Breaking up with a friend

There’s a lot of advice out there (and on this podcast, of course) about how to handle a romantic breakup, but there’s less information about how to handle a situation when a friendship ends, whether you initiated ending it or not. Nevertheless, most of us have likely experienced a friendship ending in some way, either by drifting apart, ghosting, a big blowup of a fight…the list is endless.

This episode, we discuss some research on why friendships end, some coping mechanisms when you find yourself in the sad situation of parting ways with a friend, and how to reconcile (if that’s something you both want).

Why do friendships end?

Based on our research, some reasons that could contribute to a friendship breakup include:

• Social context (school, university, jobs, neighborhoods, etc.) are contributing factors.

• Current events (such as the Covid-19 pandemic). One in seven people ended friendships over different stances on the Covid-19 vaccine, for example.

• Geographic mobility and marrying later in life are two American trends that have contributed to self-reported isolation/loneliness.

• In the United States, parents are spending twice as much time with their children than previous generations, decreasing time and effort for other relationships.

• Again in the United States, people are overall working longer hours and traveling more for work, which may be contributing to having trouble developing and maintaining friendships.

• One study came up with four different categories and 55 reasons people end friendships:

  • Selfishness, where the friendship may feel one-sided.

  • Romantic involvement, such as one person being interested in the other romantically without reciprocation.

  • Lack of frequent interaction.

  • Perception of friends and family.

Getting through a friend breakup

Sometimes it can be difficult to grieve for a friendship breakup. Often, this is due to disenfranchised grief, or grief that is not acknowledged as legitimate by society. There are very few institutions, support systems, rituals, etc. that help people experiencing disenfranchised grief.

Some ways to handle the difficulty of a friendship breakup include:

• View your pain as legitimate. Seeing friendships as less valuable can impact both the support we receive and the way we process our grief.

• Practice self care.

• Avoid rumination.

• Exercise.

• Talk to someone, whether another friend or loved one or a trusted professional.

• Read about others in your situation.

• Try a new friend group.

• Examine what went wrong in the friendship.

• Check your emotional health.

• Try some closure exercises.

Reconciling a broken friendship

While there may be some good, lasting reasons to not reconcile with a former friend, other times both parties want to mend things. Our research found a step-by-step process for reconciliation for those times when you want to try to rebuild a former friendship:

1. Analyze the extent of the damage.

2. Understand why you became friends in the first place.

3. Why do you want to be friends again?

4. Preparing to build a stronger bridge aka that first call.

5. Approaching a friend-turned-stranger.

Visit the article for more in-depth instruction for each step.