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Key points
- Friendships end for many reasons, including the end of activities or roles we once had in common.
- The closest friendships are a bulwark against loneliness, a defense against feeling unseen and unheard.
- A ruptured friendship that ends with a bang, not a whimper, is harder to repair than one that drifts away.
- There's room in our lives for many casual friendships but only a handful of close, enduring ones.
There are many reasons why friendships end. People move away or move on, and, after a while, the calls and texts and even the Christmas letters stop. We lose touch with former colleagues when we quit or leave jobs or when we're promoted above their ranks and vice versa.
We lose them when we drop the roles that once defined our connection—soccer mom, choir member, volunteer coordinator—because the commonality that brought us together in the first place no longer feels like enough to sustain the connection. Without the book club, the political campaign, or the condo board, we may have little to share, confide, or discuss.
But sometimes even the deepest, closest friendship dies with a bang, not a whimper, and the words I'm sorry, no matter how sincere or heartfelt, aren't enough to repair the breach.
Long after we were wronged, hurt or betrayed in some way large or small, careless or insensitive, by someone we believed was a soulmate, the hurt remains. If we were the cause of the distress, however innocently or unintentionally, we may not realize by their immediate reaction or subsequent coldness or withdrawal that our words. actions, or boundary violation caused them deep pain rather than the momentary friction or annoyance that happens in every relationship.
And when increasing distance, manifested by unreturned calls, ignored texts, or even outright snubs, clarifies their disinterest in continuing the friendship or putting it in a much less intimate framework, we face the choice whether to accept their decision to terminate or try to repair the relationship. The former leaves a hole in our heart, where we're still holding them even if we're no longer in contact.
The latter requires us to listen to them recount our failings, tell us how we disappointed, betrayed, or let them down, and, especially, to confront the full force of their pain without defensiveness: This is their story, not ours, and it requires listening. acknowledging, and empathizing with their hurt. Of course, empathy requires dredging up the emotional residue of our own past pain.
But until and unless they're willing to hear us, repairing the breach may not be possible. What we can take away from the void that exists where the friendship used to be is the lesson learned from how and why it ended and the determination not to repeat it.
