Friendship Break Ups

Friendships are the greatest untold love story. And with untold stories, it can be hard to make sense of why a friendship didn’t work out. We can be left feeling alone and bewildered.

There are a lot of myths out there about friendships that don’t help either. Perhaps the biggest myth is that friendships last forever. We assume a fun future with our friends. We joke about looking forward to being old biddies together, so that if there is a break-up we aren’t just grieving the present loss, but also the loss of that friend in our imagined future together.

Over lockdown, the added pressure of separation and trauma may have led to changes in your friendships. You might be feeling a friend-shaped absence of someone you used to be super close with, but you either faded out of one another’s orbits, or you had a friendship break up.

What Happened?

Good question! Friendship break ups can be seriously disorientating and complex. The worst part of it is if we interpret the break-up as a personal failure of our ability to sustain relationships. We might feel shame, which researcher Brene Brown describes as a physically extremely painful feeling - like burning your hand on an iron. Shame lacerates our confidence to connect with others. It labels us defective and it shuts us down – and what is more painful than not feeling able to connect with others?! Shame often results in not wanting to talk about what’s happening with anyone, so we can end up feeling doubly alone (and our ex-friend is likely feeling this also). Learn about shame and accountability here. Making friends and keeping them is a skill that we build over time. So, give yourself the permission and compassion to learn by taking on more of a growth mindset when it comes to relationships.

The thing is, friendship losses are really quite common. Research found that up to 70% of close friendships, and 52% of our social networks dissolve after 7 years! They also found that our social context (e.g., school, university, jobs, neighbourhoods) is a big factor in determining our friendships, so that when this changes, so do our friendships.

Clinical Psychologist and friendship researcher, Dr Miriam Kirmayer, normalises that some friendships fade out, get messy, or break up, and cautions us not to assume that this is all our fault. Kirmayer says that changes in social networks and life circumstances are normal, and some friendships organically come and go. In this article, Kirmayer suggests that serious betrayal, unrelenting conflict, and just being in different places are all healthy reasons to end a friendship. Kirmayer cautions us not to straight up label certain friendships as ‘toxic’, as this denies that conflicts are an inevitable part of all relationships, not to mention it’s also stigmatising.

Another factor can be the accumulation of small ruptures in trust or disappointments that haven’t been resolved, something that linguistics professor and author, Deborah Tannen, found in her research. Friendships can then get caught in unhealthy cycles that increase that sense of disconnection and hidden hurts. This is too complex to go into depth here, but if you feel this describes your situation, it might be helpful to talk to a Psychologist at SHIPS to get a deeper understanding of your relationship patterns.

Disenfranchised Grief

In the same way that friendships don’t have socially recognised milestones like romantic relationships do, we also don’t have breakup rituals. Even worse, we have no alternative way to keep each other in our lives, at least with romantic break ups there’s an option to say “let’s just be friends”.

Even though loss of a friendship can be excruciating, we might not feel we have permission to order a cartload of tissues, UberEATS every night, binge on sad movies, and generally be a blob of sadness like we might after a romantic break up. This can be understood as disenfranchised or marginalised grief. This is a term that was coined by Dr Kenneth Doka and is defined as grief that “cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned”. Examples of marginalised grief include death of someone in an extra-marital affair, loss of a job or physical health, grief following an abortion, and death of a pet. This can make healing harder, as it may feel like no one really gets it, or we don’t have a right to be feeling so upset by it.

Loss of Support

When we lose a friend, it can be like a pillar of support has been removed from under us. We don’t even have that friend anymore to turn to support us in our grieving process, or to try to work out what even happened. We know it intuitively (and research supports it) that friends make those stressful life situations so much easier to bear. That together, we are more resilient. So, losing a close friend can also make other life challenges feel harder to deal with.

Cracks in the Friendship Circle

There’s also the added complication of mutual friends you may have within a friendship group, and how friends will be divided up, or whether it can remain the same. We may also not want to talk about the break-up with mutual friends to not drag them into the breakup, but we also risk feeling even more isolated. And when it comes to important events, it’s still the same feeling as knowing an ex-romantic partner is going to be at that gathering organised by a mutual friend.

Suggestion for Ending a Friendship

Ending a friendship is painful from both sides and we don’t really have any social guidelines for it. We might be tempted to indirectly end a friendship, such as by ghosting, locking out the other person, or out of the blue ranting about all the unspoken betrayals. These actions can leave everyone feeling hurt and disoriented. Here are some of alternative suggestion that might help both parties:

Ask for a bit of space, this might help you to get a better understanding of how you’d like to proceed with the friendship.
Communicate with your friend about how some of the things they’ve done have made you feel and be curious about their side of the story to see if you can repair the relationship.
Try writing a letter/email to your friend - sometimes this helps you sort through your feelings, and it might allow your friend to spend time reading and thinking about your perspective without all the heat of the moment's emotions.
Reflect on your own behavior, and take ownership for how you might have contributed to the disconnection - taking responsibility encourages others to do the same.
If both friends really want to make it work but don’t feel they can do it alone, consider seeing a relationship therapist. In their book, Big Friendship, Aminatou and Ann, talk about how this worked for them.
If your friend is not willing to be vulnerable with you, or try to make this work, you can let them know how this friendship is hurtful, how things don’t seem to be changing, and that you need a break.

Kirmayer gives us the permission to choose our friends wisely, and as we grow older and have more commitments, we may want to be more mindful about which friendships we put our heart and time into. Emotionally safe and reciprocally nourishing friendships are heavenly and make each other shine.

So, nurture your friendships, keep them close in whatever way you can, and be open to making new connections too. Also, know that conflict is a normal part of all relationships – this means practicing your repair skills, because once resolved, you’ll both feel much closer knowing you can weather storms together and find safe harbour in one another again. Finally, please remember, that the loss of friendships is deeply painful, yet can be a normal fluctuation of life.