My best friend ended our friendship out of the blue and didn't tell me why. Therapy helped me learn how to make new friends.
When my best friend of over a decade ended our friendship, she wouldn't tell me why.
I was devastated, and it shook my confidence when it came to friendship.
I sought professional help to recover from the breakup, and now I have a new group of friends.
In 2019, when my best friend of over a decade broke up with me, I was completely blindsided and an utter mess. I've had romantic partners end relationships with me before, and all those heartbreaks combined didn't hurt as much as my best friend looking me in the eye and saying she didn't want to be in my life anymore.
Before she confessed this, things in our friendship felt relatively normal. We'd just taken a trip together to Florida, attended our monthly bingo night at a local bar, and bought concert tickets to see an artist we loved.
While I'd noticed that her tone was more matter-of-fact in text messages and that she did seem more booked than usual with work and other friends, I chalked it up to her being busy. So when I asked her in person if everything was OK with us and she said she didn't want to be my friend anymore, I first thought I was being pranked. I begged her to tell me what I did wrong and to give me a chance to fix whatever she thought was broken between us; she said that she didn't have a reason to share and that our friendship was over.
For weeks, I asked if she would be open to talking. She ignored me and blocked me on social media without responding to my messages.
Years later, I still don't know what happened between us. But her decision to end our friendship wrecked me and made me lose confidence in my ability to be someone's friend.
I've spent the past few years working on myself and my views about friendship. With the help of my therapist and a friendship coach, here's how I recovered from this breakup and changed how I approach friendship, which led me to make an entirely new group of friends.
I started therapy to try to understand what happened
A few months later, I started seeing a therapist for the first time. I felt a deep sense of abandonment and low self-confidence that went beyond this breakup. Losing a best friend brought all of these issues to the surface, and I wanted help figuring out when these feelings began and how to process them.
I learned there are many reasons someone walks out of your life and it doesn't always have to do with you
During our first few sessions, my therapist and I chatted about my friendship with this person and other friendships I've had, beginning in childhood. My therapist helped me spot a common thread: The bullying I experienced as a kid made me nervous that people in my life were either there for the wrong reasons or would surely leave me. As we processed these deep-rooted beliefs, she also helped me understand that when people decide to break up with you, either in friendships or romantic relationships, it's not always because of you.
She shared that relationships end for many reasons. Sometimes it's because of how a person feels about you, which might not be something you can control. When we discussed my recent friendship breakup, my therapist concluded that she probably felt one of two things. Maybe she didn't have space for me in her life anymore. I had just moved in with my long-term boyfriend, was enjoying success in my entrepreneurial career, and often vented to her about one-off moments of drama. Perhaps my personality, energy, and current circumstances were too much for her to handle or process; it just would have been nice for her to communicate that.
Another reason could have been that she was consumed by jealousy she couldn't get past. She was single and wanted to meet someone, and her career wasn't going as well as she hoped. She might have viewed where I was in my life at the time as something she had to compete with. While I never intended to make her feel bad by talking about my life, it might have come across that way and made her feel jealous.
Because she wouldn't give me a reason, it made grieving more difficult. My therapist and I worked on accepting that I'll never know why she wanted to end our friendship.
Vulnerability is what creates deep friendships
In each session, I replayed the last couple of years of that failed friendship to figure out when things went bad. One big revelation I had is that I'm usually very guarded in friendships and don't often show vulnerability.
In the past, friends have mentioned I don't freely share details of my life or express how I really feel. Since I've been blogging about my life since 2011, they often feel they learn more about me online than through our intimate conversations. It's always been easier for me to write about my feelings than talk about them.
My therapist helped me see how a lack of vulnerability on my end could make it tough to create solid friendships. It's hard for people to know me or be there for me if I'm not opening up, asking for help, or giving them details about my life. She also made me see how tough it might be to hear big news in a blog post. For example, when I got a book deal, I didn't tell any of my friends. I wrote about it in my blog and that's how they found out. Many were disappointed that I didn't share the news with them first.
I asked for tools to get better at this for future friendships. She suggested that instead of being a serial question asker, which I am, sharing one personal detail or life update in every conversation with friends is important. Having something to share, rather than just getting other people to open up, can make a friendship more intimate.
I needed help making new friends because I didn't even know how to start
It took me about a year of therapy to be open to meeting new friends. After losing my best friend, I also felt distant from some of our mutual friends who felt like they were caught in the middle. They started to pull away from me, too, and hanging out with them felt awkward. I decided it was time to try making new friends, but I didn't know how. I was in my early 30s, didn't have many hobbies, and worked for myself as an entrepreneur, so I didn't have coworkers to hang out with.
I chatted with a friendship coach who gave me two simple tips to help me attempt to welcome new people into my life.
Be open to starting a conversation with anyone at any time
One of the first things she asked me to do was to be more open to starting conversations with the people around me. When I shared my weekly routine, which includes going to the gym, taking walks in the park, and working at a coffee shop, she pointed out how many people I come into contact with daily. But most of the time I keep to myself; I have headphones in or am scrolling on my phone.
She challenged me to put my devices away whenever possible for a week. If it felt natural, I could start a conversation about something simple such as the weather or setting — like asking someone in line at the coffee shop if they've tried the new holiday drinks.
I made it a goal to talk to five new people every week. While this didn't initially lead to a pool of new friends, it eventually helped me make a new friend group.
Find people who share your interests
The coach's second tip was to go to the same places multiple times to increase familiarity with the people there. I went to the same workout classes, walked the park at the same time every day, and went to the same coffee shop every day at 9 a.m.
I started to see the same people and make connections with them. One of my best friends is someone I met in the park because our dogs started to play with each other daily; we started to meet for coffee, then we started having lunch together, and over time, we grew closer. A person I saw at the gym almost every day for a month became someone I started hanging out with. A few years later, she's now one of my closest friends.
These friendships evolved because of the work I did on myself in therapy and my openness to view the people around me as more than passersby but as potential friends. When I made these new friends, I stuck to my promise to be more vulnerable and shared more with them than I had with previous friends. I was more upfront and honest about myself, my beliefs, and what was happening in my life. This helped us go from surface-level friends to good friends more quickly.
As I've let go of the pain from my best friend breaking up with me, I've begun to understand what friendship means to me and how to form new relationships. Instead of being scared that people will hurt me, I view new connections as opportunities to prove to myself that I deserve friendships that are beautiful and safe, and I can make people who decide to be my friend feel that way, too.
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