer want to be friends with the person but don't know how to end the friendship either.

It's complicated and painful no matter what, but there are some protocols and generally accepted dos and don'ts when it comes to breaking up with a friend.

At a Glance

Breaking up a friendship can be just as stressful and emotionally draining as ending a romantic relationship. Be kind to yourself afterward. It's normal to feel sad, frustrated, or angry. The approach you take is up to you and depends on the reasons for ending the friendship. Some possibilities are having a talk, gradually fading out, or ending it cold turkey. Keep on top of your mental health to ensure that the end of the friendship does not cause additional problems.

Why End a Friendship?

Before you decide how to break up with a friend, it's helpful to understand the reasons why you no longer want to be friends with this particular person. This can make it easier to move forward as you end the friendship.

One way to achieve this goal is by journaling your feelings . This allows you a safe space to get your thoughts out without discussing them with others, which you may not want to do until they are clear in your own mind.

Reasons you might identify for wanting to end a friendship include:

• Change of circumstances : Your lives have changed in that you no longer work together, go to the same school, or otherwise interact with each other in the same way.
• Increased distance : You've grown apart in terms of interests or commitments, or one of you has physically moved, creating a situation where you don't see each other as often as you once did.
• Mental health reasons : Your friend is deceitful or negative, spending more time cutting you down than building you up. Or you simply no longer enjoy the friendship like you used to.
• Opposing values : Your values have become opposed in some way, creating conflict in the friendship.
• Relationship toxicity : The friend has become a toxic person in your life, whether due to their attitude or behavior.

Know that a friend shouldn't ask you to compromise your integrity, go against your values or commitments, tell a lie, or hurt someone. Although it may feel like a significant loss to lose a friend, someone who is no longer making your life better does not deserve that space in your life.

Recognizing a Toxic Friendship

In general, a healthy relationship is one in which both people are giving and taking equally. In a toxic relationship , one person will often do more of the taking and the other, more of the giving. Pay attention to how you feel the next time you're around this person and how you feel after spending time with them.

Signs of a toxic friendship include:

• Your friend doesn't show any interest in your life.
• They often lie, manipulate, and/or try to control you.
• They don't support you or show up for you. They're unreliable.
• You feel neglected or judged by them.
• You feel emotionally drained after you spend time with them.

If this person is someone who lifts your spirits and gives you energy, you might consider giving the friendship another try. However, if their negative impact on your life outweighs the positive, you may be in a toxic relationship.

Press Play for Advice On Dealing With Emotional Exhaustion

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares what to do when you're emotionally drained. Click below to listen now.

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In general, there are four healthy options when ending a friendship. In some cases, you may use a combination of these strategies.

The Gradual Fade-Out

This tactic involves letting the friendship come to a natural close by gradually reducing social interaction with the other person. This is akin to taking the stitches out of a garment versus tearing it apart. Gradually fading out of the friendship might be a good option if you are afraid of confrontation , if the person is likely not to listen or accept what you are saying, or for toxic situations.

In general, fading out of a friendship is an attempt to avoid hurt feelings. Instead of laying your feelings on the line, you become too busy to get together or generally hard to reach. You might text instead of call, fade out of the person's social media (unfollowing them or muting their account as needed), take a long time when getting back in touch, answer with short replies, etc.

You are doing things that might naturally happen in a friendship that is fading—you're just choosing to do them intentionally to exit the friendship.

While fading out of friendship may seem kinder, it could drag on if the friend does not take the hint. In that case, you might be putting that person through a stressful situation as they try to guess what is going on or why you've suddenly disappeared.

At the same time, the fade-out might be your best option if the friendship is toxic and you don't want to have to explain yourself, if you've been harmed by the person, or if you don't care enough anymore to give them an explanation.

Having a Talk

If you determine that a gradual fade-out is not appropriate or if it ends up not working, you might need to have a talk with your friend . This is similar to a talk you would have in a romantic relationship to determine where each of you stands and to talk about the future.

• Step 1 : Ask the person to meet you for coffee to chat. If you're concerned about your physical or emotional safety, you may decide to contact them via text, over the phone, or by email instead.
• Step 2 : Have a goal for your talk. Think about what you want to achieve. Do you want to clear up a miscommunication, explain resentment, address an old argument, or set boundaries in the relationship ? Whatever it is that you hope to achieve, it needs to be clear in your head before you meet.
• Step 3 : Start out with a statement that opens the doors for more conversation. For example, you might say, "I've noticed some patterns in our friendship in the past few months that have been bothering me. I wondered if we could talk about it."
• Step 4 : Talk about how you are feeling, not what the other person has done wrong. Keep your goals for the conversation in mind. Remember to listen as much as you talk.

Focus on using "I" statements when you speak. An "I" statement, such as "I feel sad when you don't show up after we've made plans," puts the emphasis on your feelings instead of placing blame only on your friend.

Even if you're angry or upset with your friend, it might be less stressful for both of you if you let them down easily. Tell them what you do appreciate about them. Just because you're ending the friendship doesn't mean you don't value the time you spent together.

A talk can be a stepping stone to the end of a friendship, but you might also find that you are able to resolve your differences and fix the friendship instead.

Taking a Break

You may determine from having a talk that your differences can't be resolved. If that's the case, what do you do? You could immediately terminate the friendship or you could decide to take a break, much the same way people sometimes take breaks in romantic relationships .  

Taking a break can have many positives. It gives you:

• A fresh perspective on the friendship
• A moment to calm down if you are upset
• An opportunity to miss your friend if you were spending too much time together
• Time to reevaluate the friendship

You can give any number of reasons for taking a break. If you prefer to be vague, you might say that you are going to be extra busy for a couple of weeks. If you've just had a talk, you could say that you need time to digest everything you've discussed. Set a time in the future to reconvene, or suggest that you will get in touch when you feel you are ready.

While on the break, you can always mute or unfollow their social media account to provide some added distance. You might find that clearing the mental space this friend once occupied can be a helpful refresher and benefit the relationship.

If you choose to continue the friendship, be sure that both of you communicate your boundaries and expectations moving forward.

Ending Things Immediately

Sometimes it is impossible to avoid the chaos that happens when a friendship ends. This is true if you are dealing with a toxic friend or someone who does not respect the boundaries that you try to set. But ending this type of unhealthy friendship is important as it can improve your personal well-being .

In this situation, simply state that your needs are not being met in the friendship. Wish the other person all the best in the future. This type of friendship break-up can be good in that it is unambiguous and clear, and you get a chance to voice any issues that you've been holding back. At the same time, it can be awkward to confront someone in this manner.

This strategy is most appropriate if you've known someone a long time and feel they deserve the respect of a final goodbye, or if someone does something so awful that it would be hard to ignore. At some point, you could simply say, "Goodbye, I need to go." If it helps, write a little script that expresses what you are feeling. 

Ghosting —ending communication with someone without telling them—is a controversial topic. But sometimes it's okay to end a friendship without speaking to the other person.

In relationships where there is manipulation, physical or emotional abuse , or the violation of boundaries, you don't owe the person an explanation for why you're ending the friendship. Your first priority is to keep yourself safe and not subject yourself to further stress, especially if your safety is at risk.

Block their number, block them on social media, and let any mutual friends know that you will no longer be engaging with this person.

Unhelpful Ways to End a Friendship

While circumstances surrounding the end of a friendship vary, it may be helpful to avoid certain ways of handling a friend breakup (even one involving a toxic person), including:

• Becoming hostile or aggressive
• Enlisting other friends to end the friendship for you
• Seeking revenge (such as posting negative things about them on social media )

What to Expect When a Friendship Ends

Though you may have plenty of valid reasons for ending a friendship, this doesn't necessarily protect you or your former friend from the feelings that go along with a friend breakup.

Remember that feeling sad that a friendship ends doesn't mean that you made the wrong decision. Having an idea of your friend's possible reaction and what you'll feel after the breakup can help you mentally prepare for the end of the friendship.

From Your Friend

They may react in the following ways:

• Asking if it's possible to convert the friendship into a different form of relationship
• Feeling hurt and becoming defensive
• Not understanding why you want to end the friendship
• Trying to manipulate you back into the friendship

If your friend chooses to escalate the conversation into an argument or displays any aggressive or hostile behavior, avoid engaging with them. Try to calmly leave the situation and get to a safe place as soon as possible.

If you're meeting with your friend in person, let a trusted loved one know where you'll be and check in with them when you're done. You might even have a loved one waiting for you to pick you up or to meet up with you at a nearby coffee shop or store.

For Yourself

You may be surprised to learn that a friendship can be saved or converted into something else. It's also okay to tell your friend that you need time to decide and that you can continue the conversation soon. Walk away and think about your options. Try not to let your friend's emotions sway you into making a decision you're not comfortable making.

You might end a friendship over the phone or via text if you're worried your friend will try to manipulate you into staying friends. If they don't accept your decision, you don't have to engage with them in an argument. You can excuse yourself from the conversation, wish them the best, and block their number.

You can't control whether your other friends continue seeing the person you broke up with. Let mutual friends know you'd appreciate a heads-up if there's a group gathering where this person will be, so you can make a decision beforehand about whether you'll attend.

Though many people have revenge fantasies or wish they could "get back" at an old friend, try to let these go. Your mental health can be negatively affected by constant rumination about your old friend .

Do your best to not re-engage after ending a friendship. Trust yourself and your decision to move on. Remember, you'll probably feel at least a little sad, and that's okay.

If you're having trouble dealing with the aftermath of a friend breakup, talk to a qualified mental healthcare professional who can help you learn healthy coping mechanisms to deal with these tough emotions.

Keep in Mind

Breaking up a friendship can be just as stressful and emotionally draining as ending a romantic relationship . Be kind to yourself afterward. It's normal to feel sad, frustrated, or angry.

The approach you take is up to you and depends on the reasons for ending the friendship. Some possibilities are having a talk, gradually fading out, or ending it cold turkey. Keep on top of your mental health to ensure that the end of the friendship does not cause additional problems.

Some options include telling the person directly that you are ending the friendship. Or, you might allow the friendship to fade away by communicating less over time. If someone is violating your boundaries or if you feel unsafe, you might choose to discontinue all communication with them immediately.

You might start off by saying how you feel about the friendship using "I" statements. Avoid blaming the other person. You can add that you appreciate the time you've spent together. Set a boundary, such as "I feel it's best if we don't speak or see each other anymore." You can end the message by wishing them the best moving forward.

Instead of insulting the person or blaming them, take accountability for how you feel and why you want to end the relationship. You can tell them what you do appreciate about them and wish them well. Ultimately, you can't control whether someone's feelings are hurt. But you can try to avoid unnecessary fighting.

Try to approach the person without anger or animosity. Though you may be upset, try not to judge, criticize, or yell at them. Tell them how you feel and try to keep the interaction peaceful. If they do become hostile, you don't have to engage. Leave an aggressive situation. If they become hostile over the phone, you can choose to block their number and end communication.

Stanford University.  The ethics of manipulation .

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Rogers SL, Howieson J, Neame C. I understand you feel that way, but I feel this way: the benefits of I-language and communicating perspective during conflict .  PeerJ . 2018;6:e4831. doi:10.7717/peerj.4831

Kansky J, Allen JP. Making sense and moving on: The potential for individual and interpersonal growth following emerging adult breakups .  Emerg Adulthood . 2018;6(3):172-190. doi:10.1177/2167696817711766

LeFebvre LE, Allen M, Rasner RD, Garstad S, Wilms A, Parrish C. Ghosting in emerging adults’ romantic relationships: The digital dissolution disappearance strategy . Imagin Cogn Pers. 2019;39(2):125-150. doi:10.1177/0276236618820519

Goldner L, Lev-Wiesel R, Simon G. Revenge fantasies after experiencing traumatic events: Sex differences . Front Psychol. 2019;10:886. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00886

Michl LC, McLaughlin KA, Shepherd K, Nolen-Hoeksema S. Rumination as a mechanism linking stressful life events to symptoms of depression and anxiety: longitudinal evidence in early adolescents and adults .  J Abnorm Psychol . 2013;122(2):339-352. doi:10.1037/a0031994

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By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

This Undeserved Life

Musings on momming and living in grace.

Mourning the Death of a Friendship

“If a friendship lasts 7 years, psychologists say it will last a lifetime.” I’m calling bs on that cute little meme. Many people are fortunate enough to have such relationships, and I count a few long-term patient people among my friends. But still many more of us know that the time you put into a friendship is no guarantee of success. Friendships end. Not all, but many do. Sometimes it’s with a fight, a betrayal, a bang. Sometimes it’s with distance, time, a whimper. And none of us are immune to the death of a friendship after a major life change – weddings and babies are like sieves that not everyone makes it through.

I’ve seen my share of friendships end so don’t think I’m referring to any one person when I say I’ve mourned. Years ago I found myself searching the internet for coping skills on friendships ending. My face was sticky with hot tears, my stomach knotted in grief. I was in pain, in mourning, in disbelief, and didn’t know what to  do . There was nothing I could do to salvage this relationship that had once been so precious to me, and I couldn’t just sit with the sadness. I needed  something to do, a guide, a tip, some way to get through this.

But there was nothing.

Lots of stuff about how to get over an unworthy boyfriend, a few things on how to pick yourself up after the loss of a job, but nothing about how to deal with the loss of a confidant, surrogate sister, and the other half of so many happy memories. Sure, the stages of grief can apply, and yeah, getting over someone isn’t too terribly different just because you didn’t date. Love is love and grief is grief, but there’s something distinctly tragic about the loss of a friendship that leaves us raw and aching in a way no other breakup can. Friendship is felt in a different part of our selves, has a comfort and familiarity to it that we don’t notice until it’s gone. We trust our friends with our secrets and share with them our silliest of memories, so when they leave they seem to take those with them. It’s like the door we were leaning against suddenly opens and we fall flat without the support we didn’t realize we’d come to rely upon. Even when that door opens slowly, we can feel it giving way, but we still can’t stop it and we’re still left standing alone with a whole half of ourselves exposed that was previously firmly against our support. Got some good news to share? A secret to spill? An inside joke that you’re dying to laugh at? You turn and are left with the gaping doorway now, a giant hole. Instead of the familiar you are left with… nothing. Well, the pain is there. The ache of missing someone who is very much alive, of the realization that you must retrain your brain and rid yourself of the muscle memory that tries to constantly direct you to where your friend once was. The old adage tells us that when a door closes a window opens, but loss is much more an exposed and open door than a shut one.

This is where I was when I found myself searching for how to deal with the living loss of a friend.

Over my years of hurting and healing I’ve come to a few realizations that I hope will help you in coping with the same loss. I can’t say I have tips or tricks or exercises, because really you can’t trick a heart into healing or speed the process up, but you can allow it to make itself whole again.

First, allow yourself the memories. Whether there was a huge, emotional blow-up over a devastating betrayal or the two of you just drifted apart, you get to keep the memories. If they’re good ones, you’re still allowed to smile at them. No matter how mad or sad you are at the end of the friendship, the memories before that are happy and should be left that way. You had your laughs, your jokes, your special movies and shared memories. Your friend was a comfort and a joy at one point – don’t rewrite the past by not allowing yourself to remember those times fondly. Whoever that friend is now, they were special then. Keep it that way.

Don’t try to replace them. The closer the friend the larger the void they leave. Sure, you’ll have another best friend someday, and no one is ever limited to the number of friends they’re allowed. But don’t try to find a replacement. Don’t try to find a knock-off version of the friend you’ve lost. Don’t compare potential suitors to the past ones. Sometimes you’ll need more than one person to fill all the gaps the lost friend leaves behind. This doesn’t mean the new friends aren’t as good as the old one, it doesn’t mean you’ll never find that same closeness again. It means that everyone has unique gifts to offer each other, and while one may fill your laughing tank you may need another who will listen without judgement. Don’t try to find someone who will do everything for you. Don’t compare your new friendship to the deep one you’re grieving. And don’t scroll through your contacts to create a queue for best friend auditions. The living person you’ve lost was special and unique, and  whether you think of them now fondly or ferociously, who they were to you will always be special and unique. Let everyone else be as special and unique as they can with you.

Wish them well. Seriously. As you work through the stages of grief – or as you work through the disbelief at whatever event has led to the end of your friendship – wish them well. Whoever they are, they’re stuck with themselves. You’re not around anyway to see them hit their shins on trailer hitches so why waste your energy hoping for it? It would be impossible to remember the good times fondly if every thought of the person you shared them left you seething  with bitterness. Healing just isn’t possible while holding onto hatred. However it ended, they once meant a great deal to you. Protect what you had – and your own heart – by wishing them well.

Don’t wait around for them to realize their mistake. Denial is part of the natural process of grief. Hope is inescapable and can protect the heart by easing into the pain of sudden blows. Let yourself accept that it’s over. Delete their contact information from your phone. Yes, at some point they may miss you, too – you’re awesome, after all, right? But don’t pin your hopes on getting a text or message bursting with apologies and promises and invitations to dinner. Allow yourself to accept the finality of the situation. It will suck. It will hurt. But it’s the reality.

Admit any contribution you may have made to the demise of your friendship. Obviously there was nothing you could have done if your friend turned out to be living a double life as a snake you’d never have recognized, but in the cases of slow death, repressed hurt feelings, misunderstandings that festered, take the time to examine yourself. None of us are perfect. If you seem to have a lot of friendships fizzle, do some self reflection and honestly own – then address – what you may have done to aide in their expiration. Improve yourself. Don’t allow yourself to believe the hype that makes it easier to hate – you won’t heal if you simply point the finger and try to move on. Reflect. Admit. Accept. Grow.

Grieve.  It seems so simple to say, doesn’t it?  Of course you’ll grieve, right? In all the searching I did for help in getting over the living loss of a friend, not finding much tells me that no, we don’t know it’s okay to grieve. The person is still alive, after all, so what’s to mourn? If you’re mad at them then you’re totally justified and shouldn’t feel the sting of sadness, right? No, dear. A friendship is a living thing, a special something that only exists between the love of two people. It strengthens over time, fills with memories, has its own unique quirks and eccentricities, and must be nurtured to grow. It’s perfectly acceptable – even necessary – then, to grieve its death. There is nothing silly or indulgent in shedding tears over a pair suddenly separated. When a friendship dies a bit of magic is lost, and the cold and lonely reality of what’s left – and what’s gone – demands adjustment, acceptance, healing, and grief. Let yourself cry. Acknowledge the loss. Something has died and it is, indeed, very very sad. It is an end, but not  the end, so grieve what you must in order to move on. But maybe wait a while before you watch  Beaches , there’s really only so much grief a person need face all at once.

All of this to say, if you find yourself mourning the death of a friendship that ended too soon or healing from one that didn’t end soon enough, you will be okay. You will make it through. You will heal and laugh again. You will even find yourself one day living a life you never thought wouldn’t be shared with your friend and be startled to realize just how much about you they don’t know now. This gone-away friend is not the last one you will ever have. You will make new friends, more friends, different friends. What’s gone is gone but the memories will live on, and so, my friend, will you.

