Many end because of a change in personality or lifestyle when friends just drift apart and fade away with time. There is a retreat from self-disclosure and seeking out each other's company. Avoidance begins. The friendship slowly loses importance and finally disappears.
Sue said, "The end of our friendship was a gradual thing. I moved from one side of the metroplex to the other. We had over an hour's drive to see each other. For a year or so, we met religiously. Then our friendship began to taper off."
John wrote, "I didn't even know the friendship was over until I caught myself thinking of Alan as a former friend. In the past tense rather than the present."
Pat explained, "We started seeing each other less and less. The friendship was just over."
Other friendships break up suddenly from a disagreement or move to another town.
Paul said, "When I moved to Seattle after college, our friendship abruptly died. We were both struggling with new jobs and didn't keep in touch. Now that friendship is so dead, I don't even call him when I go home."
Sandy wrote, "That was the last straw for our friendship. I never spoke to Lisa again. It's like we were never friends."
Bob Carver, Dallas psychotherapist, says, "A friendship or any other relationship fails because of three things:
- Unexpressed expectations,
- Undelivered communication,
- And/or thwarted attention."
For example, moving from single life to coupled life has a great effect on friendship. Coupled persons often feel their single friends act interested in them only when a romantic prospect is not in sight. They may feel jealousy for or neglected by a single friend's new social life. The single friend may feel awkward and withdraw from a world of twosomes. Divorced and widowed people often have a feeling of being abandoned by old friends.
Lillian Rubin in her book Just Friends says, "Thus generally it's true that friends accept each other so long as they both remain essentially the same as they were when they met, or change in similar directions. If they change or grow in different or incompatible ways, the friendship most likely will be lost."
Regardless of why, when, or how friendships end, there is always some pain of loss to assimilate. When nothing can be done to mend the friendship, it is important to grieve and feel the pain fully. Then move on to enhance another friendship or build entirely new friendships.
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