"What Ended Your Friendship With A Former Best Friend?" (30 Answers)

As social creatures, we really do want to have friends around. Sharing experiences, toys or advice are all useful things we get out of having a social circle we can rely on. Besides social support, there is evidence that having a few friends actually helps a child develop empathy and problem-solving skills. It doesn’t actually take much for younger children to become friends, beyond some shared activities. Just turning up to school in the same t-shirt as another kid could be enough.

But, on the topic of losing friends, relationships formed very young tend not to last that long. Often, they are based on circumstances, which change and shared interests, which also change rapidly for younger children. It’s only in one’s teenage years that stronger, longer-lasting friendships start to form. Let’s face it, being a teen isn’t the most enjoyable period of time, so having a buddy helps. And when two or more people go through some uncomfortable experiences together, it creates a sense of solidarity.

Adults tend to find new friends in the workplace, which comes with its own set of limitations. One might feel a bit warier about how they act around a coworker and it can be hard to draw the line between networking and just enjoying time together. Most people go to work to earn a living, few see it as a great place to just hang out and make friends. While at school, it's pretty normal for pupils to commiserate and discuss how much they want to be elsewhere, adults are burdened with the knowledge of taxes and bills.

Even counting outside-of-work friends, adults tend to struggle to find relationships like the ones they potentially had as teenagers. Partially, it’s logistics, since older teens have the physical energy and free time to be spontaneous and have adventures. As an adult, the idea of even staying up past two in the morning makes me want to take a sick day. The result is that many adults just do not have as many friends as they would want. In the West, the average number is just two. So all those sitcoms, from Friends to Seinfeld all represented some sort of aspirational social position. 

There are other psychological issues that can also cause problems. Did you know that most people probably like you more than you think? While it’s hard to generalize, many friendships struggle to take off because one or both of the parties thinks the other doesn’t like them as much. This is called the liking gap, where a person decides that a new acquaintance does not really like them, so to avoid looking needy, they won’t pursue a friendship or relationship. Now, as you might have guessed, this is a false emotion, as many people underestimate their likability. But the result is simply fewer friendships. 

To be clear, it is important to differentiate types of friendship. Like ships, houses, and organizations, not all friendships are created equal. As many of the stories here describe, it’s possible to be friends with a person who actively makes your life worse. Once you have had a friend for long enough, you tend to think of the position as natural and might avoid wondering why you don’t really enjoy being around this person. Sometimes people justify it with thoughts like “bad friends are better than no friends.” Maybe this is true, but the aforementioned benefits of having a friend tend to only apply to what researchers call high-quality friendships. 

While the idea of a high-quality friendship is somewhat subjective, it tends to involve reciprocity. Both parties trust each other, there generally isn’t much bullying and one party isn’t constantly the victim of the other’s mental or social issues. Unfortunately, loneliness is also a pretty real concern for many adults, who would prefer to be stood up by so-called friends rather than have no friends at all. Like finding a new job before one quits, studies show that it can be less scary to “quit” a bad friend if you have a new friend lined up. And if you want to read some more accounts about why friendships ended, check out our other article here.