Author: Jen

I am the wife of an insanely hot husband and the momma of three precious and exhausting kiddos. I have been given way more than I could ever deserve and I really love naps. View all posts by Jen

154 thoughts on “Mourning the Death of a Friendship”

This is beautifully written and just what I needed right now. Thank you so much for writing it. I’m still tragically sad, however now, I am tragically sad, and grateful at the same time.

RIP Best Friend of 25 years.

Man, this sucks.

Oh, Jaime, I’m so sorry. It absolutely sucks. ❤️

Lost my older by one year sister age 6. Moved house became friends with 2 girls, turns out they both shared my late sisters birthday. Anyhow one homed in on my first true love 2wks after we split. Me and him kept getting together over two more years til I gave up. He went back to her, but 6 years on came to my weddt and I knew his feelings were still as strong. A week later he married her but 2hrs after taking his vows told me he’d married the wrong girl. Thankfully my own marriage was strong. They kept splitting up n called it a Day. The other girls bf didn’t like my bf or me even though he’d introduced them. She came to our wedding along with her family, who’d moved out of London so she spent most weekends at my mum’s house. So many shared memories, holidays etc. No idea when it went too wrong. Anyway today I came across photos of our once in a lifetime holiday and the tears are flowing. Wedding and children bit was the death knell. So 32 years on Reading your blog helped. Thank you x

Googled “death of a friendship” this morning, and this amazing article came up. This Christmas produced the death of a 35 year friendship. So painful. So many tears. Just no words..except yours. Thank you.

Oh, Bridget, that’s a lifetime. I am so very sorry.

Best friends for 45 years. She took a powder when my husband died. I am now dealing with two deaths: his and my friendship with her. Thank you for this thoughtful piece.

This morning I also googled death of a friendship after waking up the past few mornings with such sadness of how I missed these friendships that died 6 months ago. In the midst of planning my wedding with my boyfriend of 6 years, I asked several important women in my life to be apart of my bridal party. Yes, everyone always warned me that you find out who really cares for you when you plan a wedding. 3 of these women and I have been friends since we were 10, now 27, they are no longer in my life, at all. It’s like they never existed.

You are not alone, that’s the important thing to know through all the sadness. Other women have experienced the death of friendships they thought would last a lifetime. Friends we thought were more family than friends. I debated writing a blog, or a goodbye letter to these women after we parted ways but instead found this beautiful blog post. After 6 months, I am finally mourning the loss of these friends and its strange. I was so strong when it happened and truly felt nothing, I was afraid that I felt nothing, that they weren’t as important to me as I thought. But now, 6 months later and mourning the loss of friends I once cared for so deeply, I am realizing, they never truly cared for me.

I can tell you that I am sure your friends cared about you. Honestly, I could think this post is about my friend since this is the reason we stopped talking. She was getting married and I jsut had a baby. Having a new baby was soo rough for me. I didn’t have a lot of support and I was crumbling. My anxiety and depression caused me to isolate myself and there was no way I could focus on her wedding. I was maid of honor but asked to be bridesmaid but even then, I really couldn’t. It ultimately ended with her uninviting me to her wedding. I also felt my own resentment because I felt she wasn’t around in my new chapter of kids. But things happen and people change or just don’t understand what’s going on. Three years later and I am still mourning the loss of my friend but I am too afraid of reaching out and finally saying what I needed to say then.

I feel this allllll too well! I too, recently had a wedding. One of my bridesmaids betrayed me and made up false accusations and twisted words i said that in turn didn’t just ruin our friendship but my friendship with my best guy friend of 20 years. We had been friends since 5th grade. We are in our thirties now. He won’t talk to me to defend myself or tell him what really happened bc it was supposedly said about his wife. Now my bridesmaid and my best guy friend and his wife are bestfriends and I’m left out in the cold looking like an idiot. They have blocked me on everything as well. It hurts. I cry all the time. I feel like someone is sitting on my chest. I feel you girl

Yes 55 year friendship ended. I am 60. There’s a part of me that wants to keep trying to repair but it’s clearly evident in her that she wants no contact. I am excepting the ending with sadness and gratitude as. well

55 years….that’s a lifetime. I never thought I’d read about someone else mourning a friendship that had lasted so long. My heart goes out to you. I too have lost a 50+ year friendship. I’ve been told that I am unwilling to “let go” of my anger, that I need to move on, and other such unhelpful advice. Nobody seems to realize I am grieving a death.

Me too Denise. 50 year frienship…and I just turned 60. I became wrapped up in caring for my elderly parents through Alzheimer’s, strokes, and everything in between…never once did she offer her support…and yet I saw her helping so many others through things. She felt things were lopsided with her always making the effort. How could we see things so differently?! I have come to believe I just didn’t fit in to her picture of family with husband, kids, and grandkids…I have none of them. The lopsided was just her excuse to give herself permission to end the friendship. What hurts so bad is the dishonesty and being treated like I did something terrible. We have many common friends and they have not reached out..gone as well. I hate wondering what has been said about me. I find myself crying wondering what I did??!! It’s been a little over a year and I am still hurting so bad! Her daughter was my Goddaughter…she had a baby and when this was beginning to go down…I was seeing pictures on social media of all these baby showers, none of which I was invited. Never have met my friends Granddaughter. Just seems so hurtful and wrong. I look so forward to getting through this, not crying myself to sleep, and seeing it as a thing of the past. I wish no one I’ll will and just want to be able to move on!!!!

Same here. I am tragically sad. I am mourning the death of a friendship of 20 years and its SAD!

I am 41. I lost 2 of my best friends. My closest was a friend since I could talk and the other since third grade. They didn’t support a decision I made. It was them or my husband and I chose him. I am happy with my decision but at the same time devastated by the loss of the two people I thought I could always count on. It’s been a year and I will always love them but they no longer hold a place on my heart as they abandoned me during a time which I needed them most. I am ok. I am happy. I just feel like a big piece of me is missing.

Hi there Jaime I’m not sure when you posted….but do you better about what happened….inner peace?

I’m very sorry 💗💗💗

Thanks for this. I have lost my mother in law after 28 years(friendship not death) and one of my best friends after 12 years at the same time and could not seem to move past anger and realized yesterday that I’m grieving. Thank you for this. Very insightful. Been working on forgiveness and healing but some of these are so poignant. Didn’t think about how it was ok to still have good memories. That has been hard for me as some of my happiest memories are with them in it.

Oh, Kris, I am so sorry for your loss! That’s a lot to grieve. It’s so hard to imagine creating new memories without the stars of our favorite memories, but I’m so, so hopeful for you. It’s okay to miss someone you’re hurt at, and I really hope you’re able to heal someday. ❤️

I am struggling with a friendship that, quite frankly, I had to end because it became toxic after she moved out of the area. The friendship was very one-sided (with a generational disparity) with me doing almost all the giving and support and enduring jabs, criticism and at times anger. After so many unpleasant exchanges and reconciliations I came to the conclusion that she was intentionally sabotaging the relationship and I needed out to preserve my own well-being. After all, a friendship that continually hurts isn’t a friendship at all. Still, I can’t eat….feel extreme loss, have cried many tears—but will remember the good times and know that this hurt will eventually pass. She lives alone and has had a lot of hurts and losses and only one relative that she speaks with and only a few friends. Perhaps I was jaded that my friendship would really positively-impact her, but the unprovoked anger finally told me otherwise. Thanks for this forum and any advice as this is so new and raw would be particularly helpful at this time.

Watching the friendship die before my eyes and grieving already. Wish i could just rip on the band aid and just end it.Thanks for the words if encouragement and hope.

Goodness, May, I’m so sorry. ❤️❤️❤️

I’m in that same position. Think we both are just holding on because we’re both scared but not Ute how to come back from this. All I do is 😢

I can relate to this article but he didn’t end the friendship I did yes I’m still kinda angry at him because I did see that it was one sided and I know one sided friendships don’t work at all they never have never will he always put his girlfriend first all the time which was a red flag he never made time for me even though he lives on the same street no he’s not being loyal he’s being selfish he’s changed since he started dating his girlfriend he’s become more irritated and angrier someone I don’t know anymore maybe with time things will go back to how they were but until then no I’ve got no intention of being his friend again I can’t go back unless he starts putting in effort

This hit home all points. It was like it was written to me. I was angry and hurt and sad and probably still am, but I’m heading to well wishes and an almost sense of relief. The beginning was wonderful and fun but something started to shift slightly the last two years and then the last last year I wasn’t feeling the same after some misunderstandings. She did cut me off abruptly but it was getting toxic towards the end and I wasn’t feeling the same. So when she did sever our ties it does feel like a sense of relief mixed in with the sadnesss and anger. I hope to visit this article in a few months or a year and see my comment and be in a better place. I know I will be, every day gets better as long as I pray and remain close to my loved ones and will remember to wish her the best in my mind even when I don’t truly feel it yet, I’m going to train my mind to follow my heart to wish her the best ❤️

Thanks for this, so helpful. I’m mourning the loss of my best friend, who is also a family member. I have a wonderful relationship with her children and will still see her at family functions, etc. Do you have any advice for this situation? Thank you

Oh goodness, how difficult! With it being a family member and still loving her children, try not to give in to the temptation to be angry. Don’t force a relationship with the kids, let their mom make that decision (if they’re still young), and still seeing her at family events it will be important to always be kind, friendly, and genuinely wish her the best. If her children are grown, maintain the relationship with them, but never discuss your friendship with their mom, don’t press them for details, just enjoy them for who they are. I’m so sorry. ❤️

Thank you for this. I’ve been holding on to hope that my best friend will come back (she did for a moment then left again) and things could go back to the way they were, but I realized that I need to truly mourn the friendship because even if she does come back it will never be the same. It’s sad but I need to accept it instead of continuing to get my hopes up and trying to force things only to get let down and be crushed all over again…

A very helpful article. I have been going through the death of a close friendship with another woman. She is still alive and is in the same church community. It ended through an emotional blow up including the expression of repressed hurt feelings by the other person. I can accept some responsibility and can forgive (with the other person well in the silence of my heart but I can’t go back to the same type of sharing.

Joy again. I meant to say I could wish her will within the silence of my heart. She was my best friend. We mix within the same community and circle of friends. It is not dissimilar to the end of a relationship within a family where no one is leaving and each will have to face the other. Even social media is an issue. My former best friend likes the posts of other common friends but doesn’t like mine. I took the step of posting to others except her so that I don’t have to experience this rejection each time I post. However, I will still see her like the posts of others. I can’t really cut myself off from everyone else though.

That’s so hard, I’m so sorry. Do you have the option to “mute” her on social media or unfollow for a bit while your heart heals? Seeing that is so painful.

Thanks Jen I have been able to mute visibility of the person on Facebook without unfriending them. I can change this back if I want to. I think this meets my needs without unduly upsetting the other person more than necessary.

I made a best friend who i nicknamed Bee. It was an online friendship that I seriously considered would be a lifetime real friendship. I told Bee things no one else ever knew about and she told me things about herself I knew no one else knew. It was only a year, compared to everyone elses very long friendships, but I poured my entire heart and soul into the friendship. One day she blew up and said I was laying too many of my problems on her to fix, called me a bunch of horrible names. I said my points with kindness and sadness. I told her I would fix my mental state and work towards building our friendship. She ended it. Her friend decided to tell me she was relieved she didn’t have to speak to me anymore. I’ve been trying to ignore the anxiety but reading this made me cry. She’s not coming back, and it hurts.

Oh, Flower, I am so sorry. That is so painful and sad!

30 years of friendship. It’s gone. Eleven years later I still mourn that loss. But it is what it is and I have no control over it. But it still hurts.

Jen this was a very heartfelt post and helps look back on many years and many friends. My thoughts are how blessed I am by my children’s good friends, also how I have been shaken by their loss. On the bright side is a lunch at Babes with you and my beautiful girl❣️

RIP my sweet-heart. I’ll miss you!!! These points have helped me a lot!!!

I find myself needing to come back to this article over and over. A close friendship of 16 years ended 6 months ago, but contact continued. It grew increasingly negative and cold with time. I’m so nervous about potentially seeing her at a party I’m hosting at the house of a mutual friend this weekend. Even though I know I’ll be surrounded by a ton of people who love and have supported me through all this, I’m still sick with fear and missing my friend.

Goodness, C, I am so sorry. I hope the party goes well and you are OVERWHELMED with love and happy memories from everyone else there. ❤️

I lost my best friend days after my second child was born. I felt her slipping away in the months leading up to my daughter’s birth, and when I didn’t hear from her until days after with a generic “that’s good” text. I was disappointed, and told her as much, that as my best friend, I would of expected to hear from her sooner with more enthusiasm. I saw it as a fight, she saw it as an opportunity out. After weeks of ignoring phone calls, texts, Facebook Messages, anyway to communicate, she sent me an email with the subject line “Goodbye:” She told me how I was ‘too needy’, and that she needed friends that were going in the same life direction as her. I truly felt so alone and abandoned. Now, nearly a year later, I’m still raw, and after repressing it for months with denial and anger, I have found out she is pregnant. I hope to find closure and peace with the advice from this article. I am still filled with anger and bitter, and yet I miss her so much.

Oh, Jillian. I am so sorry.

This resonates with me so much! When there’s nothing you’ve done “wrong” it’s hard to wrap your head around the why. It’s been 3 years (or is it 4?) for me since my best friend said her goodbye to me, and it still hurts. I don’t know how long it will take to heal, and I can’t help but hold onto hope that someday she will come to her senses, and reach out to me again. That’s probably not healthy, but I can’t help it. Even though she has hurt me deeply, I desperately want to have her friendship again. Every time something big happens in my life, she’s the first person I think of…..that I want to tell….and then I remember. I wish I had some words of advice for you, but I’m afraid I’m still just as lost as I was when she left. I can say though, that I understand what you are going through, and I feel for you. I hope that you are able to heal and move on from this. Lots of hugs and love.

This. I was the one who broke off the relationship because it had grown toxic over time and she no longer was the person I thought she was. But it still hurts. We were friends for so long, on and off. Sometimes, though, you have to let go.

I haven’t been letting myself grieve, which I think might be a mistake. I mean, I miss her. I guess part of me will always miss her. We had a lot of good times. It just sucks.

This is the situation I’m in. I initiated the breakup since we became toxic to each other and I saw that she began to dislike me. I had to do what was necessary after she did an unforgivable thing. Buy now after ending a 15 year friendship, the anger is gone and it’s just left a gapping hole . At 41 im not going to find or look for another female to get that that closen. I’m lonely as can be but suffer thru it daily, trying to fight depression. Even when I know I did the right safe thing, that she really wanted. Dosent make it any easier when you loose family.

Thank you so much for writing this. I do apologize that the grief is very fresh for me. But you showed me the path forward.

The sad thing is I let things get so sideways in my marriage that I took it out on my friend. Then he said I wasn’t even the same person anymore and pinned it all on her.

I feel like a baby compared to these other folks. I only knew him for 7 years. And I will try to remember the good times, but it is so painful now. I let contempt threaten two relationships and now I can only save one.

Thank you again for helping. It helps me remember that this is not something that is unique to human history and I’ll figure it out eventually.

Man Im in the same position. My best buddy was having issues at home and I supported him the best I could. When things turned around for them I would appear I was the sacrifice and somehow part of the issue. Only knew the guy for 3 years but we became best buds quickly. Google ” Grieving the Loss of a Friendship”. Its a real thing and made me feel a little better knowing I was not crazy to feel that way

This is what I needed to read. My best friend (a widow at 25) is about to get remarried (to a widower). He is great for her and I know she loves him, but I was really holding out hope that she would meet someone who would love who she loves and want to be apart of who she was before him. Very sadly, I am feeling that this is not going to happen and I am broken.

I wish I had seen this sooner. For a year, I have held onto the terrible ending in hopes that it would make me miss the friendship less. I have not allowed myself to remember the good memories. I think I see now that that is not productive and won’t help me heal.

This was so very helpful. I miss her so much but it’s been years and like you wrote I can’t make her realize what she lost. I deleted her contact information- that was very very helpful. I think she’s deleted Maine anyway. This read was what I needed. I’ll move on. I was wronged but life moved on. Justice may be elusive but I can’t keep waiting. Thanks for this – grieve, own my piece, wish them well and move forward.

This is beautiful. And sad. And just what I was looking for today. How wonderful that as humans we are never truly alone in any of our experiences?

Thank you. So happy to have stubbled across your blog today.

Thank you for writing this . I didn’t really realize how Common these heart breaks are… to everyone here I am so sorry for your loss . My heart hurts like I can’t breath… and it does come in waves. It’s been 1 1/2 years since we talked . Doesn’t seem possible. We were best friends for 25 years . 💔 I would have never quit on you kel… I don’t understand!!

Reading these words was both hard and needed at the same time. I lost my friend of 20 years last year and the friendship of many of my family members (due to a death that caused a family rift) within 3 months of each other. After, being sad and angry at her seemingly effortless way of moving on, I’ve been searching for answers and help. I’ve never felt this kind of pain before. And, I have a great life so I am constantly mad at myself for being so sad and unhappy. Thank you for these words. I am sure I will be reading them over and over again, now.

I miss my friend everyday I loved her so much. Grieving of a friendship is real it hurts and it’s getting mistaken for a mental illness that it isn’t.

I recently chose to walk away from a 17-year friendship because I learned of lies and manipulation on her part, some of which spanned the entire friendship. Through counseling and self-reflection, I’ve realized that, at times, her treatment of me was a form of emotional abuse – to the point I have alienated myself from other friends and family, as well as avoided opportunities to make new friends or take risks that would lead to personal growth. This article is the only one on this topic (there are more out there now) that is so eloquent at describing the gut-wrenching pain and engulfing sadness that can take you by surprise. Or how the void of your secret-sharer leaves you eager to tell a non-existent person exciting, scandalous, or bad news, ripping the hole in your heart just a little more at a time. Strangely, thank you. Although I’m sad to know there are so many more people who have felt this pain, it’s nice to know I’m not alone. Truly. As suggested, I’ve owned my part in how it came to this end. I look forward to the passing of more time so I can look on the memories more fondly, versus picking each apart for some sign I should have recognized as a red flag for what was to come.

I don’t know how long ago you wrote this Jen, but I hope I can still express my appreciation for having googled this topic, and then being led to your excellent writing. It is just what I needed. I am a 68 year-old woman who recently lost a friendship of 53 years. It was because I love animals, and their welfare is my cause. I criticized her friend (who I don’t even know and never met) for engaging in an activity that I think is abusive to animals. My old friend was talking about it like it was an amusing story. She knows how I feel. Because I referred to her friend as an a-hole, I ended up having to apologize several times, even though her friend never heard it. My apology was never really accepted, and we parted permanently. I am still in shock and grief after 3 months has passed. Your words, as follows just made me sob out loud: “Got some good news to share? A secret to spill? An inside joke that you’re dying to laugh at? You turn and are left with the gaping doorway now, a giant hole. ” I always think, whenever something happens, oh wait ’till I tell Linda, but Linda is no longer in my life.

