Should You Really Break Up with That Friend?
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With spring in the air and the season’s obligatory cleaning on the mind, many of us are itching to Marie Kondo our lives, from our overstuffed closets to our social circles. But even the most—ahem—high-maintenance friendship shouldn’t get the same treatment as our old J.V. badminton jersey. Just because the relationship is not immediately sparking joy might not necessarily mean it’s time to pull the plug.
Opting not to work on—or even formally end—friendships has, in recent years, been widely rebranded as a wellness imperative: a means of “protecting your peace,” “respecting your self-worth,” or “cutting out toxic people.” Take, for example, a recent viral TikTok in which a young woman brags about “ghosting” her close friend and former roommate for a series of (arguably minor) infractions—none of which were discussed with the dumpee. Commenters cheered the dumper on for “recognizing the signs” and standing up to “gaslighting.”
When you look at the science of friendship, however, it’s hard to see cutting ties as a form of self-care. We all know friendship is good for us, but it’s hard to overstate just how good. Researchers have found that people who have five or more friends they feel comfortable sharing their struggles with are 60 percent happier than those with four or fewer, implying that the loss of a single friendship can put a major dent in our overall life satisfaction. The strength of our social bonds is also one of the strongest predictors of our physical health—as strong or, in some cases, stronger than smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity.
Findings on female friendship are even more compelling. Women who have strong bonds with other women are not only better at regulating their emotions but also receive more emotional support, have more satisfying romantic relationships, experience more career advancement, and make more money than women who don’t have female-dominated circles.
Alarmingly, research tells us that, on average, we lose half of our friendships every seven years. And many end not with a bang but with a whimper. Often, when conflict arises in friendships, it goes unaddressed, says science writer Lydia Denworth, author of Friendship. People just “slink away” or let the friendship “fade” without a conversation or even a cursory breakup text.
Why are we so quick to quit?
Friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson, host of the Friend Forward podcast and author of Fighting for Our Friendships, has a theory. She speaks to a lot of individual clients who complain about feeling a lack of support or reciprocity in their friendships. Her first question is always, “What did she say when you told her?” Often, the response is that the client hasn’t broached the topic with her friend. That’s right: These women are actively seeking friendship counseling, yet many of them haven’t even taken the first step of actually talking to their friend before seeing an expert.
“What’s so weird about friendships is that there are prescribed times to talk about our progress in every other context” but this one, Jackson explains. We have performance reviews at work. There is an expectation in romantic relationships that we should check in and voice our needs. And you can’t simply ghost your sister, because you’re going to see her at Christmas. Professional, romantic, and familial bonds are more culturally valued, and so there are rituals in place to motivate us to work through our issues rather than abandoning them entirely.
And yet, the loss of a friendship is devastating. In her book about being a palliative caregiver, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware writes that one regret is “not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved.” And in their coauthored book Big Friendship, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman point out that being dumped by a friend can feel a lot more personal than being dumped by a lover because “you can’t blame a fizzled-out sex life or an attraction to a new partner.” One listener to the pair’s (tragically defunct) friendship podcast wrote of her sudden split, “It feels worse than any breakup, any job loss, and any family death I’ve experienced.”
A gentler path forward
So rather than ghosting a friend when the going gets tough, make an effort to communicate with respect and kindness. The first line of friendship defense should always be a candid conversation, Jackson says—one free from therapy-speak and corporate buzzwords. “If I've been holding your hair back in the bathroom, I know all your business. I cannot suddenly talk to you like HR—it’s cold, impersonal. And it feels really, really hurtful,” she says. She suggests speaking face-to-face to avoid slipping into stilted language. It’s hard to say, “I’ve identified some areas for potential growth” out loud—and even harder if you’re looking into your best friend’s eyes.
While there is no one-size-fits-all template for these conversations, Jackson does have tips for making them both productive and authentic. She will sometimes do an exercise with her clients where they write down everything they want to say, go back and highlight any sterile or templated language, and replace the impersonal phrases with feeling-centered language. For example, instead of saying, “I really don’t have the bandwidth to plan around your constant flakiness,” try saying, “I feel really hurt when you cancel last-minute. I moved a lot of things around and was looking forward to boogying to Beyoncé
with you.” The changes are small, but they are meaningful: They come from a place of warmth, care, and shared history.
But if you can’t work it out…
If after a conversation (or, ideally, a few), your friend is still not meeting your needs, it doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship is doomed. Rather than questioning whether a friend belongs in your life, it may be worth wondering if they belong in the role you have assigned them. If you have a friend who disappears when you’re struggling but who is a blast on a night out, you might want to find someone else to call when you need an emotional rock and reach out to her when booking a trip to Cancun. “I’m not going to expect something I am not getting and that they can’t deliver,” says Denworth.
There are, of course, instances when a friend is simply not able to show up in your life in a way that adds to it. Maybe you don’t like who you are when you are with them. Maybe they seem to root for your failures. Whatever the reason, it is best to be honest about what’s going on. “A main source of stress for those involved in friendship breakups is when they don’t understand why a friend has exited their lives,” writes Jacqueline Mroz of Girl Talk, a book on the science of female friendship inspired by her own painful friend breakup. “If you know exactly what happened, it’s easier to find closure,” she told me.
So instead of listing every single way the friend has wronged you, try to emphasize the ways you are going to pursue what you need, suggests Jackson. For example: “I think I need to be in spaces where I feel freer to be myself” is a lot easier to swallow than “Here are all the ways you have made me feel small over the past decade.”
By bowing out with grace and honesty, you leave the door open for the friendship to resume down the line, once you, they, or your life circumstances have changed. Denworth recently experienced this firsthand when she reconnected with a group of friends from college. “It felt a little bit like I found a sweater in the back of my closet that I’d forgotten,” she recalls. The friendship might not have been the right fit all those years ago, but “it looks great on me now.”
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