The five most common reasons friends fall out – and what to do about it

From political differences to secret sharing, here’s how to fix a floundering friendship (and when to walk away)

Jessica and Claire have been best friends for over 30 years since they met at college. Now they live on other sides of the United States, but once a year they meet up for a girl’s weekend with Emily, the third member of their close-knit friendship group from student days. 
“It’s generally the only time we see each other, but for the last few years, Claire and I have been nitpicking at each other over dumb stuff,  which then blows up into an argument. Last weekend, it got to the point where both of us said we can’t do this anymore, it’s just not fun for anybody,” says Jessica,55. 
Jessica had heard about a growing trend for “friendship therapy” where two friends see a therapist together in an attempt to work out their issues. “We were at do or die point, either fix the friendship or end it, but we both wanted to try and salvage what’s been an important relationship for us,” says Jessica. 
Jessica and Claire are now seeing Barbie Atkinson, a psychotherapist in Texas, who offers friendship therapy.  Friendship clients make up 25 per cent of her business. 
 “I see lifelong friends, business partners who are friends, friends who disagree over politics, the usual stuff. It’s not so different from couples therapy, but instead of talking about sex or co-parenting we might talk about trust and communication,” she says. 
While it might sound like an awkward process that would be unlikely to flourish on this side of the Atlantic, the trend for friendship therapy shows that people often struggle to fix floundering friendships. Yet multiple studies demonstrate that we should try, with research showing that good friends protect us against depression and anxiety, lower blood pressure, help us live longer and even make us less likely to catch a cold. 
“Friendships have always been presented as something that should come naturally,” says Danielle Jackson, friendship coach and host of the Friend Forward podcast. 
“There’s literature to help with marriage and parenting, but we so often look at friendship as a space where if you have to try there’s something wrong with you. I hear a lot of shame from people who say, ‘I should have this figured out by now.’” 
Yet all the experts agree that like any relationship, good friendships take work. Here’s how to fix the most common friendship fall-outs, and when you should walk away. 
Birds of a feather tend to stick together, and if you and your friend have drastically different values, whether it comes to contentious issues like politics, parenting or money, then it can lead to arguments and conflict.  
Robin Dunbar is a Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford University and the author of “Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships.” 
“We tend to like people who are very similar to us, and that is what we call the Seven Pillars of Friendship, which is kind of like a supermarket barcode of who you are as a person, your likes and dislikes, your age, gender, and psychological profile,” he says. 
Discovering your friend sees the world differently can be challenging, although not insurmountable. 
Nina Badzin is a friendship agony aunt and hosts the podcast Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. “The minute one friend tries “converting” the other to her side, things will go south. This applies to politics too. Nobody wants to be lectured by their friends.” 
The key here is tolerating your friend’s views and not allowing an argument to happen. “You’re not going to convince anyone to change their politics, so it’s about acknowledging openly this is a subject they can’t talk about together,” says Barbie Atkinson. 
Make clear to your friends that you’re not judging them. “Our human brains have a hard time feeling like we can both be right, so friends need to make it clear that they still like each other, they still support each other, despite their differences,” says Shasta Nelson, the author of three books on friendship and the host of the podcast, Frientimacy.  
If you and your friend have grown apart, you feel judged by them and have few things left in common. 
“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little” goes the famous quote attributed to Gore Vidal. We’re supposed to be happy when our friends do well, but it can sometimes lead to problems, due to a lack of symmetry – a key element of a good friendship. “Relationships across financial disparities can succeed but often have something strong underpinning them, like a childhood friendship, or common interest,” says Robin Dunbar. 
“If that isn’t the case fissures can open up, like the poorer one feels they have to match the spending power of the richer one, and that if they let the friend pay they might not be pulling their weight. They then might decide they can’t afford to go out with their friend again,” he adds.
Similar problems can arise if one friend is in a relationship and has children and the other isn’t. “Sometimes people don’t have space in their life, and when they fall in love they have less time to maintain their friendships. One Australian study found that one of the commonest causes of social isolation in middle-aged men was that everyone else in their group was married with children,” says Robin Dunbar. 
People’s lives change and it’s important to accept you won’t always be at the same stage. Be courageous and communicate how you feel without blame. “If you feel like she’s forgotten you since she got married, find the courage to say ‘Hey I know you’re in the honeymoon stage, but I miss you, can we do our Friday morning Facetimes? Or say – ‘Hey I know we used to go to these five-star restaurants, but for the next couple of months can we get a bottle of wine and hang out at the house, until I’m back on track?” advises Danielle Jackson. 