Oh, Sharon. That is HEARTBREAKING. A lifetime of friendship, it must feel like losing part of your own history. I’m so very sorry you’re going through this, and for such a reason as standing up for the innocent animals who can’t speak for themselves. Healing will come, but it will take a good, long while. Blessings, Sharon. You are not alone. Thank you for sharing. ❤️

Thank you for this! I am currently struggling with the loss of 2 friendships at the same time. To say I’m not handling it well is an understatement. This is so beautifully written and I hope will help me grieve easier.

The loss of a treasured friendship leaves a very real hole in one’s heart and in one’s psyche. The memories include those where I wish I had been more forgiving, more loving. I wish I could take back the negative feelings I harbored at times. The doubts about the authenticity of the friendship. The lingering concerns about trust. A history of deep sharing only intensifies the regret and disbelief that this beloved friend is no longer a part of my life.

Thank you so much for this wonderful article.. I have been having a very difficult time understanding why I have felt so sad, hopeless and in despair over the last few weeks in regard to the sudden distancing of my best friend. I feel better knowing that my feelings are valid and I am not the only one who is going through this sort of anguish, and that there is hope for healing in the future.. ❤️🙏

Thank You so much for this article! I have been struggling over the ending of a 30 year friendship and we have also worked together for 17 years which I believe caused the friendship to end. I cannot speak or look at her, it is hard enough having to work in the same office everyday.

Oh Mel, OMG- I can’t imagine how BEYOND struggling it must be for you to actually have to come face to face with your formerly loved, LONG TIME Friend. I had also lost someone- 2.5 years ago- with whom I had a deep friendship with for over 30 years, and it was abslutely horrible when she ‘took some space’ from me incredibly painful -for awhile at least- to just worry I might run into her in public since we live in the same city in neighborhoods that are close to eachother.! I grieved this deeply and still once in a while feel that pang of sadness & guilt. But I am not sure you can actually fully do the mourning you absolutely need to do, and have the right to do– I don’t know how long ago the ‘breakup’ occurred, if it is still fresh or not, but DO YOU have any paid time off at your job you can take? I mean, this is like emotional trauma to have to live with seeing her and I think for sure you deserve to NOT HAVE TO speak or look at her for a while at least. My heart breaks for you. We are all “lucky” to have found Jen’s insightful and passionate essay. I actually printed it out and keep it by my bedside (My present broken friendship is with someone I’d been very close to for 13 years, and happened very suddenly and explosively.. we were that rare adult friendship where you talk to eachother like, every day or every other day, and it still never gets boring. And this was a Guy Friend. Just wanted to speak up and offer you sympathy for what must be a nasty-horrible-re-hurt-ful work situation. (mine was work related also- I worked for him as an indie contractor and when the breakup occurred he ‘fired me’ as an employee ALSO.

We all have different heartfelt stories and at the core of them are the same emotions of hurt, loss, pain and overwhelming sadness. My girl best friend, twin flame, we called each other, I thought would last a lifetime. We spoke every day and were always there for each other for all of our 5 year friendship. Then she met a new guy, I was so happy for her…then she decided that we did not have so much in common anymore…from nowhere, I was heart broken when she told me that the friendship for her was not working anymore and she felt it would be best to not see me anymore…she said it has been brewing for sometime and she just did not know how to tell me…so no big argument or falling out led to our breakup…on her part just meeting a new man and a kind of moving on…I was left devasted with this big immense hole inside. I cried so much…it really felt like a death….a year later, I still think of her a lot. I can’t really hate her, she treated me badly for sure, but I suppose if she did not want to be my friend anymore what could I do? Was she truly ever a friend…It is all so strange….I do sometimes send her a message, not sure if she gets/reads it. I am not expecting a reply…I don’t ask questions, I just tell her what I’m up to, I don’t give any details…not sure why I do it…I suppose I am just trying to cling to some sort of link even if it is one sided…has anyone else done this? Maybe I don’t want to be forgotten…I just send an email then forget about it. I really don’t expect a reply. Sent her an Xmas message. She did reply. Very formal and not like her at all…but at least she did reply. I still wish her the very. best and even though she is gone from my life I feel she is in my DNA somehow. She added sparkle to my life for 5 years and for that I will always be grateful..I feel lonely sometimes, I have other friends but they are like her. We were so close. It was only when when she decided that she did not want me as a friend that I realised how much I leant on her from emotional support, like friends do. And she on me…I helped her in so many ways. Her “Dear John” note read…..”You have always been a good friend to me and you are a lovely person. However I feel that we are no longer compatable and want to move on. Wishing you all the best!!!” Five years of friendship and that is all I get as some kind of explanation why she wanted to ditch our friendship! I really miss her and sometimes it feels like an ache and tears come to my eyes. I refuse to fill that void with hate and “hard done by me” feelings. So I leave it empty and hope that the space in time will be filled with something positive and beautiful.

Omg. What was your reply to this? I’m wondering if she has extremely conflicting views? (ie. religous, etc). Maybe she didn’t agree with something very strong politically that you supported or didn’t support? Very weird message. And also hurtful because it seems like she was only using you until a man came into her life!?

Unbelievably perfect article. 18 years fading away fast. Your beautiful writing is everything I want to say. Thank you.

I know a lot of people have already told you this.. But i need to say it myself : Thank you so much for compiling ypur knowledge and wisdom and writing this. It made me feel less alone. I am young, 21 yrs, and I lost two friendships of 3 years in the same time. May not seem like much.. But i have clinical depression and anxiety. And these two have been my first real friends since i was born.. Before them i struggled with excruciating loneliness for as far as i remember.. And after i lost them I found myself completely alone.. I got used to being in good company with them all the time, and so, all this being taken away from me all of a sudden.. ugh.. I understand better times are ahead. But until then, i am living hell itself.. I don’t even have anyone to share my thoughts and pains with. So, your words made me feel less alone.. Thank you..

Jen, I am a singer/songwriter who is morning the lost a 3 year friendship. I was really moved and inspired by your writing and was wondering if I could use your words in a song?

I love this idea! I’m not sure if there’s something I need to do, officially, but I’d love to hear it when you’re done!

I lost a 40 year friend 1.5 years ago. It had been coming. The signs were there – busy everytime I invited her to do something or she simply would email me and say “no thanks.” I asked what was wrong repeatedly to which she always replied, via email since it’s easier than saying it in person, “nothing is wrong” which I accepted for a long time until the reality finally struck me when my Dad died. I called her to let her know. I once again begged profusely for forgiveness for anything I ever did to offend or hurt her in any way. She wouldn’t open up. I asked, pathetically, if this means she doesnt want to be friends anymore. Uncomfortably, she replied: “People change. People go in different directions. We’ll get together SOME TIME, which NEVER happened. She never even called to see how the funeral went or how I was handling the devastating loss of my Father. It was like dealing with 2 deaths! I emailed her a year later to extend the olive branch ONCE AGAIN. ONCE AGAIN, I apologized profusely and said I wished her well. In reply, I received 6 words: “no worries, best to you too.” It’s still very hard and I miss her terribly. My advice: PRAY, PRAY, PRAY. Keep busy. Try to be a blessing to someone who needs it until your blessing comes. God hears ALL prayers and will help YOU. I feel for all of you as I do for myself. The loss and personal devastation is incalculable. Be good and kind to yourself. Time will heal your wounds and mine. I will be praying for all of you as I continue to pray for myself. It’s a rough road, but we will know peace again. I so wish I knew the reason for all of this. I would NEVER have done this to her for ANY reason.

That is so heartbreaking, I’m so very sorry!!!

It took several years for me to fully recover from the loss of an important 20-year friendship. I clung to the feeling she had deeply wronged me and even rebuffed her early and short-lived attempts to resume the friendship. I eventually realized the ways I had contributed to the rift, then turned all that anger and remorse back on myself. Time and life has a way of softening us, however, and I ultimately forgave both myself and her. Yes, we both f’ed up and something beautiful died as a result. It was sad, and I accepted it. I am now more gentle and responsible with new friendships, and treasure old friends more than ever. That was the enduring silver lining of this friendship’s end.

That sounds hopeful because I still hurt hugely from a friendship loss.

friendship of 23 years gone in a flash, from my own blunt, callous stupidity. i’ve never wished my best friend or his wife anything but the best & that’ll never change, but i have nobody to be mad at but myself. we were never actually related, but we were always there for each other & he was more than a brother to me, through my entire military career that took me all over the world with good friends who came & went fairly regularly, the death of my actual brother, the end of my failed marriage that lasted entirely too long, & even through the rest of my blood relatives abandoning me over the years. i’ve never felt more alone, even with the largely solitary life i’ve led, but the hundreds of miles physical distance should at least help some with the healing process as i find my new normal.

I’m in a similar situation. It’s unbelievable how hard it is.

I caused the end of an extremely precious friendship because of an awful betrayal which has been irreparable. I struggle with what I did every single day and am in deep grief over the loss of this person. I would do anything to be able to try to repair the relationship but I don’t think she will want to have any contact with me know. I suppose I just wanted to say that some of us who have let down friends and caused tremendous grief and pain do also suffer very much with the loss, especially in the knowledge that we are the cause and that we can’t heal the hurt from our mistakes. I don’t know how to move on from this. It has been several years now.

You could write a letter of apology in which you accept your role in the friendship’s end (as you do in your post), and say how sorry you are things ended the way you did. You do NOT ask to resume the friendship, and you make it clear there’s no need to respond. Then sit on your letter for several days and consider carefully whether the point of sending it is to make YOU feel better or him/her feel better. If you believe the other person still feels wronged and would be soothed by your overture, even months later, then go ahead and send the letter. Making sincere amends to those we have hurt heals us as well as them.

Wow this totally resonated with me. Thx. Grieving the list of my ONLY best friend of 35 years. I tho it this was the one enduring friendship I would be lucky to have my entire life. But it’s not to be. The tragedy of her cancer divorce and messed up kids and life have taken their toll ADN she is no Ofer the same person I loved and felt care for by. That’s fine. In its place is a bitter sad angry person impossible to be around though J have truly tried. I just can’t do it anymore. Feeling lots of guilt over it and she is sure as heck mad at me for “giving up on he as I go away to heal what’s been pretty toxic for me.

I love how this is written, thank you I needed, I’m currently a University student at 22 years old. I’m a man, and as a man it’s harder to be honest with my emotions because men are taught to suppress it and “be like a man” and move forward. My best friend is a girl, we were inseparable. We were both together in the yearbook when we went to the same high school, she and I won the “most likely to brighten your day” award for the seniors, and we had a picture of the two of us hugging. We danced at prom together and we graduated high school together and went for walks on the park together. I was so happy when I found out we were going to the same University together, what I didn’t realize though is that even though we went at the same place I thought it would be easier to see each other, it wasn’t we got busier and now she’s so busy she doesn’t even answer my texts or greet me like she used to. I took it as a sign that we grew apart, I tried not to cry but I did, I miss her so much, she misses me, earlier today when I was alone at school when no one was looking I weeped. My best friend’s hugs could take away my temper and soften my heart she was the sweetest thing I’ve met. It’s hard as a man, because I’m told I’m supposed to man up, and just let it go but letting go hurts, I feel hurt. It’s even harder for me being shy I dread making new friends because it’s hard the idea of me making first move to anyone terrifies me. So this friendship was worth it and it didn’t came easy for me. I miss her so much I love her she loves me and we hug each other every time we see each other, her hugs make me happy. She is my best friend forever, my bestie in my heart. I’ll never forget what she did for me and how she introduced me to Jesus I’ll never forget her, I just hope to see her again soon if we can somehow find the time. I love her so much, but for now I got a slow and painful process grieving and healing to get through to fully recover over time.

– Randy

My husband and I have been friends with another couple for going on 20 years. This couple has been like family for us, our best friends. Our kids were raised together and call each other cousins….their granddaughter calls us “Aunt and Uncle.” About 5 years ago, he cheated, badly…and she left him. They eventually decided to work it out, but needed some help getting back on their feet. So, we let them live with us for about 6 months. No bills, no nothing. It was no problem, and went very smoothly. Fast forward, and we’ve all moved to another side of town, but we still live very near each other…and we are still very close. Suddenly, she starts acting really strange and has a bit of a “relapse” of anger…and leaves him…it culminates in a lot of relationship drama for them. And they both start acting weird with us. We have told them over and over again that we love them…but they both started taking advantage of us, and lying about stuff. Then, went so far as to borrow (more) money. All of a sudden, they just stopped talking to us. We know that they’re back together, because of the gossips in the area. I’ve tried to reach out several times, only to get really crappy responses. The final straw was this weekend…the husband was just downright rude in a text. Like…how did WE become the villains in their lives? I sent a heartfelt text (because they won’t answer their phones) – and it’s just like they’ve ghosted both of us. It’s all still so fresh, that I vacillate between sadness and anger. I feel like we deserve to be told something. This ghosting thing is just so ugly and hateful.

I cannot imagine how confusing and painful that is! I’m so very sorry!!

It hurts so much to be treated like this I know. I hope you can find peace with the hurt. Good luck

Thank you so much for this. Two days ago a big betrayal came out and amongst other things pushing us apart over the past two years I feel that a 16 year friendship is over. Your article is very wise and comforting and I was concerned about losing such a long friendship but after reading your article and seeing such lengthy losses in the comments I feel more comfortable that it’s the right decision and it’s the quality of the friendship as opposed to the length that counts. I also feel a lot less alone in losing such a lengthy friendship but as your article states no one is immune. I will be sure to revisit the article as my grief journey continues.

Thank you so much for this. I’m still young and the friendship is only 5 years old but I couldn’t tell myself why it felt like I was grieving..the end to the friendship was sudden and based on her boyfriend not liking me (after I supported a decision she made to spite him) so he suggested her and I keep a “professional relationship only.” I had to keep telling myself it was not me. It’s only been a couple days but I’m tired of being sad and tired…above all we still work together so I will still have to see her and work alongside her so I feel like I don’t get closure and I’m still holding out for our friendship to fix itself when he’s done being upset with me but…I’m not sure I want the friendship anymore.

Oh my goodness, what a difficult situation!

Your situation sounds similar to mine. My ex-friend ended our friendship with no explanation after she got back with her former partner. He’s very possessive and I can’t believe she went back after the trouble she went to to leave. But I would have supported her given the chance. I think he’s turned her against me even though I’ve never met him. I miss her dearly but not sure I want the friendship anymore either because of the revolting messages he’s been sending me. I don’t want that in my life. She and I have to work together too so it’s hard to move on and accept she’d end it like this without the decency of a proper explanation.

The hard thing is, my friend, “Lucille,” is the person I would have been talking to about this very situation, because I was so accustomed to telling her everything and now that I can’t tell her this, I find I’m having to do what I used to do–>write things down. Still, I am bothered by thinking about her even when I don’t want to be thinking about her. I had a lot of feelings of sadness before too, when she pulled away the first time but now I’m feeling more anger because I KNOW she would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that pulling away when my mother died would be profoundly hurtful. (Justine or Jen, please clarify if I’m typing this response just to Justine now, which is my intention. Thanks). Julia

I know that feeling all too well. Had a friend drop out of my life multiple times and she was the person I talked to about everything so I had to write my feelings down and couldn’t stop thinking about her. She eventually came back AGAIN and I let her but it’s not the same, can’t talk to her about anything and I don’t really consider her a friend anymore. Anyway, I’m so sorry you’ve had to experience that, I know how painful it is and no one deserves that, just know that time will heal your wounds even if that feels impossible now. Also my name is also Julia 🙂

dear julia,

also sorry for the suffering you’ve had to endure. I am quite a merciful person to anyone who apologizes to me and have renewed some lost friendships over the years but I don’t think this one is ever coming back because I never knew her to be much of a merciful person in that way, and she changed so much that I could hardly recognize the person I’d known previously. It’s still so hard to understand and I am working to accept that it will never fully make sense to me. at least I know that I tried really really hard to be a good friend. I wish I could take a pill that would allow me to stop thinking about her when I don’t want her in my head.

Thank you, and yes losing a close friend is so hard to process. No one expects friendships to end so suddenly. Unfortunately there is no way to get them off our minds but as much as it doesn’t seem like it and no one really likes to hear it, time does help. It eases that deep ache and old memories get replaced by new ones. It is so hard, so so hard and sadly the only way through is to feel that pain for as long as it takes for it to subside. Best of wishes to you, I hope that you are able to form new friendships with people you can rely on and treat you right. Sending you peace and love – julia

Most definitely. It’s been 2 months since we’ve spoken and she’s gone out of her way to not be in the office while I’m there. (She’s also my supervisor). It’s still hard because she will use old nicknames during meetings but then go back to being strictly professional. Everyone at work knew us as very close so it’s raised a lot of questions. Her emotionally abusive bf cut her off social media as well so I can’t stalk either…probably for the best.

I have been struggling for almost a year with losing a friendship. I haven’t for reasons unknown stopped grieving. At the most absurd times, I remember that – “Oh XYZ would have loved this and got the joke and laughed so hard at it.” I can’t seem to get across to anyone on why it hurts so much to lose a friend vs losing a partner ( much support received here) or losing to death a loved one (lots of support here too). When I say I’m hurt and grieving for losing this friend, all is get is odd and/or awkward stares and the proverbial absent minded pat on the head/back.

What you’ve written (so very well) really touched a chord in me and I finally feel understood and that I’m not ridiculous to feel this intense pain at the loss. I’m so tempted from time to time to restart the friendship but I know it will be intensely sticky and awkward as families will get hurt despite this being a wholly platonic friendship between 2 people of the opposite sex who saw the other as a person who got the other person’s ridiculous sense of humour/train of thought/philosophy and didn’t need a response for everything communicated.

Thank you for writing this. This will help me let go of the pain and move on.

A beautifully written article. I have lost my best friend of 38 years. My heart is broken. Hers probably is, too. Truly, no apology could change the finality. It would never be the same. Still, my heart is broken in half. I will love and miss her forever.

