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Best Friends Not Forever: Here's How to Deal with Losing a Friend

Relationships

October 29, 2024

Life is stressful. As a teenager, you have to balance school, family, and extracurriculars on top of having a social life and maintaining your friendships. It's easy to get blindsided: often, an issue in a relationship starts small, but when neither party addresses it, it snowballs into a larger issue—a friendship-ending issue.

While teenage drama in pop culture is usually focused on romantic relationships, friendship break-ups can hurt just as much, if not more. Caring for your friend while also protecting your own peace and energy can be a difficult task, but we've got you covered! Here are some practical, psychology-backed tips for how to deal with losing a friendship and come out on the other side a better, stronger, and more mature version of yourself.

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#1 Acknowledge your own feelings.

It's totally okay to feel hurt. It's totally okay to miss your friend. It's totally okay to feel like you want to destroy something because you're mad at them! Regardless of what you're feeling, acknowledging your feelings is the first step to healing.

If you've lost a friend before, you know this feeling all too well: you might get random reminders of them throughout the day if you hear a song, see a TikTok video, or suddenly remember something the two of you did together. When this happens, it can be really confusing—after all, you definitely had some good times together—but instead of cherishing the memories, you just feel hurt. Or angry. Or upset.

Whenever this happens, be kind to yourself. Acknowledge that this person once played an important part in your life. Try to identify what emotions you're feeling at that moment—is it anger?

Sadness? Nostalgia?—and assess whether these feelings are helping you heal, or just adding more to your hurt.

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If the emotions you feel when you're reminded of them are largely negative, then it might be time to start setting some boundaries. While this looks different from person to person, some good starting points include limiting how often you go on social media, abstaining from listening to specific playlists, and avoiding interactions with other triggers. Remember that these limitations aren't meant to be in place forever—they're just ways to give you the space to process and heal.

Even then, it's still completely normal to think of your friend from time to time. Our friends are a stable source of dopamine (read: they make us happy), so when our brains are deprived of that dopamine, we try to replicate their presence by thinking of past memories or imagining future scenarios.

When this happens, it's hard to simply suppress the thought. What I prefer to do is let the scene play until the moment we say goodbye to each other, clearly visualize the farewell, and do something else right away—whether it's homework, chores, or dancing to K-POP.

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#2 Let go of your expectations.

This is probably the hardest step.

In relationships, it's totally normal to have expectations for the other person. For example, if you message your friend something serious, you might expect a response. If you do a favor for them, you might expect that favor to be reciprocated, and vice versa. Some of these expectations are explicit—if you agree on a time to hang out, for example, you expect the other person to be there—but some of them are implied, and that's where the gray territory begins.

Unless you've communicated a clear plan moving forward with your friend, like limiting contact or not interacting in person, let go of your expectations for how they'll behave around you. Let go of the expectation that they'll miss you or cherish the memories you had together.

Now that you're no longer friends, allow yourself to slowly let go of the things you expected from them during your friendship—whether it be having regular check-ins, sharing things, or engaging in interesting conversations—and know that those things aren't being expected from you anymore, either.

Let go of your expectations for yourself, too! Don't expect yourself to get over the breakup in a week, a month, or a year. Don't expect yourself to be completely nonchalant if you see them in person. If we set unrealistic standards, whether it be for ourselves or others, we can set ourselves back a lot when our standards aren't met.

By letting go of our expectations, we liberate ourselves and others, and we allow ourselves to heal.

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#3 Reinvest in other friendships, hobbies, or interests.

What do you do with that massive hole in your life? Fill it with other things!

Is there a hobby you've been meaning to try? Are there friends you haven't talked to in a while? Are there interests you once shared with your friend that you can bond with others over?

There are so many things that can spark your joie de vivre, take your mind off the situation, and help you realize what an amazing friend, writer, artist, musician, scientist, and person you are. Losing a friendship doesn't and shouldn't stop you from pursuing all the things you love. Use this space you have as a chance to reconnect—who knows, maybe you'll end up making a new friend, or re-discovering an old passion of yours!

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#4 When the time is right, reflect.

There's no formula for this, but there are some good signs that you're ready to look back on the situation through an objective lens and reflect productively on your mistakes and areas where you have room for growth.

If being reminded of them doesn't evoke feelings of anger, sadness, and resentment, and you're able to cherish the happy memories you had together and the good they brought into your life while still acknowledging that your friendship has run its course, then you're definitely ready!

Acknowledge the mistakes you made, learn from them, and move on. Acknowledge the other person's perspective as well. Don't wallow in guilt—apply the lessons you've learned from this friendship to your other relationships.

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Remember… we're all just kids at the end of the day.

Unless either of you has committed some horrible, heinous crime, we're all just teenagers trying to figure out how to navigate the world and find our rightful place in it.

It's okay to make mistakes—even mistakes that might have contributed to the end of a friendship. A conflict between two friends is NEVER just one person's fault and it does not define your character or your ability to make long, meaningful, and deep friendships in the future.

Jaiden Li
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Jaiden (Mengan) Li is an aspiring linguist, writer, and computer scientist. Born in China and raised in Singapore, she now lives and attends school in the Greater Boston area. In her free time, she enjoys learning foreign languages, programming, reading [fanfiction], playing the piano, and listening to K-POP.

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