No one needs to be told how important friendships are at every stage of our life.
So important, in fact, that a social relationship study conducted in 2016 on endogenous opioid (things that makes us happy) found that friendships ignite the part of the brain that makes us feel good.
While a great deal of research has found that having a strong social support network is important for maintaining our psychological well-being, some also suggest that when these friendships are in conflict or generate stress or anxiety, they are more damaging than having no friendships at all.
What causes us to outgrow our friendships?
Although friendships are not always black and white, and like any relationship, they can be emotionally complex and confusing, and the idea of losing friends is painful, regardless.
Outgrowing our people or that person often happens slowly. Different life directions mean you stop hanging out as much, then they’re no longer the first person you go to with news, and before you know it, your contact grows stilted until you practically become strangers.
A simple conversation can get lost in translation and lead to resentment, jealousy, and defensiveness are usually at the forefront of why most friendships break up.
If you are constantly at odds with one another or lack boundaries, it may be a sign that the friendship has run its course.
Feeling like you cannot be your authentic self can make it hard for someone to connect with them on a deeper level.
Best friendships are built from a point of familiarity if you don't have common interests.
So what happens then when we outgrow them?
We often have a romanticised idea that friendships last a lifetime. We see friendships, unlike our romantic relationships, as these ever-lasting relationships that are only disrupted by huge fallouts or massive events that either last forever or come to an end in an instant.
According to Dr Seth Meyers, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist who wrote a piece on the subject in Psychology Today in 2015, losing a friend can be more difficult than breaking up with a lover. And that loss can lead to sleep loss, which we all know is bad for our health.
But why is that, particularly at a time when we are taking profound personal growth and transformation of our well-being, vocal about our mental health, and ridding ourselves of toxic relationships or people friendship breakups?
Also, no one wants a draining friendship or relationship because it simply means we are inviting more stress into our lives, depleting the energy we need to pour into other cups of our lives.
What can you do?
Madeline Lucas, LCSW, a therapist and clinical content manager, contributed to an article in the Well +Good publication on why friendship breakups seem like a failure. According to Lucas, life events play a significant role in whether or not our friendships survive.
The best way we can manage these moments is to make adjustments in how we engage, set expectations and boundaries, and stay true to where we’re at before reaching resentment or inner turmoil.
You choose your friends for what they add to your life at a particular period or life stage. But not every relationship is going to last a lifetime. Seasons! Everything and everyone has their own time in their life. Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of outgrowing a few things and people along the way.
Even though, as we age, there is a general fear that we will become more isolated and people will disappear, so we sometimes maintain relationships out of habit and fear.
There’s a sweetness to good relationships.
Maybe we should normalise grieving our friendships as we do romantic ones. Because we need to acknowledge that friendships are multifaceted as are people and they were tied to different aspects of who we are as individuals or who we were.
Different strokes for different people, although friendships mean different things to everyone, like myself, we build these friendships, and they become our communities because family is spread all over.
But how do you tell someone that you’ve done life with that you are now on paths that are different? If, for any reason, you find yourself at odds with friends, air your problems and try to come to an amicable agreement; if not, part ways with a relationship that’s no longer serving.