Kathy….I’m so sorry that this long relationship ended and in a negative way. Like you, I will always love my friend no matter what. Maybe the fond memories of your life experiences together will help carry you through and with time the pain of that void will lessen. Thinking of you! Sarah

My relationship of nearly two decades with my best friend was also lost to me recently, coincidentally at the same time my mother died. These two events were in fact related. I believed our friendship was sacred. I told my best friend everything, believed we could survive anything. I thanked God for our relationship. After a period of unusual behavior on my friend’s part, I later learned she’d kept a secret from me all these years when, late in life, she made a decision to revisit an extra-marital affair from her youth. This affair was with a man she referred to as narcissistic. That fateful choice resulted in terrible destructive chaos for my friend and ultimately contributed mightily to the end of our friendship. I had a particularly empathy for my friend in this regard and aimed to be supportive because years before, I had a relationship with a similar narcissistic character before knowing my friend. Her relationship with this man chewed up and spat out a beaten up version of my friend. She became utterly obsessed with this relationship. Her life revolved around the relationship, her pain and her therapy over the pain. Twice over a year, she put me “on hold” due to misperceived messages on my part, saying she needed to process her feelings. I had no idea whether she was ever coming back and I went through much more grief than she ever understood. I begged her the first time to return to our sacred friendship. Over time, she became hyper-focused on her body, lost far too much weight, and finally became paranoid and unreachable, even as I tried to offer support I would have wanted in such a position. At other times she thanked me for the support and told me she didn’t know how she could do this without me. When my mother died, my friend knew I wanted her support, not only because that is natural but because I had told this in advance. Instead of being there for me, her preoccupation with the relationship, her wounds, her therapy, reigned high when my mother died, and she put me “on hold” right then, at that crucial time, with no end in sight. , She misperceived messages I’d sent which were meant solely to be supportive and lashed out at me. There was nothing I could say to alter her sad, warped perception. I understood her pain but not her lashing out at me. Over time, I watched as my formerly very strong friend turned into a person I no longer recognized. She knew my mother and had stayed in my parents’ vacation place on a yearly basis but she didn’t even send a card when my mother died. If someone had whispered in our ears a year or so in advance of these events, neither of us would have believed it would happen! I lost my mother and at the same time, I lost my best friend. And my friend lost her former healthier self to this life-sucking relationship. Her failure to be there for me when my mother died made clear to me that I needed to say goodbye in order to mourn my mother. My friend’s departure at such a crucial time, no matter what her pain level, suggested to me she may have wanted to pass her pain on to me. She was much nicer to the man who treated her badly than she was to me. I’m still at that stage where I think of so many things I would have told her on a daily basis. Meanwhile, I also have a sense of relief to be removed because the dance with my friend had begun to make me sick in my stomach. That was my warning in advance.

Thanks so much for this. I’ve recently lost a very close friend due to her reunion with a possessive partner. She cut me off before I found out they’d reunited and I had no idea why. I’m very lost and find the tears creep up on me when I least expect it and just when I think I have a handle on things. She’s left a big hole and perhaps the worst part is I still have to work with her and it’s not helping me move on. So thanks so much for your post. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in my grief.

It’s tough when you work together. I have the option to work remotely so do that a lot now to avoid seeing her. I find I can deal with it much better from a distance. She gave me a birthday present recently and it stirred things up for me again. I was angry- if she doesn’t want to be friends any longer I’d prefer her to just leave me alone outside work. It’s six months since we saw each other socially and not getting any easier yet.

I hope things will for you with time.

This is the first year I didn’t wish her happy birthday in 26 years, because I have to let go and accept the loss Thank you for this thoughtful and heartfelt post. I’m mourning today, it’s been years since the loss…but on certain days it hurts more. It hurts more than a death.

I know how you feel. I’ve lost one of my friendship groups and it just feels like a death.

I am devastated. My best friend, my soul mate, my go to gal pal in times of angst and troubles does not want to be friends anymore. We were friends for five years. Speaking almost daily, messaging and hanging out for coffees. She sustained me emotionally and was always there for me. Also I was their for her too! I miss everything, and it has only been two days! I wonder how I will fill the void that I feel. It feels so heavy and full of pain. The worst thing is that she will continue with her life and I will never know what has happened to her. I will never know if she is ok and what she is doing…that is the worst part….she has met a new boyfriend and now feels are friendship is no long tenable!!! She sent me a text, thanking for the our friendship and telling me what a good friend I had been to her….!!!Presently I feel bitter….Such a good friend to her…but she does not want to continue our friendship…..She has a new man in her life….and I am left with a blank, vast, deep, cold void….I hope I will heal. It is just so painful the thought of never knowing how she is doing and wondering if she is OK….that part is just so hard to bear.

Thank you for this article, I’m finding it hard that my close friendship has come to an end. I was recently in hospital with a life threatening infection and needed heart surgery. My best friend came across really patronising, dismissed my emotions and treated me like a child. I felt so stressed and unable to handle her approach so I told her I felt. Instead of trying to talk to me and support me she reacted defensively and made it about her, and since then haven’t heard from her. Luckily I have amazing family, partner and other friends who supported me but the complete abandonment from someone who I considered so close still hurts. Looking back, I can see the friendship was one sided a lot of the times, and I was constantly used as an emotional dumping ground for her but I feel so sad when I remember the good times, I also felt I meant more to her, and it hurts that our friendship was dismissed so easily

Lucy—You deserve better! A real friend drops everything, especially with such a health concern. I am so glad you’re ok! 🙏

Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that she revealed her self-centeredness to you when you really needed her. Now you leave a space open for, perhaps, a new balanced friendship with someone more deserving of your loyalty and devotion. Life is too short. Hang on to the memories of the good times—friendship for a season and a reason. I had a similar loss without the health scare and after six months I can look back on “red flags” and one sidedness in the relationship with more clarity. I will cherish the good memories we shared and wish her the best in my heart without enduring her draining negativity, victim mentality and temper.

The best friend I (thought) I ever had betrayed me in the worst way possible. She had an affair under my nose for three years with my husband. I loved her. All the anger I have been holding onto. Angry that she came in and damaged my life and pretended to be my friend and she got to move on and get married and have a baby while I’m still back here thinking about it everyday. I think about her betrayal constantly and then I finally realized that as much as I hate her and what she did to me. I miss her, well not her but the best friend part. I’ve never been as close to anyone as I was to her and I’m angry she took that from me. I’m hoping this artical will help bring peace to my thoughts and stop the repetitive thinking of her daily and get some normalcy back! I will never ever let anyone in again😢 I feel for everyone’s comments also yours Jen

I know that my comments are coming WAY after the original posting, but having freshly suffered the loss of a friendship, this post really was wonderful for me to land on. It is beautifully written and confirms that I most definitely WILL get through the loss of a friendship I’ve had for over 30 years.

I’m so sorry for what you’re going through, Melanie! You absolutely *will* get through it, but MAN is it painful right now. I’m so glad you found this. Honestly – and sadly – this post remains the most frequently-visited one on the site, and there are new comments weekly from people experiencing the same loss. It’s heart-breaking to see, but also strangely comforting to know it’s not just you, you aren’t alone, it wasn’t all your fault, and there’s nothing “wrong” with you. Again, I’m so sorry for your pain. ❤️

Im getting used to moving on from deep friendships on what feels like a yearly occurrence. Ive lost all of my meaningful friendships/ childhood friendships.

All Ive got is family now and theyll be there forever. And Ive gotten used to people moving on, but the current of life constantlt culling these precious connections is hard. And its so painful to see them move on without a care in the world and to see them so happier without you.

Nobody in the state I live in gives a shit about me. Idk it sucks being so independent.

Through the years I have had friendships come and go. Some that had lasted years, some that hadn’t been very long but oh so strong. Recently I fought cancer as well as almost died on the operating table and realized how small my support circle really is. With therapy I know I have a way of doing negative thinking and massive anxiety but when I look back that was during my grieving process, not what caused the friendships to fizzle out. Do I have regrets of lost friendships, most definitely but that is something I no longer truly focus on. I look at who is here now. I learned how quickly life can almost come to an end so celebrate who is by your side now

I sorely needed this. I am still grieving the loss of a close friend. Well, I really screwed up the friendship, not her. I was really mean to her over an affair between her and another man she got me involved in and with her lack of wanting to walk things out, I just became really angry and said enough is enough. In a very toxic fashion. Now six months later, I wanted to apologize to her. Not that I believe she’ll accept it and perhaps not even see it. So, I really needed this in order to reflect and move past my mistakes. Thank you so much for posting this!

I’ve been trying to put words to what I’ve been feeling for about 8 weeks now after a friendship of almost 5 years ended. That’s not a really long time but for an adult friendship, to me it was a very long time and we were really close. I approached her about some behavior her son was exhibiting and it just went all sorts of wrong. Now I question if I should’ve even said anything. She never responded to my last email. It just ended . So thank you for helping me to feel like this grief I feel is normal because it’s really kicked my butt.

I am mourning the loss of a 33 year friendship that I thought would always be there. I’m devastated by it.

Cara I am so very sorry you have to endure such a loss and join this club of so many of us experiencing the same! My friendship was 45 years. We met in 7th grade and are now 60. Her and her family were my family, including being a Godmother to her daughter. I lost them all…I feel like 2/3 of my life is gone. I cried when I woke, all day, and at night in bed. It is devastating. It has been about 1 year since I’ve seen her. I want you to know… it’s going to get easier with each day. You will have a memory pop in to your head (I’m not sure what your situation was) and start realizing things were fading for awhile. You will begin to realize that it is absolutely your ex friends loss and you will meet others that respect you perhaps far more than what you may have been getting back from your friend. I promise you this…it will get easier and better…and you will move on to have an awesome life….whatever it has in store for you!!!! Hang in there and know it is absolutely okay to mourn and be hurt for as long as you need to! 💖

Thanks, Keely. I considered him my “first real boyfriend” and we’ve known each other since I was 15 (now 48). I became friends with his wife and he became friends with my husband. He was always someone I could turn to…. it’s truly been devastating to me.

about 18 months ago, my daughter was having issues at school. Both of my kids work in tv/film and were missing quite a bit of school. Her teacher that year was very, very NOT understanding. He could not fathom all that she was learning while working on set. So, after that, I asked my kids if they would prefer to do home-learning. My daughter at the time was suffering severe anxiety every time she had to go to school because she was not sure how the teacher was going to react to her being there. She jumped at the chance. I posted on social media asking for my friends’ thoughts and suggestions. My best friend sent me a private message saying that I would cause my kids to become “social re****s” . I had a visceral reaction to his words. And responded in shock. I mean, he knows my kids (they are actually teens). I found his words incredibly disrespectful. He could have simply asked me about socialization etc, but instead he attacked using horrific words (didn’t seem like him at all).

Anyway, I told him he was entitled to his opinion. He said I was being patronizing and condescending and pretty much that was the end of the friendship. I’m still in shock. I can’t believe that he was willing to cut off a friendship of more than 3 decades because I decided to homeschool my kids! (Actually, to be accurate, they are still enrolled in school and I have to report to a certified/qualified teacher weekly, but he didn’t stick around long enough to ask for information, he just jumped to conclusions with zero regard for me or my situation.)

I keep telling myself that it’s his loss, but the problem is, it’s not. It’s also my loss, my kids’ loss (no more Uncle) and my husband’s loss. We all lost out.

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know all too well what it feels like to be attacked by your best friend, enough so that it ends the friendship. My opinion: there is always…ALWAYS something deeper. It’s never just the incident you think it is. I wonder why he would do that, especially out of character. Any ways I know it’s shocking. I’m finally out of shock and it’s been nearly 2 years. I still cannot believe it’s been that long. My best friend was toxic. After a long time I came to realize that. I thought it was the incident for so long, then I realized there was a whole lot more to it. There always is. Anyways good luck. I don’t think time will ever heal this kind of thing, I still feel like a limb has been chopped off, but I’m still alive and doing the best I can and I’m proud of myself for sticking my ground, so you should be too. You were only doing the best for your kids. School is so corrupt in so many ways. It’s good they’re getting that skill and fulfilling their passion, you did the right thing and he was wrong not to support it.

Yes, I agree, I think there is definitely more to it but I cannot fathom what it is. He has no interest in even trying to sort it out. Which is interesting because I’m the one who felt attacked. Anyway, if I continue to dwell on it all, I will only drive myself crazy. I’ve been suffering rather severe anxiety since it happened and I have to try to take care of my family and not give this situation more oxygen.

Thanks for your understanding. And yes, it feels like I’m missing a limb.

Thank you so much for sharing this, Jen. I’m grieving the loss of two friendships at once. Your line about weddings and babies being the sieves which not everyone makes it though was especially profound. I’m 27 years old and recently married. I asked two close friends to be in my bridal party. We had a longer engagement, lasting almost 2 years. I came to regret my decision, feeling like these friends were absent from much of the conservations and planning we would have as a bridal party. When it came time to organize a date for my bachelorette party, they tried to blame my best friend, my MOH for somehow being responsible for not including them more. I felt beside myself. My best friend was astonished at how unhelpful they were and this caused me a great deal of stress and hurt. The one friend was so upset with me, because I wouldn’t allow her to dye her hair bright red for my wedding. First she asked about having pink hair, then bright red. She claimed she had undergone a great deal of change in the last year, and wanted to honour those changes. I tried asking her to clarify why she felt so compelled to colour her hair, but she wouldn’t explain further. It felt like she wanted to be the star of the show. I was upset by this. I tried explaining what with so many changes in planning a wedding during a pandemic, there was a specific look I was trying to achieve, and that I would appreciate her having her natural hair colour. Perhaps I was wrong to do this, and I’ll admit that. I wanted our wedding day to be ideal. Having one out of 6 bridesmaids with bright red hair didn’t seem appropriate to me. I would personally never do that to a friend if I were in their bridal party. She was aware she’d be in our wedding for the last 2 years.

They weren’t entirely terrible. They did give a gift at my bachelorette and at our wedding. For the most part, I didn’t feel like I was a priority to them. I felt they didn’t want to be part of the bridal party. The other friend abruptly left the bridesmaid group chat, without any explanation whatsoever. Each of my bridesmaids lived in different cities, making it necessary to have a group chat online. At one point, I gave both of these friends a chance to attend as guests instead. I knew they were having difficulties themselves and didn’t want to burden them further. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. They both decided to remain bridesmaids anyway. Our wedding went off without a hitch. Literally, it was truly uncanny and I was steeling myself for the moment either of them to do something awful. It was like a fairytale.

The wedding has come and passed now. I have pulled back a lot, limiting contact from both people. I hope in time I can get over this. It’s one thing to grieve the loss of one friend, but two at once is a lot to bear.

Hey, I just wanted to reach out because my best friend and I fell out over the wedding as well. Being on the other side of it, I don’t think it was right of you to dictate their hair colour, that’s kind of controlling. Plus if a bright colour is what they wanted then that’s who they are and I’m sure you must have known this? Anyways, I know you already said you maybe shouldn’t have done that but I just wanted to confirm it. Can I ask what happened at the wedding? Sounds very similar to my story.

Almost 3 years ago my friend (or sister as I claimed her) of 22 years and I had a bit of a misunderstanding of sorts and it left me hurt. We never recovered from it though I tried reaching out dozens of times and she never responded. I tried for a whole year and was rejected each time. I felt like someone took a dagger to my heart. I never could explain what losing a friendship like ours felt like and this article hit the nail on the head. Most times I am ok but days like this I am crying my heart out. One day or one year at a time I guess.

Sounds very similar to mine. It’s heartbreaking. What happened if I may ask?

About 5 mths before, my ex-BF got invited to a wedding in Miami and another mutual friend said, why don’t we make it a girl’s trip as well. It didn’t pan out at first but about a month before I happened to find out that they did in fact organize a bit of a girls weekend and nobody told me or invited me.

Wow! So many others going through a similar situation. I can feel the heartbreak as a scroll through the comments. I’ve lost a few long term friendships over the last few years. Cleaning house as you might say. Do I expect too much?? Perhaps. But i am a giving person and I expect the same. Maybe that’s the problem? This last one though really hurts. We were the best of pals. Maybe I sabotaged it? I’m hurt, confused and very sad.

This article and all the comments were very comforting. My ex-boyfriend was also my best friend. We lived together for five years and then went on to keep our friendship for two more. When I finally started dating someone else, my ex couldn’t deal with it and we ended the friendship. While I have fully mourned the romantic relationship, I’m finding the loss of the friendship incredibly difficult. It’s been six months and I’m just now realizing how overwhelmingly sad I am. Like, bouts of depression level sad. I feel like a family member died. I’m not sure how to get over it, but I’m trying.

Sorry to hear of this, it is definitely a loss. Also, I don’t think we ever really get over it but learn to accept what has happened and move past it. Mine happened 3 years ago and I still have moments where it hits me hard. I live in a small country where everyone, knows everyone and we have the same friends… so at times it is very awkward. Hope you feel better soon xo

To everyone here…the loss of my 38 year friendship is now six months. I posted here when looking for ways to cope. The last few months have helped heal a giant hole in my heart. We have not spoken since then, and I don’t expect we ever will. I didn’t just lose her, I lost her whole family. BUT she lost us too. Keep that in mind as you heal. Today will be difficult for me, as Christmas Eve was always a huge part of our friendship. But tomorrow will come and the good memories of the past will still be there. Take care and know that the hurt eases with time and the tears don’t come as often. There is some truth in the old saying that Time Heals All Wounds.

Thank you. I veer between “I’m ok. All will be ok. Life will go on.” and utter devastation.

Your words five me hope. xoxo

I needed this right now. I’ve had the same best friend for 37 years. We come from very different backgrounds – mine was blue collar, middle class, older parents, largely democratic. Hers was white collar, wealthy, average age parents, republican. We knew our differences our entire lives, and they never affected our friendship. We never let them. We were connected by so many deeper things- life, death, love, marriage, divorce, everything. The ties that bind us go back decades and I thought they were strong. Until her adult daughter attacked me for differing political views. When I refused to engage, telling her I loved her too much, she came at me harder. I still didn’t engage, just told her I loved her even after being called a hypocrite, having my faith questioned, and more. I never told my friend about the situation – her daughter is a grown woman who makes her own choices. And I didn’t/don’t want my friend in the middle. But I’m assuming she got drug into it because she has become a ghost. Ignored calls, vague responses, etc. I’m sure she feels stuck, but I never thought anything could divide us at this point. If the situation were reversed, I too would have to say “family first” – that is one thing we were both raised with. But I’m heartbroken that we were even put in this position, and that it’s come to this. There are no words for the void she leaves behind. It’s as painful as a death.

I understand completely. As I wrote previously, my friendship ended not because of political differences (we are on the same page politically), but because I decided to have my kids start home-learning instead of attending public school. I did it because my kids work (in film and tv) and it is their passion. They’ve never had a passion before, but this has been 3 years going strong, so I offered to enroll them in a distance learning programme and the two kids jumped at it. My closest friend, the one I thought would be my rock through everything sent me devastating messages telling me that I would cause my kids to be “social re****s”. I was devastated and had a gutteral reaction to his choice of words. I never thought a friendship of 33 years would end because my kids wanted to learn at home so they could focus on acting and music more. I mean, my decision has less than zero effect on my friend or his family, right?

Anyway, I’m trying to get over it…. but I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

Hugs to you. I know exactly how you feel. xoxo

Hi, came across this article during one of my 3am crying sessions.

Loosing my best friend/honorary sister of almost 3 years is painful. Really never thought this will happen to us, I tried to communicate and was willing to work on our friendship, even admitting that I also made mistakes.

It just hurts that she was not willing to fight for our friendship, feels like I valued our friendship more and that I cared more.

I hope this pain and emptiness goes away someday.

