Finding true connection is one of the greatest gifts in life. Amid all the heartbreak and triumphs you might experience, good friends create and elevate irreplaceable memories. They often act as an anchor when life feels unpredictable or stressful. This is why ending adult friendships can feel so painful.
It’s no secret that adulthood comes with many important relationships with partners, children, and other family members. With that, adult friendships also become more complicated. It may take more effort to maintain these relationships as life gets busier. Subsequently, the grief associated with losing a friend can feel much sharper.
Understanding the Adult Friend Breakup
There’s no doubt that being an adult is complex. Beyond the visible struggles of managing your career, paying bills, or navigating other logistics, adulthood comes with subtler challenges. These can include loneliness and disconnection. Your identity is in motion, and you may be reconciling with a changing sense of self.
With that said, relationships can fade or fall apart for many reasons. People experience conflicting values, shifting priorities, or unresolved tension that just can’t be easily resolved. The needs you have within your inner circle can and do change, and your relationships often reflect those changes.
Furthermore, the emotional labor of maintaining friendships often competes with the weight of other responsibilities. Still, when friendship breakups occur, we’re often left grieving with little societal feedback on how to really process those feelings.
Here are some common reasons why friendships change:
Evolving Responsibilities That Take Priority
Life happens, and priorities change as we get older. Careers advance, families grow, loved ones relocate, and health challenges might show up. These natural progressions often shift how much energy we can really devote to our friends. It’s not uncommon for weeks or months to pass before you realize you haven’t reached out to a certain friend or spent time with friends.
New Boundaries Around Friendships
When you’re younger, there isn’t much stopping you from making new friends. Being an adult is a different story. You learn that boundaries can keep you safe, happy, and healthy within your relationships.
But ending an adult friendship due to boundary issues (or lack thereof) often cuts deep. If a friend crosses a line, it’s a breach of trust. If you have unhealthy codependency, it can make you lose your sense of self and feel isolated – even when surrounded by loved ones.
Reality or Perception of Time Scarcity
We always only have 24 hours in a day, but adulthood comes with so many competing tasks that fill those hours. Most people find that aging distorts their perception of time. Sometimes it’s hard to slow down and enjoy a leisurely afternoon with friends when the laundry needs to get done, work is piling up, or you really just want to get a nap in. Unfortunately, it’s easy for friends to also fall to the wayside if other relationships have taken center stage.
How Losing Friends Can Impact Your Mental Health
All grief activates powerful emotions and can have a negative impact on your quality of life. That’s not to say grief is bad- it’s a natural human experience that directly speaks to our capacity to love and connect with others. However, it’s normal to initially feel worse about yourself amid this kind of friendship breakup.
Regardless of the specific context of your emotions, it’s important to validate your feelings during this vulnerable time. It’s okay to feel sad, angry, confused, or even a bit relieved if a friendship changes. This doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or that you’re overreacting.
Here are some ways your mental health may be impacted:
Anxiety and Depression
Anxiety and depression are among the two most common mental health disorders. Losing a friend- or experiencing a change in the dynamic- may trigger or exacerbate these symptoms.
You might notice anxiety showing up with more hypervigilance, panic, or rumination. This can look like you obsessing over what “went wrong” within the relationship or fixating on what might happen in the future. You may find yourself feeling more anxious in social situations, worrying that you won’t be able to make new friends or that you’ll lose other friends.
If you begin to feel depressed, you might struggle with connecting to others. This can show up in many ways, including isolating yourself, throwing yourself into work, avoiding your emotions, or trying to soothe your feelings with other forms of relief, including drugs and alcohol. Depression can make it hard to believe you’re worthy of making new friendships or having a sense of support in your life.
Trust Issues
Do you remember a time when you made new friends without overthinking? Maybe, when you were a child, it felt intuitive to connect with the people in your class or extracurricular activities? Perhaps there wasn’t a time when you experienced such strong self-doubt. Back then, you didn’t have those hang-ups that make you question everyone and everything around you.
Trust issues are always valid and legitimate. They often emerge from relational trauma- if someone you cared about betrayed you, it’s hard to feel safe in other relationships. You might feel like you’re guarded around others, worried about rejection or potential abandonment.
Poor Self-Esteem
When a friendship ends, it’s natural to feel unsure of yourself. Friendships often play a key role in identity formation. When a friendship ends, it may have a profound effect on how you perceive yourself.
Your self-esteem can easily be swayed depending on how the friendship ended and what remaining ties there are in your life. This context can directly impact how you are able to move forward. For example, if the ending involved some form of betrayal or exclusion, you might have spiraling thoughts like, Was I good enough? Did I do something wrong? Am I bad friend? These types of internal messages can make it difficult to trust yourself.
Focus on Other Relationships
In some cases, friendship changes shift the focus onto others. You might find yourself more interested, for example, in spending time with family or coworkers. Or, romantic relationships- even if you’ve been enjoying being single- might seem more appealing.
