How Do Best Friends Become Strangers and What Happens Next?

Friendship sometimes feels like too weak a word for what it is. With our mind and hearts, we carefully select (or maybe jump headfirst into) intimacy with someone else. Friendship means we have given our trust, our time, our very lives to share with someone else of our own choosing. We invite them into our homes, our memories, and our families. They see the joy, the sorrow, the highs, the lows, and all the mess of our hearts, and love us anyway. We never picture those close relationships ending. Or ending badly.

But sometimes friendships end. And sometimes they don’t blow up or naturally fade away. There is an awkward in-between where the ending is full of confusion. What about the sting of friendship ending with more questions than answers?

If friendships end, we hope it’s a natural drift where we fade into the next chapter and the next friendships. We move locations or change jobs or start a new path that aligns us more with other people. But sometimes, friendship endings sour.

Somewhere along the way, what once was talking daily and sending memes and messages on three different mediums became silence. Not a comfortable silence, but a difficult one. One full of strain, sadness, anger, or resentment.

When friendships fade or end naturally, we still engage and comment and reach out even if months or years happen between. But when friendships sour, there’s an avoidance of one another completely. Like we never shared life and memories at all. Like a bad breakup, some friendships end harshly.

Frequent social media posts and pictures with each other turn into ignoring each other’s posts completely. Adventure and vacations stop. Communication stops. We stop making memories and sharing life together. We see it on a screen instead . . . if we’re lucky.

Maybe there was miscommunication. There were hurt feelings. Maybe there were subtle changes in behavior, and we assumed that meant big changes in our friendship. Maybe priorities just shifted and passive aggressiveness eeked out. A blow up might have been better. It would have made more sense. Maybe answered questions, like where did it go wrong?

How do best friends become strangers? The how might be murky, but the what now doesn’t have to be. Even if it has been years, it doesn’t have to be the end. What if you both are at a stalemate, not wanting to make the first move? Test the waters! Start engaging with their posts or stories. Text them. Send a message if that feels less intimate. See if and how they respond. Maybe there is a sequel for the two of you and a simple text might revive it.

But what if it’s really over? What if that chapter can’t be revived? Savor the joyful memories they were a part of. It wasn’t a waste of anyone’s time. Take the lessons of what you didn’t like in that friendship (in them and in you) and be better. Maybe they don’t make sense in your life anymore. That’s okay too. Take time or write your feelings down and practice wishing them peace.

Sometimes, our knee-jerk reaction after loss or rejection is to erect walls in our hearts and give up trying to make connections. Don’t close yourself off to the next chapter just because one chapter didn’t turn out how you had hoped. Remember, you haven’t met your next best friend . . . yet.