It may suck, but it’s inevitable that during your years on this earth, friends will go in and out of your lives. Whether this happens because of irreconcilable fights, or because you’ve just grown apart, it can be extremely difficult to deal with losing some of your closest friends.
Here are a few things that Valley believes you can do to deal with the loss of friendships.
Gain Closure
The most helpful thing to do when working through the end of a friendship is to find closure. If you went through a fight and it ended badly, partially of your own fault, it’s never a bad thing to apologize. It may seem pointless to do, especially if months have passed since the actual fight, but most people will still appreciate the fact that you’re acknowledging your mistakes and taking responsibility for them.
It can be more difficult to move on with your life if a friendship ended for no apparent reason. If you know that you didn’t somehow wrong the other person, it becomes more torturous to think about the ‘what ifs’ and ‘whys’ of the end of the friendship. Just know that there probably isn’t one specific reason why the friendship ended, and you did nothing wrong; it just wasn’t meant to last forever.
If you really want closure in this situation, you could be very straightforward with the other person and ask what happened, but it all depends on whether you truly want to know. However, sometimes it’s just best to let it be, and maybe reach out later in the future, if you feel that’s best.
Make New Friends
A few of the best ways to overcome the end of a friendship are to reach out to other people and actively make new friends, take the time to focus on yourself a bit and strengthen your current friendships and realize, in some cases, that you truly deserved to be treated better and can find more meaningful friendships.
If you decide that you’d like to make new friends after the loss of another, reaching out to people in your classes and on your floor are some of the easiest ways to make great new friends. You can effortlessly meet new people by finding others with whom you can work together on homework and by saying ‘hello’ to people in the bathroom and in the halls.
Focus on You
If you’d prefer to focus on yourself and your current friendships, rather than seeking out new people, that’s totally OK, too! Take the steps to focus on yourself and to spend more time with your current friends. Make a point to hang out with them and make sure they know how much you appreciate them.
Though it’s difficult to face the loss of a friendship, it can help you realize that the friendship wasn’t healthy and that you deserve more. Every person deserves to be happy, and the loss of a friendship tends to illuminate that you should be treated with respect and love.
Sophie Haiman, a freshman, says, “You just have to realize it’s no longer a healthy relationship, and slowly, you kind of drift apart or let the other person go. We need to realize we have to do what is best for each of us, so when the friendship is toxic, it only makes it worse for the two people a part of it.”
If you happen to find yourself in a situation where you’ve lost the friendship of someone close, please remember that although you might feel stuck, you deserve to be truly happy.
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