I wish I had come across this article and all the responses eight years ago when I suddenly lost a friend I thought I would have for life. For years we had gone running together every weekend, shared our greatest secrets and done lots of wonderful adventurous things together. We seemed to share a similar outlook on life and, as we both had four young children, were going through the same kind of family experiences and traumas. I treasured our friendship. When life in general was pretty difficult, the friendship became very special and important to me. Then, out of the blue, she suddenly became cold and distant with me – sending me a hurtful text and then making excuses not to meet up with me. I was devastated. I told her so and she sort of seemed to understand, but she was clearly no longer committed to our friendship. The weekly runs stopped and she only occasionally responded to my texts. For ages I clung to the hope that she would suddenly ‘see the light’and come back to me full of explanations and apologies but this never happened. It affected me emotionally and physically in a profound way. I just couldn’t believe that she could just give up on me like that. It went against my deepest notion of what a true friendship should be. But slowly things did get better. The stretches in time when I wasn’t thinking about her became longer and there were more and more days when I didn’t cry. I made new friends (including someone who turned out had gone through a similar experience with the same friend years before!). Now, eight years on, I rarely think about her and the deep sadness has gone. I just think that something healthy happened and my mind and body just said ‘that’s the end of it…we’ve had enough of being sad’. I still go running a lot. Occasionally I pass my old friend walking her dog. We always say hello to each other and I sometimes think that she’d like me to stop and talk to her (she always loved to talk to people and finding out about their lives). It gives me a strange sort of satisfaction to keep on running past her and to feel that I have finally managed to leave her behind.

That is horrible. So you never found out why she suddenly stopped talking to you? I stopped talking to my best friend 2 years ago (after a 20 year friendship). She asked to speak but I refused because if I did, I would have nothing but terrible things to say. She couldn’t forgive me for that, and I always worry if I did the right thing. But she was/is extremely toxic. And anytime I tried to tell her how I felt via text she would ridicule me. It was awful, so I refused to meet her. Now struggling to think anyone knows who I am or what a good friend I am. It has physiological haunted me and I will never truly heal. I still value our memories more than anything, but she is a very selfish person and I couldn’t take it anymore.

Sarah, I guess being the dumpee and being the dumper is different. You wisely realized that your friend was being consistently mean or hurtful and just did what you felt you needed to do. I want to just say this (with NO JUDGEMENT IMPLIED okay?) When you have a serious rift with ANYONE (girl /boy-Friend, family member, bestie whatever) even when things have gone way downhill and you just can’t stand it anymore (we’ve all been there) it is important -for both sides- that you give them the chance to hear WHY it is really over for you- in other words, make a final statement even just so you will know you made a ‘clean breast’ of things and not feel bothered by guilt. She may not want to listen, may not care, etc. etc. and it is obv. beyond any ability to fix (happened long time in the past??) or mend. Texting about something very meaningful -as you said you tried to do- IMHO is NOT the best communication for this kind of deep stuff. Phoning them or sending an e-mail, that is better to make impact- then the friend isn’t just non-chalantly ignoring or deleting your serious message, casually and hurtfully to you. You said all you would do is say toxic things to her if you told her why. I get that, totally. But maybe after a month or 2 or 6 months, whatever, you’d be able to say the things she needed to hear from you AND you needed to say to her, minus the intense anger/frustration. O.K., I think you said this happened quite a while ago, so maybe it’s already gone forward too much to even bother with doing this, that’s cool. Just if it ever happens (HOPE IT DOESN”T) again, this might be a ‘thing’ for you to think about. For your peace of mind…again just sayin’ not judgin’.

Hi Nina, thanks for your comment. I didn’t leave her empty handed, she knows exactly how I felt after several very long whatsapp messages back and forth (this is the equivalent to email btw). And every time I said anything about how I felt, she just ridiculed me. So what was the point in meeting her? Or speaking to her over the phone? She was extremely mean and toxic, and quite honestly I just couldn’t bear it anymore. I tried to give her explanations – which she then just threw back at me and invalidated how I was feeling. I also told her a few times I just wasn’t ready to speak about it in person and I needed more time, her response? To tell me she was sick of me, that I was being stubborn, and that she thought me telling her how I felt was ridiculous. Then throwing all the blame to me as to why the friendship ended. I do agree that most people you should have that conversation, and in many ways, we did. But sometimes you need to know when to walk away. Everything I said I just kept getting attacked, and never got an apology for what she did, which is all I needed. Not only that but I found out things she said behind my back which were truly horrible. I’ve come to realize I did try. And if I wasn’t ready to talk, that’s not my fault. She could have apologized and made me feel more comfortable about the situation, but she didn’t. Alas here we are having never had that final conversation in person. It’s been over a year. I think it’s too far gone now.

Sarah, So sorry you had to go through all of that unrelenting cruelness and horrible disrespect. I now have a larger context for your situation, which again I wasn’t ‘judging’ you on, tho I guess ‘challenging’ is the right word. I hear you saying you really did try to communicate but that she WOULDN’T take in your truth. Sometimes people (this ex-friend) become seriously damaged by something, something totally irrelevant to you and him/her, but then they damage you /someone else thoughtlessly and irreparably. It hurts and totally disrespects you, and NO, you DON”T have to keep ‘taking it’ from her if that’s all she’s going to do. Uuugh. It just sounds so demeaning. I’m glad you walked away from her negativity; sometimes -though not usual-there are situations giving you good reasons to totally disengage and not communicate. This obviously was one of them. Again sad for you that it had to be so painful a break.

Thank you. I feel you’ve hit the nail on the head. It was something that ‘forced’ me to walk away from a negative situation. Still painful but just coping day by day.

I have a similar response to Nina’s in this situation. I couldn’t help but think that avoiding talking about the situation and thereby leaving the person always wondering what happened (but never really knowing), would be really hard for them- perhaps harder than hearing what you didn’t say. Furthermore, leaving them without your words allows less opportunity for either of you to learn and hopefully grow as much as possible from the experience. I know I would certainly want an explanation, no matter how difficult but I always value the truth.

I am grieving tonight and went looking for articles or encouragement online in the hopes of understanding or relieving my grief a little bit. It’s so heavy sometimes. I didn’t fully understand why I was grieving because my 17 year friendship ended somewhat amicably but the grief has truly taken me by surprise. Thank you for your words. They have helped to shed a light on a sad and confusing time ❤️

I’m so very sorry your friendship has ended. It is a very heavy weight of loss and grief. Memories come back in waves and the sadness can creep up out of nowhere. It’s been over a year that I’ve lost my best friend of 50 years. Truly, I lost my family. I know it doesn’t make the hurt any easier, but just want you to know your in the company of so many dealing with this. I hope things will become easier for you with time. Please be good to yourself❣️

I’m not sure when this article was written. I am in the process of losing my closest friendship. It feels like a death that is long and drawn out and I’m grieving. My best friend and I had a disagreement last year. I told her something very personal which she disagreed with and rang my husband to discuss, and a couple of her other close friends. I felt betrayed and it hasn’t been the same since. I called my friend out on it in what I believed was in a loving way, but she still got very defensive and didn’t apologize. She believes she is in the right to have spoken about my issue. We keep in touch but its not the same and some days we don’t message at all anymore. The thing I told her was nothing scandalous, it was about my belief in God, or lack of. (We are a part of a high control religion). I feel lost without our constant communication and it feels very off between us. Its been 6 months now.

Ugh, I am so sorry to hear this. I think you were 100% right to state what you believe. I think religion ruins most people unfortunately and it sounds like she’s chosen a fake belief over a good friend. I promise, you will find more like minded people in time. It’s a really good feeling when you do. But I lost my best friend two years ago and it will never feel the same. She really hurt me and has some very serious mental issues, but I still question it everyday. Losing a best friend is such an inexplainable experience. I don’t wish it on anyone, but sometimes who we are moves away from who they are, and in order to grow we must separate.

Good article. I had a great friend a couple of years ago, knew eachother through my job and she eventually quit back in 2016 (knew her since 2005 when I started), got insanely close like a male to female BFF, we both text eachother a lot and phoned eachother often, had long phone conversations and when I was sad she’d call and when she was sad I’d call. It was a good few years after she quit we were really really close and she told me we are always going to be together getting through everything together, us texting in the morning got me through my rough days and days we planned to call eachother but things happened and didn’t made her sad.

Then comes along a loser boyfriend…I feel like he got her to ditch the friendship. She stopped texting me unless I text her but took her a day to text me back instead of asap, our phone calls were short and not as good, she didn’t hang around me much and made excuses but hung around other friends of hers. They didn’t last quite 2 years and I just messaged her last week, she said she was thinking about me and that we should catch up soon, talked on the phone for 20 minutes and going to go on a hike next week but I am no longer interested in keeping her around much longer. She gets upset when I dissapear, but I get fed up so I take off for months and months knowing she wont ever keep in touch anymore and I could take a break from everything.

Just had a bust up with a friend complicated by the fact that we’re also working on a project together. She took the lead in a creative project in which we were supposed to be equals, because my schedule was packed. We could have waited a few weeks for things to clear for me – but then her schedule would’ve been packed. I’m sure we could have found a way round it – but she ploughed on.

Recently, I’ve been struggling to meet deadlines for the all the projects I’m on – I have a newly diagnosed cognitive disability, and have issues with executive function and time management. I’m getting help, I’ve told her what I’m dealing with. I asked our bosses for an extension – to get the work in – and they agreed. In fact – one of them was relieved, because she too was short of time to read the work that we’d produced.

My ex friend blew up – sent me an email outlining all the times I’d hurt her, her resentment at being lead on this project. (Remember – this is not what I wanted). I was astounded at the things she’d taken offence to, and the role of victim she’d adopted. I ended up grovelling, because I asked for the extension before talking to her first. Which from a tact point of view was a mistake. But I’m bruised and raw from her backlash. I don’t deserve it.

But now I’m switching between anger and sorrow. This is the third time this happened and I feel that I can’t go on like this, being subjected to passive-aggressive abuse. The friendship is dead, but we still have to work together.

So today, I bought a candle and wrote her name on it on one side, and the words “letting go” on the other. When it gets to the end – my period of mourning for our friendship will be over. It’s the only way forward for me. So glad to have found this article today. 🙁

Definitely sounds like a healthy thing to let go of the friendship, even though it hurts. I’m still grieving my 22 year friendship after not speaking for 2 years (we too worked together). However, I would be very cautious of burning a candle and giving yourself a time limit to let go. It doesn’t work like that I’m afraid and if you don’t deal with your feelings properly you will never heal. Anyways, just my two cents but best of luck.

I had a pivotal moment in my mourning process for my former friend today. She cut me off 15 months ago after her possessive ex (now current again) partner told her lies about me, even though I’ve never met him. I tried so hard to resolve the situation to no avail.

We work together and it’s made getting over things that much harder when I have to see her all the time. For the past several months I’ve been stuck in the anger stage, and lately it’s been getting worse and worse, to the point I couldn’t even stand the sound of her voice anymore. Not conducive to a good working relationship!

Anyway, today we had a meeting to catch up on a few work things at her request. While I don’t report to her she is higher in the office hierarchy than me, and I was determined to use today as a chance to stand up for myself. Which I did. And it was great. I realised a couple of hours after the meeting that it unexpectedly helped. I don’t know why, but suddenly the anger is gone and I actually feel warm towards her. We’ll never be friends again, that ship has sailed, and that’s sad but I’m okay with it. I feel like a huge weight has lifted off my shoulders and I know now our work relationship can grow without that huge hurdle in the way. Maybe one day we may even be able to talk about what happened and I’ll finally get a real explanation. But if we don’t, that’s okay too. Acceptance stage here I come. 🙂

Just wanted to share. For those of you who are still dealing with the earlier stages of grief, please know you’ll get through it and get to acceptance one day. It feels fabulous.

Thank you Jen for this beautiful and thoughtful text. I don’t know where you are in the world or when this was written but I thank you so much. All of the other readers seem to have lost longterm friendships…My (abrupt) loss comes from after only 6 months but I’m devastated anyways… I have no idea why all of a sudden my friend seems do distant, limiting his interactions to a couple of bland texts each day when we used to talk on the phone sometimes 2 or 3 times a day….We live in different cities but work on some projects together and I’m dreading our next meeting, which I cannot avoid. I love him (as a friend, he’s gay, I’m a straight woman) and wish him the best. I will treasure the memories but boy it is soooooo hard to let go. Allowing myself a good cry (me!! A grown woman!!) once in a while is soothing and I only did that after reading your post. Now if I could just crush my hopes…. Anyway, again, thank you Jen

I really appreciate your openess. I tend to be very militant with my feelings when it is time to move on but a lot happened and I had to leave a friendship of 10 years quickly (long story.) By the time it seemed it was time to grieve we had some big things happen and then pandemic so about 2 years later I realize I never grieved the end. I just had to go and it seems the world set fire. This helped. Now after a few years all of a sudden memories are coming back and I know that means it’s time to finally grieve. It is all very weird considering the context. Thank you

Grieving the loss of a 30 year friendship, my ‘sister’ and I so needed to read this today. Beautifully written article, than you

This essay was so helpful to me today. I lost my 40-year BFF in a six-month period that included the near-death of my spouse, the death of my mother, and a long-distance move made, in part, to be geographically closer to this BFF. (We’ve lived everywhere from in the same neighborhood to on different continents during our decades of friendship.) The only explanation she made for why our relationship ended was “I haven’t felt heard by you for a long time.” I don’t know when or why she felt unheard, and it doesn’t matter because she’s moved on without me. Her adult daughter is dearer to me than my own nieces, and I’m afraid of losing that relationship, too.

I’m struggling with having moved to a new town where I know no one, and my loss feels especially fresh today. I appreciate being accompanied by all the other posters who have known this kind of sadness.

Dear M, Your story is so similar to mine. I lost a 50 yr friendship…her reasoning?…it had become too “lopsided”. I was knee deep in caring for my elderly parents (Alzheimer’s, strokes, etc), my great Niece died at 2 years of age, My Dad passed away, then I moved my Mom in with me…on and on. She was rarely around for me…never called to see how I was…All I can figure is she was SO used to me ALWAYS being there at the drop of a hat FOR HER and she just couldn’t handled that I instead was actually in need of her support. They were my family (I mean 5 decades…). I too was really close to her daughter (my Goddaughter) and lost that relationship as well. I’m sure this friend passed on “not true” stories about me. It has been almost 2 years since I’ve seen any of them (my friend, goddaughter, her son, and husband). I am just now slowly seeing some light at the end of a very long dark tunnel I’ve been in. There was not a day where I didn’t cry. That was my whole adult life…now I’m left without a friend or family. Devastating is an understatement. I am so so sorry you’re going through this. We often times learn someone’s true character when we go through a difficult time and need them most. Be kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up over it…because you will run every scenerio in your head as to what you may have done. She may reach out to you in the future. Do something kind for yourself….get involved in this new community…meet people. It is the worse thing to experience, but you will come out the other side stronger! 💖

This post Jen, will be revisited and revisited again and again… thank you! The writing is also superb, I just can’t articulate properly through my tears.. sadness and relief!

I can’t believe the complete state of shock, and quite honestly grief that has occurred after I have ended a close friendship. Physical and emotional. I know it’s early days and I know I needed to do so, but the sadness and sense of lose is all consuming at this point.

It was a friendship with a man, and he happily partnered up 18 months ago. We had been close and did a lot together, we had lived together as well at some points, as friends, travelled, explored and just hung out.

Since partnering up, I have almost become a social pariah with the small group of mutual friends we both have and have been excluded, save one social function probably 9 months ago.

I never expected to get involved with everything that they were doing as a couple obviously, or even his new group of friends from the partner initially…

I stupidly expected to eventually all be apart of each other’s lives though, maybe not at first… but it’s been a while now! I seriously thought that, yes I would be there… even if it took a little time…

But being excluded from existing social circles and not being able to do much more then pop over for a coffee or to help with renovations with him exclusively, has become unbearable to the point of our friendship becoming untenable. I guess we still do various favours for each other like petsitting… I can’t deny that. However, it is skewed to me helping more.

In retrospect, I probably gave more and maybe even cared more throughout the former ‘fun times’ but I was too busy just enjoying it to realise. It was always enough because essentially he was consistently wanting my friendship. I mean who is truly keeping tabs until it all goes pear shaped?!

Now, he does just enough to make you hope everything’s fine but deep down I know it isn’t…

I have tried to talk about how it has felt to be excluded, shafted really but he just downplays it and talks about how awkward it is for his partner (and apparently the mutual friends too)… really it must just be awkward for him as well.

The small circle of mutual friends were his friends first basically. After years of association I guess I’m a little wounded by their actions but honestly it’s drowned out by my feelings regarding the really close friend. I’ve always been friendly and had some very good times with them, but never I guess never truly formed closer, deeper bonds with them?!

I’m deeply hurt after what I thought was a truly close friendship. And, yes it has left a huge hole. I do wonder if maybe he could have been more honest at some point and not left me hanging on for so long, so to speak. Or perhaps I was a fool for not seeing the warning signs…

Anyway this will be a hard one, we were probably so close because neither has family or friends here and we fell hard for the friendship and had many shared interests, and continued for at least 7 yrs as per normal, another 18 months after. My other truly close friends have since moved away, because surprise, surprise – we aren’t from here.

I honestly thought we would be close always. Even if one or both of us moved away I had always envisaged we’d still pick up the phone ocassionally or even meet up for an adventure at some point…

Defintely not going to happen now. And the future seems surprisingly stark at this moment. But these feelings will pass in time, I realise… my mind can’t settle at the moment and as much as I try I can’t find the joy in much at all. Even the activities I love and get excited about. I guess, this too, is normal..

I also want to thank those who have shared their stories too… it really has been eye opening… I would never expected this level of loss being felt. I’ve been fighting it in fact, thinking I’m being ‘dramatic!’ Thoughts to you all…

Most of the comments are from ladies who have lost living lady friends.

I’m a guy who has lost the close friendship of a lady friend after 9 years.

My feelings changed and I suppose the situation for my friend became too intense to handle and cope with.

We have parted in a clinical and sad way. Im devastated at my loss of a super person in my life. I felt her as a soul mate. I think she saw me as a sounding board and a father figure.

The loss is hurting, lonely and very sad. Im ruder-less and alone. Im unable to talk this over with others so struggling to get through it all solo.

Thanks Jen for your words.

I had a friendship with a coworker that I thought was very solid. I took a promotion at another location for the company we work for and in the last few months my friend has become rude and distant whenever I attempt to reach out. The last reply that I received was extremely rude and hurtful. Realizing our friendship was at an end finally, I was filled with grief. When trying to reflect on what went wrong, I was having a hard time doing so and was just confused about the whole change of behavior. I reached out to my girlfriend for some comforting and to talk about my confusion on what went wrong. I told my girlfriend that I just couldn’t see what it was that led to my friend being this way. Her response was to tell me how she handles someone who is rude or mean like my friend was to me. She said “ They want to act brand new treat them brand new. I just have a don’t care anymore attitude when it comes to that. It sucks, but oh well! I’ll bitch about it too, but at the end of the day, their friendship doesn’t feed me, screw me, or support me.” What should I say to explain to her that dealing with the loss of a friend in this way is not healthy? I think she’s been let down so many times by her friends in the past she’s been traumatized in someway. I want to explain to her that to me I need to mourn the loss and have some kind of closure. It seems to me she doesn’t really understand that friendships are important to us.

