Recovering from the loss of a friendship is as difficult and as painful as a romantic relationship. Especially when it’s a long-time friendship where you’ve shared your secrets, hopes, and dreams.
A broken friendship can be very sad and hard to process, but in life, the loss of friendships is also inevitable.
Also, losing a friend does not reflect your value or ability to be loved by others. Sometimes it just has to happen regardless of your best efforts, there are reasons people choose to end friendships such as unavoidable changes in life, circumstances outside your control, or the friendship naturally fades due to differences in life paths.
Unfortunately, we have no control over someone leaving us, but that doesn’t mean we have no control over the situation. What we do have is control over our own feelings and emotions.
- You have to make a closure for that friendship: it can include a conversation with each other or journaling for only yourself. It’s a necessary part of moving on.
- Give yourself time to heal after the loss of a friendship.
- Learn to forgive after the loss of a friendship.
- Deal with your feelings: most people try to avoid their feelings because it’s painful. But keeping it all bottled in isn’t healthy. Eventually, you are going to have to face your feelings and deal with them. If you don’t deal with your feelings they will come up somewhere else. Deal with your feelings, talk things through with someone you trust, write your feelings down, cry if you need to, then move on.
- You can learn from the loss of friendship and become a better more authentic friend to others.
- You can seek out new friends, and embrace the possibility that a new friendship may blossom.
No one likes ends. No one likes pain. Not every beginning is meant to last forever. And not every person who walks into your life is meant to stay.
You can’t make someone be your friend, just like you can’t make someone love you. But what you can do is focus on the wonderful friends and people you do have in your life. Focus on the ones who are still there, not the ones who walked away.
Sending you so much love and strength ❤