There are times when we may find that a friendship has run its course. Friendships are key to a healthy and rewarding life, and good friends are a factor of longevity. However, poor or toxic relationships are more damaging to your well-being than having no relationship at all. This is when evaluating the friendship is important. So, exactly how did your friendships start?

Friendships are generally started by one of these three factors:

1. Shared Interests: Because our interests may change over the years, friendships that were built on a love of skydiving, a favorite entertainer, true crime podcasts, book club meetups, or running marathons, for instance, might not last a lifetime if the fulcrum in the relationship was the shared interest.

2. Shared Life Stage: Due to the way our lives unfold and our culture is shaped, we spend a great deal of time with people who are in the same age cohort as ourselves. From daycares to playgrounds to elementary through high school, we are all surrounded by agemates. We may head off to school or begin our careers, and though these are very different destinations, we are again among those who are likely in the same life stage that we occupy, such as being an adult to our days since elementary school. When two friends go different ways, the friendship may fizzle out as their paths diverge too widely to bridge the gap.

3. Proximity: Proximity can refer to the people you work beside on the job, the tenants in your apartment building, or your neighbors on the block. The more we are exposed to someone, the more we tend to develop positive feelings about them. Although, if the key to the friendship is proximity, moving to a new desk or a new home may signal the end of the friendship.

Although a person may have thousands of friends or followers, there’s a limit to how many one-on-one, genuine friendships a person can manage. We only have so much “social capacity” to commit to friendships, so it’s totally natural that less close, less rewarding, or more labor-intensive friendships may lose their intensity or value over time. We may feel a little sad when we see that once close friendships become more distant, but it’s part of the process of human development and human limits. So, how do you know if that friendship just doesn’t work for you anymore?

This can be challenging to know exactly, but often when  you feel that you “owe” someone for their friendship, then it’s no longer the type of friendship that brings the most joy. When we feel sorry for someone, that too can lead to keeping up a friendship longer than is ideal. The problem with these types of relationship balances is that friendships should not lead to “one up/one down” situations. Friends should feel that they are on an equal plane with each other, regardless of the differences that exist. But just when will you know the expiration date of that friendship? Here’s one way if knowing.

Sometimes, a friend can’t be present for us the way we want them to be or the way they want to be. When this happens, a good friend will bring up the topic, and a productive conversation will result. Sometimes, friends need to “take a break” from friendships when life is overwhelming them with other responsibilities. Good friends accept that friends have their own full lives, and sometimes there is not enough room for them in their lives.

When you realize that you haven’t chatted with a friend in months but have no desire to pick up the phone, that’s a sign that the friendship may have run its course. Ideally, both friends will realize their friendship isn’t the priority it used to be and be OK with its weakening or dissolving. When neither person is able to commit to a meetup or respond quickly to texts or calls, that may be a sign that the relationship is coming to a natural end. They may not admit to the other that their desire to keep the friendship going has diminished, but their mutual drawing away sends that message. Although what if you wanted to revive that friendship?

People are dynamic, not static, and our needs and abilities shift over time. Circumstances that foreclosed a prior friendship may change and you may feel the desire to reach back out to revive Remember that friendships are voluntary, though, and reaching out to an old friend may not always bring the result you want. But if you feel the urge to reconnect, here are some ideas:

– Send a card in the mail. Getting a piece of snail mail is a rarity these days, so receiving a greeting card with a warm, personal message can feel like a gift.

– Text the old friend and let them know that they’d crossed your mind that day. Include an appropriate meme if you think that they’d enjoy that. If they text back, consider asking them if they’d like to catch up.

– Call them. Let them know you’ve been thinking about them and invite them to share what’s been going on in their lives. Express interest in them, we all like to share about ourselves.

If you ended the friendship in a way that was less than ideal, canceled plans one too many times, and acknowledge that you “let the ball drop” and that you regret it. Even  if the friendship doesn’t get sparked again, you will gain a sense of satisfaction and possibly closure by taking a chance to reconnect. Feeling the need to reach back out can be a sign that you’re carrying baggage that you really need to put down. However, what if you are a friend who no longer fits in that relationship?

Sometimes, we get the feeling that we’re not as important to a friend as we feel that we should be. Some of us might wonder if we’ve done something wrong that we didn’t realize we’d done. But it might not be about you. It might just be that the friendship’s glue isn’t there anymore. Taking an objective view of a friendship isn’t always easy, but it can increase our understanding of what might be happening.

Unfortunately, if you feel that a friend is leaving you behind, it can be hard to accept. It’s important that people develop wide social support networks so that you don’t expect one person to meet all of your social needs. Remember that if someone has too few friends, they may try overly hard to keep the friendship going. There’s a danger in being too needy or too eager to change in order to try and keep a friendship going after its “expiration date.” Such friends are often outgrown by people who are moving forward in life.

Desperation is one of the least attractive qualities in a friend. Sometimes we need to be a good friend to ourselves by doing the inner work we need to do to be able to be the kind of friend we would like to have.
Friendships evolve over time, with many lasting around for a lifetime. What is meant to be is that as we evolve, the people that surround us also change too.  Like all relationships some friendships come with expiration dates. As we evolve, the people that surround us also change. Although this makes logical sense, growing apart from friends or ending a friendship that drains you isn’t easy on the emotional level. It can be confusing and often lonely.

Some friendships naturally phase out. There are some people who grow with us while there are others we grow apart from.  This does not discount the value the relationship has provided or make either person right or wrong, better or worse. We all grow inwardly at different rates and in different ways and our outward lives shift in response. This is especially common with childhood or even college friendships where relationships are often cultivated based on age and proximity rather than common interests, values and priorities. Most of my closest friends today were not people in my life ten years ago because I have grown and changed so much over the last decade. Continue to put yourself in environments where you are likely to meet like-minded people who share your values.

Our friends are such an important part of our lives, and I tend to believe that they won’t expire, at least not so quickly. That is, if we are the result of the people we surround ourselves with, most are chosen wisely.  One of my favorite quotes is, “A friend is someone who knows the song of your soul and sings it back to you when you’ve forgotten the words.”  Surround yourself with friends who you can be your full soulful self with and can be a part of your inner circle.