In the last week it has really hit me that I am in mourning. I have lost a friend of 18 years. The loss happened slowly, and was partly due to my own frustration with the situation.

I started to pull back 2 years ago after noticing that I was making all the effort to see my “best friend”. I always went to her place because she had young children and things were difficult for her. I brought the wine, the food, and I often paid because they didn’t have a lot of money … everything. I was sure she would return my kindness when I needed her.

But evidently, that wasn’t to be.

When she went back to work she was “very busy” and would have time to “catch up soon”. I started to think that if someone is important to you, you should make time. But her weekends were full with other friends. So I assumed she didn’t realise how she was making me feel and I told her (gently) that I would appreciate if she could make the effort sometimes. I was met with, “well you just live so far away that it’s difficult to see you.” I live 30 minutes from her house. She never had trouble asking me to travel that far. Or asking me to pick her up, take her places, or fit in with her schedule at the drop of a hat.

She then started to be “sick” and cancel plans. A lot.

Finally, it was my birthday and she was busy all month. “So sorry,” about it, but nothing she could do. We did eventually catch up, and she did drive the 30 minutes to have breakfast with me, but it felt forced when before it had always been so easy.

Then, a few months later I was in an accident. I hurt myself so badly I couldn’t walk for 6 months, then needed surgery and had to recover for another 3 months. I couldn’t drive – I actually couldn’t do anything. I was miserable and I needed my friend. And where was she? “Very busy,” … “very sorry”, and coming to see me “soon.”

She never came.

After this, even when I recovered, I pulled back completely. She moved (same suburb different house) and asked me to come over. I said I would next time I was in the area. I didn’t. If she suggested a catch up, I felt she wouldn’t go through with it, so rather than risk myself being hurt again, I (with all politeness) spoke to her as before, but I made no effort to make catch up plans happen.

Another 6 months went by, conversations got less and less, and I was finally pregnant after 6 years of trying – my greatest joy! I found I didn’t want to tell her – my best friend. I told friends who had been good to me while my life was hard though my accident and my surgery. But not her. When she finally contacted me, I did tell her, but I was 5 months along. I think I expected she would realise how badly she had hurt me, say we should celebrate (because she knew what this meant to me) and everything would get back on track. But that was the last time we spoke before a few texts on her birthday a year later when my son was already 6 months old.

We just wished each other well.

The last few weeks, now with my birthday coming up, I am in belated shock that we didn’t mend the rift – that we won’t always be in each other’s lives like we planned for so long. I guess in the back of my mind I thought she would miss me and everything we used to do together, we would talk and get back on track. But she moved on with her life as though our 18 year friendship – where I had treated her better than her own family – never existed.

I thought was in control and had made the decision to pull back for myself. But in writing this I realise she pulled out of our friendship long before I realised anything was wrong.

I still miss her. I hope that won’t always be so.

Tonight I removed her from my social media accounts. It was painful constantly seeing her watch stories about my baby son and saying nothing. I started to have nightmares. I couldn’t understand m what interest she could have in us now if our true, close and special friendship was over and she’s never even met him. Her kids were like a niece and nephew to me, but I had to let them go.

I will say, that reading this article and seeing similar pain from others in this thread, I no longer feel alone in what I have gone through. In fact, I feel just as shocked for all of you that your once “best friend” could ever slip away.

I hope we will all once again know a friend as good and as precious as the one we have lost.

Even though in my case it wasn’t a balanced relationship, I am very loyal and just want to be treated with the respect, kindness, and genuine caring I show others. But, if she called me tomorrow and said she understood what had happened between us and asked to start again, I don’t know if I could.

It sounds like you’ve hit a breaking point where you wouldn’t ‘take her back’ even if the chance arose. This is progress and you’re moving forward. I had this at some point and when it hit I realized I was the good friend the whole time, not her. I went out of my way. 22 years. She did so many things to upset me but I shrugged it off. Not saying I am perfect, but she KNEW I was always there for her – I could not say the same. Anyways, I just wanted to say I know how you feel. Please know that you’re making progress. Sometimes we make mistakes by giving people too much of ourselves when they don’t give back, without realizing the only reason we’re so close to them is for all the effort WE put in. The only reason they allow it is because we make it so damn easy. I know it’s hard and upsetting and I thought we were best friends with an unbreakable connection – There is no answer or solution, I guess sometimes people need some time to work on themselves.

Lost two friends of 35 years, one through death, the other still living. Miss them both terribly. The living friend leaned on me constantly but when it was my time to lean ….. nothing.

Thank you for opening my eyes that somethings don’t last forever, but a loss is a loss and grief is right there to remind . you

The loss of a 38 year friendship broke my heart. I am the kind of person who can have only 4 friends but they will mean everything to me. I love my friends with all my heart. I have been through so much loss in my life. My parents, Grandparents, sibling, Aunts and Uncles. She was the last important thing that had continuity in my life besides my spouse. I am not sure if she had a mental issue or what but she became born again and started acting very strange. Like she vanished and turned into someone unrecognizable. It made me uncomfortable and that coupled with trust and the fact that she would not make time for the friendship dissolved it. I walked away and never heard a word. Silence was the answer I needed. It was all a lie. Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me.

What I learned from this experience is that I am worthy of good things. I also learned that we all have different views on God, heaven etc. I can’t understand how some people get lost in religion when the most important message I believe delivered from the almighty is “love”. It is all about love. As for God, We all come from him, we all go back to him. If the friend ever comes across this post, I am happy you found the Lord but if finding him makes you leave those who love you are you really taking the right religious path?

Google brought me here. Thank you for this beautiful piece on a rarely talked about subject. I have had a dear friend for decades, we shared university days and vacations and so many special moments together, including with significant others and families. Her politics have been increasingly difficult to deal with, and a recent world event has put her insensitivity toward who I am on full daily display and I just can’t handle it anymore. I will have a difficult conversation with her to let her know my feelings, but I think this is over and our friendship can never be the same, as I accept that this is what she believes. I have felt depressed for weeks, thinking something is wrong with me. But the daily joys of our friendship have been taken away, and I am coming to terms with the fact that I won’t be planning vacations and events with her in the coming months. It really feels like grieving. Looking at old photos and memories is really difficult right now. Thank you again for sharing your experience and making me feel less alone.

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The New York Times

The learning network | how should you handle the end of a friendship.

How Should You Handle the End of a Friendship?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

• See all Student Opinion »

Sometimes, good friends simply “grow apart.” Interests change, social circles shift, a family moves away–these are just a few reasons a friendship might fail apart. What is the best way to handle a friendship’s end? What have you learned from your experiences or from witnessing other friends grow apart?

If you think adults don’t go through the same thing, you’ll be surprised by “It’s Not Me, It’s You.” In this article, Alex Williams writes:

“The first step before you end a friendship is to consider, very carefully and seriously, if you want to end a particular friendship or if you just want to wind it down,” said Jan Yager, a friendship coach and author of “When Friendship Hurts: How to Deal With Friends Who Betray, Abandon, or Wound You” (Simon & Schuster, 2002). “It will usually be a lot more pleasant to just pull away, and stop sharing as much privileged information.” The passive approach can work, sort of. Marni Zarr, 46, a substitute teacher in Mesa, Ariz., employed it when she decided that a friend she had picked up in parents’ circles was starting to drag her down with her neediness and constant competitiveness. Ms. Zarr gave less of herself in conversations, stopped talking about her feelings, became vaguer about future aspirations. “I took the route of distancing myself: not immediately answering texts,” she recalled. “I answered the important things, but not the ‘Hey, how are you doing, what’s up tonight?’ ones.” … Mr. Horchow, who at 83 has been carefully adding and dropping friends since Franklin Roosevelt was president, prefers the gentlemanly approach. “At any age, dropping a friend is a delicate matter and should be handled kindly,” he said. “You don’t want to have to make a pronouncement that your friendship is declining or over; you don’t want to have to say anything. If asked why you haven’t seen each other for a while, be vague. ‘I’m just so busy’ or ‘I’m traveling a lot.’ ” … A trial separation can soften the blow. “You might also want to suggest a cooling-off, or a revisiting your friendship in X number of weeks or months,” said Dr. Yager, the friendship coach. “Your former friend will probably put more time and energy into the other friendships that are working and will forget about contacting you in time.” Such a direct approach ultimately may be effective, but it still engenders the same pain and awkwardness as an actual breakup, said Erika Johnson, a blogger who lives outside Boston. A couple of years ago, she found herself running a cost-benefit analysis of a friendship from her early 20s that was starting to grind her down. Every new choice she made in her life — whether it was to return to graduate school or move to the suburbs — was greeted with dismissive scorn by the friend. Ms. Johnson decided to end the relationship with a telephone call. “My main point was that life is very short and fleeting, and I value my happiness enough to eradicate the negative energy,” Ms. Johnson recalled. For months, the ex-friend continued to try to contact her. Ms. Johnson felt terrible, especially as mutual friends would tell her about the pain she had caused the woman. Eventually, however, the reports from the mutual friends started to change in tenor. The old friend had been doing a lot of soul-searching after the breakup, they said. The mutual pain might have been worth it, Ms. Johnson concluded — to the point where she might consider another attempt at friendship with her.

Students: Are you surprised by what you read above about adults who agonize over ending their friendships? Can you relate to their situations? What do you think of the advice given by Dr. Yager and Mr. Horchow? What have you learned about handling relationships with your friends from the adults in your life?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

I think it should be mutual. It’s really if two people can’t get along then instead of causing hard ship just stop being friends. Makes less stress on each of the people.

By not freaking out about it. Oh no, your hated by another person, it’s not the end of the world.

How I would handle the end of a friendship, is just to let it go and walk away. I wouldn’t be mad or try to start a fight. I would be upset but I would still try to talk to them hear and there.

Well I guess I’m surprised at the fact that adults would actually have a method of choosing there friends. I don’t even have a method of gaining or poising friends. I just gain a friend or loose a friend with out any particular method. I gain a friend from school or a party because we have a common interest or if the person is just fun to hang out with and I loose a friend we we slowly grow apart or we just don’t hang out anymore due to a number of different reasons. It’s a completely random and natural process and I feel like the advice given is just over-complicating a situation that takes care of itself. Sorry.

Its supriseing how adults have a way to add and drop friends I feel a friend is a friend no matter what

I dont see me ending any any of my good friendships but i dont think you can end a friendship unless its a mutual agreement. Ive learned a good friendship is on both sides-not just on one person but both.

I really cannot relate to their situations because I have not really lost many friends. Although I may have friends that I don’t talk to often but I am still friends with them. I haven’t really learned much about handling relationships with friends from adults because my parents haven’t really lost friends. Although I myself has lost friends along the way most of the time it’s for a good reason, and I think that sometimes people take it harder then they should.

am not surprised at all. My parents told me about how they handle there life time friends all the time. I can not really relate to the topic because I haven’t ever lost a friend. I mean they may move away or we stop talking but i still consider them a friend.

I think it’s abnormal that adults have a way to get friend and a way to drop friends. I’ve never really planned out how I receive and lose friends. Things like that just happen on their own and there’s nothing I could really do to make the situation stop.

I am not really really surprised about how adults deal with the end of friendships. I have seen first hand some of the ways adults deal with these situations. Not all adults decide to end friendships by phone call or distancing themselves. Sometimes they try more extensive things that can backfire on them. I can definitely relate to a lot of these people because I have had to move many times and lose friends and gain new friends. Mainly if it is a sudden stop of friendship then i try to distance myself from the person until the other person finds out what I am trying to say.

I don’t believe that there’s a way that people gain or lose friends. I believe that it just happens. As you meet a person that you may or may not know, you become closer to that person. If the friendship becomes too close, then there are usually a lot of fights, which may put an end to the friendship. What I’m trying to say is that you can’t manually make a friendship and then end it, it’s just something that happens naturally.

I believe you should be able to cry for the first day and if it really wasn’t a big loss then just keep moving on with your life. Because, as soon as you graduate you sure as hell won’t be sitting around sulking and you’ll forget about that person. It’s not something that you’ll be stuck on for the rest of your life. You’ll make other friends.

I don’t think that if someone was really ever your friend that your friendship would ever actually end. So in my opinion you should just cut your losses in this situation and realize that you’re better off; no one needs fake friends.

I think the way you should end a friendship depends on why you’re ending the friendship and what went on. If they did something bad or just started distancing themselves from you in the first place then maybe you should just let them go. If they don’t want to be in the friendship, why carry it on? If things are just going well between the people maybe a talk would work, or like just slowly grow apart and find someone new, to fill the gap.

I think that the best way to end a friendship is to just let it fade away. Start by spending less time with someone. Eventually, they’ll get the hint. You don’t need to treat it like a big thing, like breaking up with someone. Just let things happen naturally. Also, it should be a mutual occurrence. I agree with my classmates, actually, that it’s strange that this is something that adults worry about. Friendship sort of happens by itself- you meet the person, learn about them, decide you like talking with them, and become their friend. Friendship ends when you grow apart from someone, and it’s a very natural thing.

I think you should end a friendship on good terms. That means not holding a grudge against each other.

I think the end of a friendship shouldn’t be dramatic. Usually when a friendship ends (at our school) EVERYONE knows about it. I think your personal business should be discrete. If you and a friend just simply grow apart, you can’t change what happened. Hitting high school, I’ve witnessed many of my friends changing, maturing, and sometimes..not. I’ve learned not to make it a big deal, and move on.

I too believe that the end of friendships just happen. Sometimes people grow apart. In my case I’ve only had two real best friends. The first one I just drifted away from. We started talking to different people, it was mutual. I also think though, if a friend is really dragging you down, or was mean to you in a very powerful way, it would be best to just cut that person out of your life immediately.

It doesn’t surprise me that adults also agonize over ending their friendships. Friends are people you share things with, secrets, stories and everything in between. Its hard to just let that go. I have learned that friends grow apart and its just part of life. You have to be really lucky to have a friend for your entire life.

I totally disagree with the adults method of finding friends. There is no particular way one should go about finding friends. I think that it should just come naturally. You don’t need a “method” to find friends; it should just come easy. If you and a particular person can talk easily and have fun together and most importantly trust one another, it will be a good friendship. Whereas the ending the friendship thing comes in, I don’t think I have ever ended a friendship by saying in their face or even telling in general that it was over or we needed a break. If a friendship ends it is usually likely that the group just grows apart and doesn’t think much of it. They might not talk to each other or hang out anymore for a various amount of different situations.”gain a friend from school or a party because we have a common interest or if the person is just fun to hang out with and I loose a friend we we slowly grow apart or we just don’t hang out anymore due to a number of different reasons.” Wesley 216 I totally agree with you. You couldn’t have put in a better way.

From my experiences, failing friendships tend to die on their own terms. There is no need to explain why, it’s a silent transition. Friendships that end due to anger are a completely different animal. Lying and trying to “get back” at the other person tends to be a difficult transition, as the other person wants everyone to know that they were in the right. These terminations requires patience and being the better person. Being polite, retaining composure and controlling your emotions are key to ending a difficult friendship.

I believe that if you need to drop a friendship then do it. But you shouldn’t just drop it for no reason cause if you you will both get hurt and sooner or later regret it. So I think if you are considering dropping a friend take time to think about it and make sure that its what you want.

I would agree with what the article suggested and just drift apart. In my experience when you do sort of just grow apart it involves a lot less ager and resentment. It also leaves you with the opportunity to return to that friendship later in life. By boldly ending a friendship you may be severing a tie that cannot grow back.

Friends at any are obviously going to stress about losing one another. Looking at doctor Yager’s statements, I’ve found that I have used the same technique before, because I get sick of people easily. So I just stop hanging out for a while, stop contacting them and then later I realize that I miss them and we pick back up and things are great. The adults in my life have always told me to use this manner and to be polite and subtle about it, much like what the “experts” talked about in the article. Generally, I don’t “end” friendships, so much as they fade away.

It doesn’t surprise me that adults often have this problem also. In fact, they have more priorities and responsibilities than us teenagers so it would be more difficult to maintain a friendship. From adults, I’ve learned to be careful who I keep in my life, and who I “kick out”. Regret is awful and friendship is very important.

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End of Friendship

Updated 18 August 2023

Downloads 61

Category Life

Topic Friendship

Reasons for Ending a Good Friendship

Human beings are social beings, and thus we find it necessary to associate with people at a deeper level. We all have people we regard as close, who are not family members and who we share a bond. Therefore friendship is a platonic relationship between two people who care for each other. Ideally, friendships are supposed to be built on mutual respect and mutual care. Whatever we do to those we view as friends should be a reflection of what we would want them to do to us. But many times we find that the bond and the care is not mutual. There are those who view friendships and relationships as disposable, and every relationship they create, they always ask; "what do I stand to gain." But it should be remembered that great friendships have a foundation on Love, empathy, acceptance, honesty, mutual care, and respect, among others. When all or some of these traits miss, friendships break, hence this paper is going to show some of the reasons which can cause me to end a good friendship (Ptacek and Jennifer).

Lack of Respect for My Family

If I seem to be in a good relationship with someone, it means that between the two of us most things seems to be working, but there are some things that the other person does that puts the friendship into jeopardy and may lead to termination. One of the reasons is that if my good is respectful to my close family member of my family, it will jeopadise our friendship. There are those friends who only care about me and not those close to me, and thus they may be careless in the way they treat my family. Since my family is important and disrespecting them may be tantamount to disrespecting me, I may be forced to end the friendship.

Breach of Trust

I share a lot of secrets with my friends because of the assurance that they will keep the secrets. It takes time to build trust and trust is fragile. Secrets are of different significance to the extent that there is harmless and meaningless gossip and there are most personal and private secrets. Revealing those private and personal things about myself is b breaking this trust, and I may be forced to terminate the friendship since my secrets are no longer secure, and revealing them has the potential of causing embarrassment. When mutual trust is broken, it is sometimes hard to bring build it again (Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 424).

Lack of Autonomy and Pressure to Change

Human beings are about autonomy, and a great friendship is about accepting the uniqueness of the other person. However, in life, we meet people who want to change us to be who or what we don't want to be. This leads to them pressuring us to change for them to fit what they deem fashionable. They always do this irrespective of my physical or Psychological well being. For instance, I had a good friend who insisted that I should be taking alcohol like him. Every time I would go out with him, he would try to insist I take a sip so that I would become a man. Since he would not respect my autonomy, I was forced to end the relationship (Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 425).

Keeping Score on Favors

Friends who keep score on favors are the ones that I never keep. There are people I meet and become friends with who take every opportunity to remind me of the nice things they have done to me. This ends up in making me feel bad about myself since there is this constant need to make it up for them, making me feel manipulated. It this regard I may have no choice but to end the friendship (Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 426).

