Breaking up with a best friend is painful. In fact, a friendship breakup can feel just as devastating and heartbreaking as breaking up with your significant other, and that is because your brain does not know the difference between a romantic and a platonic relationship. A breakup is a breakup, and the feelings one feels when they break with a significant other, or a best friend are similar. You no longer have a connection with a person you trusted and cared for, and that requires time to reflect on.
When you think of your best friend, you think of a person who will always be there for you. They are the person who you trust and love and who you know you can always turn to when things are going tough, which is why when you break up with your best friend, you will feel lost, and you will feel hurt. The most important thing to know is that those feelings are valid, and you are allowed to feel those feelings.
The main question that people have after a friendship breakup is: how do you cope when a close friend no longer wants to be friends with you? The main thing people need to do is be accepting because accepting is the key to recovering from a breakup. Many people just outgrow a friendship, and as hard as that is to comprehend because this person was your best friend, and this was the person you thought you were going to be friends with forever, it is the truth. Sometimes friendships were formed when you were younger, and now as people grow and move away from home to go to school, for example, these friendships tend to fall apart.
An end to a friendship does not mean that you should begin to question the friendship. Questioning past feelings, memories and asking yourself if they were genuine feelings and moments is not healthy because they were genuine feelings. You and your best friends had the best of times, yet sometimes some friendships just fall apart and aren’t meant to last a lifetime.
Here are some things that you should do when you are going through a friendship breakup:
1. Acknowledge what happened and give yourself time: You expect to have your best friend by your side, and when that is not the case anymore, you may feel disoriented and upset. Therefore, it is important that you take the time to reflect and think about how you are feeling instead of just sitting on your feelings.
2. Know that some friendships are not meant to be forever: People use the phrase “best friend forever” when they connect with someone and believe that they will always have this person to rely on. However, sometimes people connect with others during a particular time in their life, and sometimes after a major event, like moving away to school, people change, and that friendship starts to slowly fade away.
3. Do not forget the good parts: Like I mentioned earlier, you might feel the need to look back and question the friendship; question where you or they went wrong. You might start to question what you could have done differently, but instead, you should think about how that friendship made you happy throughout the years.
Friendship breakups are tough. You might begin to wonder who you are going to tell all your secrets to, or who you are going to rant to because that person is no longer your friend, but remember that this is not your fault. You should not blame yourself, nor should you believe that you could have saved the friendship by doing something different because you did nothing wrong. We all experience a friendship breakup, and many of us don’t even expect it, but at the end of the day, we’re ok.