This all makes sense. Relationships often ebb and flow. Sometimes loss reminds us that we crave closeness or that we’re ready to open our hearts to other kinds of dynamics. This isn’t a bad thing; however, it’s always important to acknowledge what kind of closeness you’re truly seeking.
How to Take Care of Yourself When a Friendship Ends
When a friendship ends, the emotional weight often feels heavy. Friends offer a unique kind of intimacy that can be hard to replicate. Whether the ending was abrupt or gradual, the pain of losing someone you once valued is valid and deserves recognition. Here are some ways to gently take care of yourself during this difficult time:
Be Intentional With Your Grief
One of the more healing steps you can take after losing a former friend is to live with intention. When we’re grieving or emotionally exhausted, it’s almost too easy to retreat inward and move into a state of autopilot. Healing, however, requires presence. This doesn’t mean you must have everything figured out right away. Instead, it just means choosing to show up for yourself in meaningful and deliberate ways.
Start by planning your day more thoughtfully. Carve out time to check in with yourself. Maybe devote five minutes each morning to journaling or taking a quiet, distraction-free walk during your lunch break.
Intention absolutely means putting effort into reconnecting with other relationships. Maybe this starts small. You can text another friend to grab coffee or consider volunteering in your community. You don’t need to rush into making deeper connections right away, but stepping into environments where people gather with shared experiences or interests opens up possibilities for intimacy.
Reflect on Your Part With Self-Compassion
If you just weren’t able to keep a friendship alive, you might notice intense self-blame or shame. You may replay certain conversations in your mind or wonder what you could have done differently. If there was a painful fallout, you may feel this deep agony about how it all unfolded.
It may be helpful to ask yourself: What would I say to someone I love if they were going through this? Chances are, you’d be kind. You’d remind them that it’s okay to feel hurt or unsure. You’d also tell them that it wasn’t all your fault and that relationships can be difficult.
Ideally, you want to strive to extend this same level of compassion to yourself. Self-compassion isn’t about forgetting what happened or even “letting yourself off the hook.” It’s just about acknowledging your own humanness and being mindful with your feelings. The softer you can speak to yourself, the easier the healing process tends to feel.
Acknowledge What the Friendship Brought You
Even if you two aren’t friends anymore, you can still acknowledge that the friendship mattered and offered you something meaningful. It’s true that people may come into your life without staying permanently. This doesn’t mean the relationship was worthless. It may just mean that it was never going to last forever.
You may find it grounding to reflect on the more positive aspects of your friendship. What did you gain? What did you learn about yourself? Which memories would you like to carry forward? Are there any lessons you will strive to bring to your next friendships?
This is a balancing act because focusing on the good parts doesn’t mean pretending there isn’t pain. It’s about holding a dialectic- you can feel hurt or upset and grateful for what you did experience when times were different.
Reconnect with Yourself
It may feel empowering to reconnect with yourself after a friendship ends. The first few weeks or months may be disorienting, especially if the end was abrupt. But even if the friendship loss was more gradual, it can be beneficial to reestablish a sense of identity.
Consider revisiting old passions or engaging in new hobbies. Try to reclaim what you’ve wanted to embrace but have potentially avoided or dismissed. Pour back into your own emotional well-being.
Be Mindful of Dynamics With Mutual Friends
Navigating mutual friends can be tricky, especially if they don’t know what happened or you don’t want to push anyone into “taking sides.”
Start by acknowledging that you’re always allowed to protect your peace. If being around another friend triggers a deep sense of discomfort or awkwardness, it’s okay to take a temporary step back. You don’t necessarily have to explain yourself. You might just disengage until you’re able to reorient yourself.
You may find that particular friends drift away or even become closer. Try to trust and respect how the dynamics shift organically. You don’t have to force anything at this time. A genuine friend will always respect your boundaries even if they don’t know the full context of your story.
The most important thing is to avoid positioning other friends into being the middlemen. With that, don’t vent or gossip about your former friend. While you don’t need to pretend that everything is okay if it’s not, you shouldn’t stir drama or pump others for information.
Therapy for Grief and Life Transitions in Seattle, WA
Friendships are delicate, and relationship changes can leave a lasting imprint on our inner psyches. Whether you’ve lost an old friend, or you’re trying to decide limits with current friends, it’s important to make space for your needs and feelings.
In my practice, I help adults define their values within friendships, create reasonable boundaries that honor their integrity, and hold space for the complex emotions that can show up when relationships feel tender. I embrace a more eclectic approach to psychotherapy, integrating techniques from somatic therapies, internal family systems (IFS), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and other bottom-up approaches.
If you’re struggling with your relationships, having support can help you feel more anchored and regulated. Therapy offers a compassionate environment for deeper introspection and healing. If you’d like to set up an initial consultation, please contact me today.