The discussion about the best kind of friendship is a lengthy one. But my belief is always that friendship should be mutual, based on trust, care, and respect. Never should anyone in the relationship feel entitled and more deserving because we help each other based on what we can and can do. If this is missing in any friendship, then it will not survive.

Ptacek, Jennifer. "I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends: A Qualitative Study of Nurse Close Work Friendship and Social Support." (2014).

Afifi, W. A., W. L. Falato, and J. L. Weiner. "10 INTIMACY AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION." Interpersonal Communication 7: 424.

(Afifi, Falato and Weiner, 424)

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in: People , Relationships

Brett and Kate McKay • November 24, 2020 • Last updated: May 29, 2021

The 3 Reasons Friendships End

With many relationships, the reasons they end are clear.

Two people who are dating realize they’re not compatible in some way and don’t have a future together.

A married couple decides they can’t stand living with each other anymore.

Business partners split to pursue divergent goals.

A boss fires an employee for stealing from the company; or an employee quits when his boss doesn’t give him a desired promotion.

Why a friendship ends isn’t always so obvious, however, nor is how one ends; while with the above relationships, there’s an explicit moment, a concrete event that terminates the bond — a DTR, a divorce, the revising of a contract, etc. — with friendship, no such sanctioned ritual exists. 

Why a friendship dissolved, and whether or not it is or isn’t still extant, can thus remain something of a mystery. 

To unravel this mystery, and help all of us better understand the dynamics behind the unique, too-little-considered relationship of friendship, I spoke with Bill Rawlins, a professor of communication at Ohio University who has spent his career studying the subject. ( If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you listen to the podcast I did with him about friendship . It’s one of my favorites.)

The Ambiguity of Friendship

To understand why friendships rarely have a clear, explicit ending, you first have to understand the distinctive nature of friendship.

“Friendship is not sanctioned in the same way as other relationships are. Friendships rest on a kind of mutual covenant, but it’s many times not explicitly stated,” Bill told me.  

Marriages and business partnerships have explicit covenants. All the parties know when the relationship has officially started and the terms of the relationship. Because they have explicit beginnings, they also have explicit endings. 

Not so with friendships. 

You usually don’t tell people, “Hey, we’re officially friends now, and this is what I expect of you, and this is what you can expect of me.” Instead, friendships slowly grow into existence through regular contact between two people who have mutual regard for each other. At some point, there’s a joint (but unspoken) understanding that you’re friends. 

Without a definite idea of what the obligations of a friendship are, and thus if they are or aren’t being fulfilled, it’s hard to know if a friendship should be ended, or has ended. Thus friendships fade into existence and then often fade out of existence. 

If you dig into this ambiguity further, however, you’ll find there are typically three reasons why — even if you’re not 100% sure you and someone else aren’t friends anymore — that your relationship has definitively eroded.

Loss of Commonalities

What makes friendship so unique as a relationship is that friends freely choose each other, based on nothing other than mutual interests, admiration, and affection. The relationship isn’t entered into for financial gain, as in business partnerships; isn’t bound by blood, as in familial ties; and isn’t propelled by sexual attraction, as in romantic relationships. As Rawlins explained on the podcast, people don’t become friends with someone for “categorical reasons,” but simply “because of the person that they are.”

As Rawlins also importantly observes, “friendships are always about something.” Friends share interests, experiences, and/or sets of values that create a sense of commonality and equality that is fundamental to friendship.

Regarding the above, friendships can be broken down into two categories based on how deep the thing that a friendship is about runs.

The first category of friendship might be labeled “circumstantial.” These are not friendships you likely would have struck up independently and spontaneously based on an “attraction” to someone; instead, external forces — becoming roommates, having classes together, hanging out with your wife’s friend’s husband — bring you together, and because you see the person frequently, you develop an easy, comfortable familiarity with them. 

Co-workers are great examples of circumstantial friends. You may have a great time with someone at the office, feel like you know them pretty well, and even sometimes hang out with them outside of work. But if you change jobs, you end up seeing this friend much less often, and when you do, given that you don’t share the context of work anymore, and can no longer conversate as you once did about projects and watercooler gossip, you may feel like you no longer have much in common and the friendship will fizzle out. The relationship was primarily about work, and when you no longer share this work, the friendship ends. 

The second category of friendship is what might be called, for lack of a better name and to stay with the “c” theme, cosmic . This is a friendship based not primarily on the external influences bringing you together, but instead on a strongly felt connection. You think on a similar wavelength, feel committed to similar principles, have a passion for the same pursuits. We might say this kind of friendship is based on a shared view of what constitutes the philosophical “Good.”

Even if some circumstances between you and a friend to which you are cosmically connected change — e.g., one of you moves away or gets married — and even if you don’t see each other too often, if your principles and passions remain the same, you’ll likely remain friends, and be able to pick up where you left off whenever you do see each other. This kind of friendship can still erode, however, if one party abandons the values that the friendship was formerly based around; this can be a mere shift in perspective that the relationship can weather, or at outright betrayal of shared values, which will likely terminate the relationship more decidedly — a situation which will be discussed in more detail below.

Whether the friendship is circumstantial or cosmic, the more commonalities two friends share, the more likely they are to remain friends, and the more commonalities they lose, the more likely it is that they won’t. For example, two friends who have some personality differences but are in the same stage of life and run in the same circles can find that the latter factor compensates for the former; on the flip side, two friends can continue to share the same values, but if one is married with kids and lives on the East Coast, and the other is single and childless and lives on the West Coast, they may experience a weakening in their bond.

As Bill told me in our recent conversation: “We get separated by time and space, or we get separated by how our lives are organized, and it may not feel like we’re friends anymore.”

Probably the best example of the way a friendship can end based on the loss of commonalities is the way some of the relationships you had in high school and college ultimately dissipate.

Back in your school days, the intensity of your bond with a best friend likely made you both feel that you’d always stay close. But then you graduated. You both went your separate ways to start your respective lives. Maybe you stayed in your home state to go to school, and your bud went out of state. You both got married. Pursued different careers. Changed beliefs. Had kids. Made new friends. 

Sure, you keep in touch with your best friend from high school every now and then, but you’re likely not really “best friends” anymore. You might still consider each other friends, but the nature of the relationship has changed. You haven’t had the regular, in-person contact needed to sustain a strong friendship. You don’t share in day-to-day circumstances. You don’t share a social network or the same interests. You share a past, but not much else. Neither of you had to explicitly acknowledge the changing of the friendship. Time and circumstances have just slowly caused it to fade away.

And that’s how the majority of friendships end, according to Bill. Not with a bang, but a whimper. “Most friendships lapse until there’s no expectation of seeing that friend or having that friend act like a friend.”

Mismatched Expectations

One of the bits of my interview with Bill that stood out to me the most, was his observation that “ people remain friends to the extent that they fulfill each other’s expectation of the relationship.”

This is a tricky business, because as aforementioned, the “terms” of a friendship are never explicitly laid out or stated, and two friends can thus bring different expectations into a friendship and have different ideas of what a friendship should look like.

One friend may be more self-contained, place a low priority on physically getting together with frequency, and be inconsistent about answering texts.

The other friend may desire a deeper relationship and more contact and communication; as he’s always the one to initiate those latter two things, he gradually grows disillusioned with this disparity in effort and investment. 

Friends can also have different expectations of what it means for someone to be there for them during a difficult time. One friend may expect the other to provide ample emotional and tangible support in a crisis, while the other wouldn’t expect that kind of treatment, and doesn’t offer it to others either.

These mismatched expectations can cause frustrations in a friendship, particularly since friends are unlikely to surface and discuss these issues. People are, again, unsure of exactly what they should expect from a friend, and thus aren’t entirely certain if their expectations are reasonable or not. And there’s no real template or cultural sanction for having a friendship “DTR.” The friend who desires more from the relationship doesn’t want to seem weird and needy; the friend who is more independent is likely completely unaware that the other person is feeling neglected. So while Bill encourages discussing expectations with your friends to resolve such differences, when those conversations understandably don’t happen, the friendship is likely to end. The friend who desires more is likely to be frustrated and even resentful at what he deems to be the inherent flakiness of his buddy, and begins to think, “Well, if he doesn’t care, I don’t care,” and stops reaching out to him. The friend who already expected less from the relationship, and didn’t take any initiative in the first place, of course fails to reach out from his end. And the friendship dissolves.

While most friendships slowly fade out of existence, occasionally they go out with a bang, and people explicitly say, “This friendship is over.”

According to Bill, the most common cause of the hard break in a friendship is betrayal. This betrayal comes in two forms. 

The first is a betrayal of a shared understanding of what it means to live a good life. 

“We’re friends with people because we think we share a common understanding about the world and a common understanding about what it means to live well,” Bill says. “A friendship helps two people with that shared understanding live up to that understanding. When there is a direct violation of that common understanding, the friendship often ends. Abruptly and with rancor.”

Bill gave an example of two men who were friends and shared an understanding and belief of the sanctity of marriage. But then, one day, one of the friends admits to cheating on his wife. The other friend calls him out on it. An argument ensues.

Adulterous friend: “Man, it’s no big deal. You know that Lacy and I have had a tough go in our marriage. I thought you’d understand.”

Non-adulterous friend: “You know that’s wrong. You need to stop, man. And if you can’t, I can’t respect you anymore and no longer want to be friends with you.”

Adulterous friend: “Some friend you are! What about loyalty? Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

If you read closely, you’ll notice that there’s a sense of betrayal in both parties about what they thought were shared perspectives on values and the nature of friendship. 

The non-adulterous friend thought an essential basis of their friendship was the shared belief in the importance of marriage. When his friend cheated on his wife, he felt there was a betrayal of that shared ideal. 

The adulterous friend felt betrayed by his non-adulterous friend because he felt his non-adulterous friend violated the ideal of loyalty in friendship. 

An irreconcilable difference in what each thought to be a shared understanding of the good life results in a hard break in the friendship. 

During this most recent U.S. election, we’ve seen how the betrayal of a shared understanding of the good life can tear a friendship apart. And thanks to social media, we’ve sometimes seen those hard breaks happen publicly. 

Bill says there are gradations to this. Some issues are so core that any difference in understanding with a friend will mean an immediate end to the friendship. But some issues aren’t that important, so you let them slide. If you’re a Democrat, but your buddy is a Republican, you might bust each other’s chops about it, but because you share an ideal of the love of good books and the wisdom therein, you let the differences in politics slide. Or, says Bill, you don’t go deep into certain issues with a certain friend because you value the friendship too much for it to be potentially rent by the contention which would result. Generally, it seems that if you both have a similar idea of the Good, but just have divergent ideas on how that Good is best achieved, policy wise, then a friendship has a better chance of being preserved. But, if you fundamentally differ in your ideas of the Good itself, then the friendship will be harder to maintain.

The second type of betrayal that causes a hard break in a friendship is what we usually think of when we think of betrayal: Throwing your work buddy under the bus so you don’t get in trouble or you can get a promotion. Talking crap behind your buddy’s back. Cheating with your buddy’s wife. Basically doing the things that would consign you to getting chewed up by the jaws of Satan in Dante’s seventh layer of hell. 

While betrayal often leads to a hard break in a friendship, it can also simply result in the friendship slowly fading away. If you discover your friend has been insulting you behind your back, instead of confronting him about it, you might just stop contact with him and let the relationship naturally evaporate. Thanks to the ambiguous nature of friendship, an ambiguous ending is always a possibility.

Reconciliation

Whether a friendship subtly fades away or forcefully breaks apart, because of the uniquely malleable nature of this type of relationship, reconciliation is always a possibility. As Bill observes, “Friendships are vulnerable to circumstances, but that vulnerability is also what makes them flexible.” Maybe you haven’t seen your best friend from high school in years, and you no longer consider each other best friends. But if he moves back to your town, perhaps the friendship can be rekindled with regular contact. Or if you’ve had a hard break with a friend over a disagreement, there’s always a chance for forgiveness and the making of amends. The ambiguity and flexibility of friendship make this kind of reconciliation easier than restarting a failed marriage or a broken business partnership. As Bill notes, the freedom and wholly voluntary nature of friendships can make them both frustrating and fascinating:

This is what’s captivated me for decades about friendship. It’s a relationship with so much potential integrity and a robust character. The only thing that keeps it together is your and my respect for each other and the degree that we meet each other’s expectations for each other.

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How to End a Friendship

After his father died, Paul Marlow, a 36-year-old mental health advocate in Surrey, British Columbia, was at a turning point. “I saw I needed a change,” Marlow says. He wanted to let go of unhealthy habits and start fresh.

“I found myself yearning to move away from the old me, the depressed and anxiety-filled me,” he says. But as he tried to move forward, his friends held him back. While Marlow was adopting a healthier lifestyle, his friends prioritized drinking and partying.

As Marlow struggled emotionally, his friends reached out less and less, and he realized that it was time to move on.

“There can be many reasons that a friendship becomes unhealthy. But any friendship that consistently contributes to our feeling disregarded, devalued, or disrespected should be re-evaluated,” says Gina Handley Schmitt, LMHC, a psychotherapist in the Seattle area and author of Friending: Creating Meaningful, Lasting Adult Friendships .

Common Signs It’s Time to Move On

As you change and grow, you may find that old friendships no longer fit. You may drift apart naturally or realize suddenly that you’re in an unhealthy relationship.

Here are some signs that it may be time to move on.

You’re not a priority. You may notice that your friend doesn’t make an effort to be with you. Maybe they’re hard to reach or don’t seem interested. Sometimes, there’s a temporary reason, like if your friend just had a baby and is busier than before. But if you rarely feel like a priority or if you sense that your friend doesn’t think you’re worth their time, it’s best to move on.

You don’t connect at the same level. Friendships work best when both people want the same type of connection. If you want a deep personal connection but your friend can’t or doesn’t want the same thing, the friendship may become stagnant and unsatisfying, Schmitt says.

You give more than you take. At times, one person may need more than the other. But if a friend is constantly a taker and rarely a giver, it’s not a balanced friendship. If you’re always there for them but they don’t do the same for you, it may be a sign to move on.

Your friend is disrespectful or mean. Healthy friendships offer support and affirmation. If your friend doesn’t respect your feelings, it’s an unhealthy relationship. Feeling anxious or negative in your friendship is a sign that it may be best to end it.

Your friend is dishonest or holds back information. “Deep connections require trust,” Schmitt says. “And trust requires honesty.” If you can’t rely on your friend to be open or tell the truth, your relationship won’t thrive and may become a source of frustration.

You downplay your accomplishments. Some friendships are competitive. But if you hold back from sharing good news to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings, it’s a sign of jealousy. Good friends want you to succeed and are happy for you when you do.

How to End It

You have a few options if it’s time to end a friendship.

Let it go. Some friendships dissolve on their own. This was the case for Marlow. “The ending of our friendship happened slowly. I canceled plans for dinners. They stopped asking me to join them. We just kind of faded out over time,” he says.

If you try to make plans but your friend keeps flaking out, you might find that the friendship fades when you stop trying.

Talk about it. It’s often best to have a conversation about why you’re ending things so both people feel respected and can move on with an understanding of why it didn’t work out.

If you had a fight, it may be tempting to leave it at that. But having one last conversation may be a better choice, even if it’s hard to talk about what happened or why the friendship isn’t working for you anymore.

No matter how you end a friendship, try to be respectful of the other person’s feelings, especially if your breakup is one-sided.

You can be respectful while being honest and firm, Schmitt says. Tell your friend why you’re stepping away, but pay attention to how you deliver the news. Be kind and mature, especially if your friend didn’t see it coming and feels hurt or confused by your decision.

Can You Be Friends Again?

“Not all friend breakups are permanent,” Schmitt says. “Sometimes, friends find their way back to each other in a different season of their lives.” As you grow, you may change, reconnect, and form a healthier relationship later in life.

“The important thing is to remain committed to finding and keeping friendships that are healthy,” Schmitt says.

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6 Reasons Friendships Come to an End

Throughout life, you’ll have many friendships. Some of them will be circumstantial or acquaintances. You’ll also have friends you deeply care for and always want in your life–part of your inner support system. But, as luck would have it, not all of them will stick around. You’ll lose all types of friends, even your closest ones. This is just how life is sometimes. Friendships are very volatile, and there aren’t as many responsibilities attached to them as in a romantic relationship.

That means they are less likely to survive some hurdles. This could even be the case with your closest friends. As much as losing someone hurts, some friendships inevitably come to an end. Sometimes it’s for the better, as they aren’t the people you’d want in your life anymore. That isn’t always the case, though. Losing friends can be messy and can scar you.

6 Reasons Friendships Sometimes End

Why do people lose these parts of their support system?

1.      People Change, So Will Friendships

As simplistic and unsubstantiated as this reason seems, it’s one of the leading causes of why friendships end. It doesn’t mean it’ll last forever if you got along with someone at some point in your life. As people grow and experience life changes, their paths start diverging. They might not even want the friendship to end. But the bond will eventually fizzle out when your lives become drastically different.

But now you’re not friends anymore. You wanted to stay in touch, but you couldn’t. That’s because you aren’t the same people you were back in high school. You have your responsibilities and lives. You are busy with your jobs and new friends. This kind of scenario is something everyone has experienced at least once.

We’ve all lost friends because we changed as people . And that’s no one’s fault. All you can do in that case is try to stay in touch as much as possible without wearing out the welcome. Some friendships aren’t meant to last. If you are simply too different for things to work, just let go of that person.

2.      You Don’t Share Commonalities Anymore

This is similar to the previous reason but with an essential exception. In the previous case, you don’t necessarily have to lose common interests. You just have to take different paths in life. In this case, your paths could stay similar. You just don’t have many things to talk about anymore.

This often happens when your friendship is built around specific interests. Say you’ve bonded with someone over your love of old movies. That was the first thing that made you click. You might have even shared a strong bond. They could have been your closest friend who you saw every day at some point.

But, when that shared interest (or interests) disappear, so could the connection. Your friendship will lose meaning when you don’t have many things to talk about with someone anymore. Sure, you might stay in touch. But there are only so many times you can talk about the weather.

Eventually, you’ll get bored of each other, and your friendship will end. Sure, you’ll feel sadness over losing such a friendship. But you’ll be able to get over it rather quickly. Again, this is a person you’ll be able to catch up with from time to time and share a coffee. But they’ll just be an acquaintance rather than a friend.

3.      You Were Just a Circumstantial Friendship

We all have those friends we wouldn’t consider friends if we wouldn’t run in the same circles. They can be friends of your friends or people you do yoga with every week. In most cases, circumstantial friends are the people we meet at school or work. Sure, some of the people we meet in these contexts will become your closest friends. But most of them will just pass through your life.

But, when the circumstances that brought you together disappear, so does the friendship. If you stop working together, you’ll probably stop checking up on each other. As in the previous case, losing this friendship won’t break you. Sure, you’ll miss the people you usually see daily at work or school. But they aren’t part of your support system. You don’t exactly need them in your life, so you’ll get over that loss pretty quickly.