Sometimes, when we try to address the issue, we’re rebuffed. That’s the moment to accept that our friend’s life might be too busy for us right now and to take a step back. This doesn’t mean you have to take it personally or that you can’t be friends in the future. 
For women in particular feeling emotionally supported by their friends is vital, as is the fact that friends are trustworthy and not competitive. “For women, the three important things are symmetry, secrecy and support. Symmetry is a feeling of balance, that everybody is equal. So I often joke that, like with a group of men, if one guy says, ‘Oh, I ran five miles last night’ and another says, ‘I ran seven miles’, it might be annoying, but it’s not a threat to the relationship. Should a woman believe she’s superior that is going to be an issue, because we value egalitarianism. The second is secrecy and sharing self-disclosure. There’s an issue if you’re sharing, but she doesn’t share with you. Or she shared your secret with someone else.
And then the last one is support. The number one thing that women look for in their friendships is emotional support. When you think about conflict, most things come down to these three things,” says Danielle Jackson, friendship coach. 
The problem is that many of these things can be very subjective. “We rarely communicate what we need because we subscribe to the idea that if you’re a woman, you should naturally know, and it shouldn’t have to be said,” says Danielle Jackson. A risky conversation may be needed to express how we’re feeling. “Is there a risk she gets angry or sees this as an attack? Possibly but people tell me how hungry they are for connection, yet they are also very conflict-averse. On the other side of healthy conflict is platonic intimacy,” says Danielle. 
You’ve tried talking to your friend and it didn’t help. Or maybe the positivity and fun has gone and the relationship just feels competitive, exhausting and negative. 
Friendship “poaching” seems to be more of an issue for women than men. “Women are more likely to spend time in small groups or with one other good friend than men. You see this in the playground – girls are discussing the state of the world with their best friend, whereas boys are kicking footballs in larger groups. As a result, women are much more concerned about losing a friend, which can make them unwilling to share,” explains Robin Dunbar. 
And yet there are so many benefits to introducing our friends and it’s also how most of us make new friends. “The contradiction that I point out is people will say to me in the same conversation that they desire a friend group, that they are hungry for community, but then they simultaneously want to keep their friendships in silos,” says Jackson.
“If you’ve introduced friends and then they spend time together, and you’re a person who is sensitive to rejection, you are going to read that differently than a person who is more self-assured and confident in that friendship,” says Jackson. It’s important to really dig deep into your anxiety, and honestly assess how much of that is driving your interpretation of events. 
“If you genuinely believe a friend is coming in and doing little things to try to cut you out and be manipulative you should discuss it by saying something like, ‘Hey, I noticed that you guys have been hanging out, and I love that you’re building a friendship, but sometimes I suspect that she’s not including me in the invitations,” says Jackson. 
When it comes to friendship groups, it helps to have a good diversity of friends so you don’t find yourself relying on one specific group.
If you talk to your friends and they show no concern for your feelings, that is very revealing. “There are some women who maybe are opportunistic or competitive and have a goal of taking your friends from you or will deliberately leave you out. I will also say that a lot of women have that anxiety unnecessarily,” says Jackson. 
The biggest grievance that all friendship experts hear is people complaining that their friendships aren’t reciprocal and they’re the ones that initiate meeting up first. Over time this can turn into resentment. 
“One friend feels she always texts first, that she’s the only one who reaches out and the friendship would end. Reciprocity also looks like one friend doing all the talking and never asking about the other person; one friend doing all the sharing while the other friend doesn’t open up; one friend making all the accommodations like driving the furthest to meet up,” says Nina Badzin. 
Sometimes reciprocity means different things to different people. Perhaps your friend always pays for dinner or is an amazing listener but finds it difficult to organise their time. It’s important not to take that personally. 
“Every relationship has what I call chores, and just like my husband and I split the chores in our house, it does not mean that I vacuum half the house and he vacuums half the house. He vacuums the whole house, but I do almost all the cooking.
There are healthy relationships where one person does most of the initiating, and that is okay, as long as you feel like the other person is reciprocating in other ways. Try to judge it by how good it feels when you’re with that person, and is this a fulfilling time when you’re together?” says Shasta Nelson. 
“At the end of the day, one of the trademarks of friendship is a reciprocal relationship. If it’s just one way it becomes something else entirely,” says Danielle Jackson.
Sometimes there is a mismatch between how close the friends want to be. “It may be that you see them as a tier one friend, but they might see you as a tier three, and then the question becomes are you ok with that? Maybe she still makes you laugh, and you can manage your expectations. But if you’re disappointed, you need to turn your attention to people who can reciprocate in that way,” says Shasta Nelson.