4.      Geographical Distance Compromises This Support System

When people live far apart , it’s much harder to make plans to meet up. And talking on the phone just doesn’t feel the same. More importantly, if you live far away from someone, you don’t feel you can rely on them as much. You can’t call them to help you fix something in the house. You can’t ask them to go out to a club. It even feels harder to plan trips together because you have to account for different traveling needs.

5.      You Have Different Expectations From Your Friendships

When people become friends, it happens organically. They don’t sit down and have a serious talk to set guidelines for the friendship. So, there’s a risk of having different expectations than your friend. Or maybe your expectations were similar at first, but they diverged over time. Still, this can affect your bond and even bring the friendship to an end.

Even worse is when one of you becomes romantically interested in the other. If that interest is not reciprocated , things will get weird. The person who isn’t interested will likely become cold and try to end the friendship. Or the other person will feel awkward and end things themselves. If your expectations are different, don’t expect things to last.

6.      Betrayal

Betrayal can come in many forms. Lying is one of the more common ones. But not white lies; big lies and deception. This breaks trust between two people. But people can also stab you in the back. They can start excluding you from social outings and making you feel like an outcast. They can tell your secrets to other people. Some friends even go as far as hitting on your partner or trying to steal your job.

Final Thoughts on Why Friendships Come to an End

People are social creatures. We can’t live without friends. Indeed, managing friendships can be tricky. Some friendships aren’t as close and don’t require as much effort. But others are very tight-knit and special. You will have some friends in your life who will be closer than family. They serve as a vital support system. But, as with many things, some friendships eventually end. Sometimes it’s no one’s fault.

Losing those connections is natural. While those losses will hurt, you’ll quickly get over them. But the more complicated-to-manage losses arise from different expectations or betrayals. Things will quickly get weird if you don’t want the same thing from the friendship. And the one who wants more will be the most affected. But betrayal is unquestionably the thing that hurts the most. If a friend betrays you, they weren’t your friend to begin with.

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Of Friendship

Francis Bacon begins “Of Friendship” with an anthropological statement of Aristotle i.e “Whatsoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.” It is humans’ nature that whenever they come across solitude, they act as wild beasts due to ‘natural and secret hatred’ and ‘aversation towards society’. There are however, examples of few men like ‘Epimenides the Candian,Numa the Roman, Empedocles the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana’, all these men tried to sequester themselves for a higher conversation. Bacon calls their attempt ‘false and feign’ without supporting his argument, he leaves it to the reader’s evaluation to decide whether they were ‘false and feign’ or righteous in their pursuit. Bacon further demonstrates that solitude may also prevails in company; faces may be nothing more than ‘a gallery of pictures’; conversation may be ‘tinkling cymbal’ where there is no love. As a Latin saying clearly supports Bacon’s point, “Magna civitas, magna solitude”. Great cities are great solitudes.The reason behind this very statement is that in greater cities, friends are scattered and there is no fellowship. Bacon says it is the miserable solitude that compels a person to make friends and a person wills to want true friends without which the world is not other than a place of wilderness. In second paragraph of his essay, Bacon describes the utilitarian approach of friendship. He elaborates utility of a friend in life.

The Principal Fruit of Friendship:

In the same way, Bacon gives some more examples of Tiberius Caesar and Sejanus, Septimius Severus and Plautianus etc. All these men tasted a bitter fruit of friendship.

The First Fruit of Friendship:

The communication of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; first, it redoubles his joys and second, it cuts his griefs in halves. Because, there is no doubt when a person imparts his joys to his friends, he joys more than others. However, when he imparts his griefs, they become less. It is a fact that, bodies become healthier upon natural actions such as joy and happiness. Whereas, they are weakened and become dull on sad and violent impressions, same is the case with the mind.

The Second Fruit of Friendship:

The last fruit of friendship:, more from francis bacon.

127 Friendship Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When you have a good friendship topic, essay writing becomes as easy as it gets. We have some for you!

📝 Friendship Essay Structure

🏆 best friendship topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 good essay topics on friendship, 🎓 simple & easy friendship essay titles, 📌 most interesting friendship topics to write about, ❓ research questions about friendship.

Describing a friend, talking about your relationship and life experiences can be quite fun! So, take a look at our topics on friendship in the list below. Our experts have gathered numerous ideas that can be extremely helpful for you. And don’t forget to check our friendship essay examples via the links.

Writing a friendship essay is an excellent way to reflect on your relationships with other people, show your appreciation for your friends, and explore what friendship means to you. What you include in your paper is entirely up to you, but this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t structure it properly. Here is our advice on structuring an essay on friendship:

• Begin by selecting the right topic. It should be focused and creative so that you can earn a high mark. Think about what friendship means to you and write down your thoughts. Reflect on your relationship with your best friend and see if you can write an essay that incorporates these themes. If these steps didn’t help – don’t worry! Fortunately, there are many web resources that can help you choose. Browse samples of friendship essays online to see if there are any topics that interest you.
• Create a title that reflects your focus. Paper titles are important because they grasp the reader’s attention and make them want to read further. However, many people find it challenging to name their work, so you can search for friendship essay titles online if you need to.
• Once you get the first two steps right, you can start developing the structure of your essay. An outline is a great tool because it presents your ideas in a clear and concise manner and ensures that there are no gaps or irrelevant points. The most basic essay outline has three components: introduction, body, and conclusion. Type these out and move to the next step. Compose an introduction. Your introduction should include a hook, some background information, and a thesis. A friendship essay hook is the first sentence in the introduction, where you draw the reader’s attention. For instance, if you are creating an essay on value of friendship, include a brief description of a situation where your friends helped you or something else that comes to mind. A hook should make the reader want to read the rest of the essay. After the hook, include some background information on your chosen theme and write down a thesis. A thesis statement is the final sentence of the first paragraph that consists of your main argument.
• Write well-structured body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should start with one key point, which is then developed through examples, references to resources, or other content. Make sure that each of the key points relates to your thesis. It might be useful to write out all of your key points first before you write the main body of the paper. This will help you to see if any of them are irrelevant or need to be swapped to establish a logical sequence. If you are composing an essay on the importance of friendship, each point should show how a good friend can make life better and more enjoyable. End each paragraph with a concluding sentence that links it to the next part of the paper.
• Finally, compose a conclusion. A friendship essay conclusion should tie together all your points and show how they support your thesis. For this purpose, you should restate your thesis statement at the beginning of the final paragraph. This will offer your reader a nice, well-balanced closure, leaving a good impression of your work.

We hope that this post has assisted you in understanding the basic structure of a friendship paper. Don’t forget to browse our website for sample papers, essay titles, and other resources!

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• Cicero and Plutarch’s Views on Friendship He believed that befriending a man for sensual pleasures is the ideal of brute beasts; that is weak and uncertain with caprice as its foundation than wisdom. It is this that makes such carelessness in […]
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• “Feminism and Modern Friendship” by Marilyn Friedman Individualism denies that the identity and nature of human beings as individuals is a product of the roles of communities as well as social relationships.
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• Why International Students Find It Hard to Make Friends On the other hand, in societies that promote a high power distance, less powerful individuals accept their position in the chain of command and acknowledge the strengths of their superiors in the hierarchy.
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• The Impact of Friendship in the Epic of Gilgamesh The elusive coalition between Enkidu and Gilgamesh, their fateful destinies and eventual epiphanies broaden the societal apprehension of the elements/value of friendship as expounded in the next discussion.
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• Gender Role Development and Friendship As far as the conflict goes, the boy’s main problem is that he is unwilling to change his behavior towards a socially accepted one under the pretext that girls are more beautiful and, therefore, it […]
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• Henry Thoreau: The Concept of the Friendship Not every person is able to understand the essence of nature, its uniqueness, and importance. To my mind, his close connection to nature and a kind of isolation from people helped him to understand deeper […]
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Understanding the Dynamics of Ending Friendships

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The Evolution of Friendships

The Winds of Change

Distance and its implications, the foundation of trust.

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Essay on Friendship for Students and Children

500+ words essay on friendship.

Friendship is one of the greatest bonds anyone can ever wish for. Lucky are those who have friends they can trust. Friendship is a devoted relationship between two individuals. They both feel immense care and love for each other. Usually, a friendship is shared by two people who have similar interests and feelings.

You meet many along the way of life but only some stay with you forever. Those are your real friends who stay by your side through thick and thin. Friendship is the most beautiful gift you can present to anyone. It is one which stays with a person forever.

True Friendship

A person is acquainted with many persons in their life. However, the closest ones become our friends. You may have a large friend circle in school or college , but you know you can only count on one or two people with whom you share true friendship.

There are essentially two types of friends, one is good friends the other are true friends or best friends. They’re the ones with whom we have a special bond of love and affection. In other words, having a true friend makes our lives easier and full of happiness.

Most importantly, true friendship stands for a relationship free of any judgments. In a true friendship, a person can be themselves completely without the fear of being judged. It makes you feel loved and accepted. This kind of freedom is what every human strives to have in their lives.

In short, true friendship is what gives us reason to stay strong in life. Having a loving family and all is okay but you also need true friendship to be completely happy. Some people don’t even have families but they have friends who’re like their family only. Thus, we see having true friends means a lot to everyone.

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Importance of Friendship

Friendship is important in life because it teaches us a great deal about life. We learn so many lessons from friendship which we won’t find anywhere else. You learn to love someone other than your family. You know how to be yourself in front of friends.

Friendship never leaves us in bad times. You learn how to understand people and trust others. Your real friends will always motivate you and cheer for you. They will take you on the right path and save you from any evil.

Similarly, friendship also teaches you a lot about loyalty. It helps us to become loyal and get loyalty in return. There is no greater feeling in the world than having a friend who is loyal to you.

Moreover, friendship makes us stronger. It tests us and helps us grow. For instance, we see how we fight with our friends yet come back together after setting aside our differences. This is what makes us strong and teaches us patience.

Therefore, there is no doubt that best friends help us in our difficulties and bad times of life. They always try to save us in our dangers as well as offer timely advice. True friends are like the best assets of our life because they share our sorrow, sooth our pain and make us feel happy.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Friendship — Making Friends And The Importance Of Friendship

Making Friends and The Importance of Friendship

• Categories: Friendship

About this sample

Words: 1035 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1035 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Friendship essay outline, friendship essay example, introduction.

• The importance of making friends in life

Types of Friends

• The value of having diverse types of friends
• The positive impacts of different types of friends on one's life

Polar Opposite Friend

• The benefits of having a friend who is a polar opposite
• Encouragement to try new things and gain new perspectives
• Creating a balance in the friendship

Builder Friend

• The role of a builder friend in providing support and guidance
• Trustworthiness and honesty in the relationship
• Pushing you to achieve your goals and dreams

Best Friend

• The unique bond and connection with a best friend
• Honesty, emotional support, and no-judgment zone
• Unconditional love and encouragement to be a better person
• The importance of surrounding oneself with supportive and caring friends
• The impact of friendships on personal growth and happiness

Works Cited:

• Baker, E. D. (1989). "Symbolism in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" In E. D. Jones (Ed.), Masterplots II: Short Story Series (Vol. 7, pp. 3925-3927). Salem Press.
• Cowart, D. (1984). "Phoenix Has No Coat: Historicity, Eschatology, and Scapegoating in 'A Worn Path.'" Studies in Short Fiction, 21(1), 45-56.
• Duvall, J. D. (2004). "Overview of 'A Worn Path'." In Short Stories for Students (Vol. 19, pp. 1-15). Gale.
• Evans, R. C. (1973). "The Art of 'A Worn Path.'" The Southern Review, 9(1), 101-108.
• Friedmann, M. (1990). "The Inverted World of Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" College Language Association Journal, 33(3), 282-289.
• Gaudet, M. (1989). "Life and Death in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" In E. D. Jones (Ed.), Masterplots II: Short Story Series (Vol. 7, pp. 3922-3925). Salem Press.
• Grimsley, R. (1984). "Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path': The Eternal Quest of Welty's Phoenix Jackson." Mississippi Quarterly, 37(4), 539-550.
• Korb, R. (2017). "A Worn Path." In Masterpieces of American Short Fiction (pp. 222-228). Greenwood Press.
• Moreland, R. (2010). "Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path' and the Slave Narrative Tradition." The Southern Literary Journal, 43(2), 15-26.
• Smith, E. A. (1984). "The Journey of Life: Symbolism in Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path.'" The Mississippi Quarterly, 37(2), 231-239.

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The End of Relationships

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Some people can walk away from years of marriage and instantly feel relieved and unburdened. For others, the end of a relationship that lasted just a few weeks can bring on intense emotional trauma that lingers for years. Whatever the circumstances of a breakup, experts suggest, it is potentially a major life stressor whose effect on one’s ego and self-esteem should not be dismissed.

On This Page

• Why Couples Split
• Getting Over a Breakup

In some failed relationships, partners endure a gradual decline of connection, intimacy, and affection, while in others, one or the other partner can identify moment when they knew it was over. When a relationship experiences strain, couples must decide if they have built a connection that can sustain it, and if not, whether it’s best to end it.

Surveys of what couples argue about find many common sources of conflict including affection, communication, jealousy, sexual frequency, control, future plans, chores and responsibilities, secrets, and finances. Being aware of the topics that tend to frustrate couples most often, experts say, would help new partners prepare, and perhaps stay together longer.

Psychologist John Gottman famously pointed to four core issues as most likely to derail a relationship—criticism (questioning a partner’s character), contempt (acting superior to a partner), defensiveness (avoiding responsibility), and stonewalling (refusing to engage with issues). When these negative interactions outnumber positive ones, he suggested, these “ four horsemen of the apocalypse ” have taken hold, and a couple may not survive.

Sometimes, the signs that a relationship has turned toxic are clear only in hindsight, because often when a partner experiences gaslighting, intermittent positive reinforcement, social isolation, or the feeling that they can’t be themselves in their primary relationship, it takes time to realize it or to admit that they need to leave.

The most common reasons people say they fall out of love are a loss of physical intimacy, a loss of trust, a loss of feeling loved, emotional pain, often driven by grief over feeling lonely, and negative views of oneself (poor self-image, feeling like a failure) driven by feeling rejected by a partner.

Yes, at least indirectly. Recent research finds that a husband’s negative feelings about his wife’s friends is a fairly reliable predictor of divorce , perhaps because women are more likely to share relationship struggles with friends, or because a wife’s friendships may be closer than a husband’s and thus seen as threatening to their relationship.

The end of a relationship can be seen as occurring across stages including contemplation (starting to think about change); preparation (getting ready to end it); action ( initiating a breakup ); and maintenance (sticking with the decision). Other analyses of breakups pint to more stages, as one or both partners waver or change their minds about leaving before finally walking away.

Ghosting is an increasingly common way of ending relationships; at least a quarter of young adults say they have or have been ghosted. Ghosting involves ending all contact with a partner and essentially vanishing, with no explanation of the underlying reasons why. Ghosting hurts so much because it can leave an abandoned partner feeling they did something wrong, or that they may be unworthy of love.

For more, see Ghosting .

A temporary separation can make a relationship stronger , research suggests, if it’s done the right way and for the right reasons. Experts suggest seeking a counselor for help in planning the ground rules, setting clear expectations, especially for communication, and guiding partners back together. Often a separation makes the relationship’s weaknesses clearer, however, leading to a more mutually agreeable breakup.

Standing at the altar, few couples can imagine that they will one day be signing divorce papers. And yet many will. Spouses lose their connection to each other for some common reasons—infidelity, financial stress, a decline of affection, or incompatibility—and so experts suggest that couples remain vigilant about these challenges even during their honeymoon period and, if those issues become insurmountable, they honestly assess whether it’s time to part ways.

For more, see Divorce .

It’s less common for people to divorce after long marriages , but the divorce rate for couples over 50 has doubled since 1990. The strongest predictor of divorce among older couples is whether one or both partners has been divorced before, although many older partners say they divorced because of long-ignored issues they were only prepared to face after their children left home.

Research shows that in many cases, divorce can boost self-esteem . In the months or years leading up to divorce, partners’ self-esteem tends to dip, and while it may take a while to recover after a split, it generally does, suggesting that divorce is the antidote, albeit a painful one, to an unhappy marriage.

Women initiate divorce far more often than men , instigating legal action in almost 70 percent of cases, across ages, regions, and ethnicities. Evolutionary psychologists point to these statistics as an indication that women hold more power, or at least take more action, when it comes to mating choices among humans.

Many couples find a pleasant surprise after getting divorced: They get along better. Researchers suggest that this is because ex-partners need to rely on each other less; that, free from marital stress, partners become more positive; and that when their kids are all they share, they find it’s easier to work as a team to support them. In this way, breaking up can improve a relationship .

Married people are generally healthier and happier than those who are divorced, and they live longer. People living alone, for example, can more easily fall into poor eating or sleep habits. But it’s not necessarily the case that divorce is bad for your health : Staying in a failed marriage may be even more detrimental, and people whose personality traits may have brought on a divorce may be less long-lived whether or not they’re partnered.

Even if you didn’t believe a relationship would last a lifetime, its ending can hurt, especially if you feel that you’ve been rejected by someone you loved and trusted. Understanding why breakups are painful, and what you can learn from them, are crucial steps toward bouncing back.

Recommended strategies to get over a breakup include maintaining distance from an ex; reminding yourself of their bad qualities, and not just the good ones you may miss; taking up new activities; and making sure to maintain your health. Some people find that repeating certain phrases or mantras, like “ I love myself ,” “I want to be happy,” or “I am better off,” can hasten emotional recovery.

There are some proven reasons it can take so long to get over an ex : People who tend to catastrophize may find it harder to see a positive future post-breakup; those who ruminate on negative thoughts and “what ifs” can struggle to move one; and those who have a weaker sense of self may wonder who they are without a partner.

On-again, off-again relationships are common: At least a third of couples, whether heterosexual or same-sex, have at some point broken up and come together again. Research suggests that cyclical relationships, however, are lower in quality and less fulfilling, in part because these connections may be driven by loneliness, nostalgia, and placing a higher priority on sex than in other relationships.

Breakups are tougher on men , research suggests. They are more likely to adopt poor health habits after a breakup, and more likely to develop suicidality. Men are also more likely to rely on a romantic partner as their primary source of emotional support than are women, who tend to have close friendships to support them after a split.

Many people in relationships also, consciously or not, maintain connection with a backup boyfriend or girlfriend . These “back-burner relationships” typically involve close unattached friends and are quite common, especially among young adults: College women have, on average, 3.78 “Plan B” boyfriends in mind as insurance should their primary relationships fizzle. It is not clear, though, whether the presence of backup partners threatens or shortens primary relationships.

Unhappy partners can stay in a failed relationship for months or years because they cannot see a clear path to leaving or because the person from whom they want to separate convinces them to stay. To make sure a breakup sticks , consider scheduling a time to talk, speaking honestly but not critically, stating what you appreciate about the other person, and, crucially, setting clear boundaries for a separation.

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