Friendships Can Be Seasonal, Just Like Our Romantic Relationships

Sometimes it happens overnight – and you can’t believe it’s over that quick. Sometimes it unravels slowly, after a few missed coffee catch ups or a slightly uninspiring meet up at the pub. Sometimes you can see it coming a mile off, like the pressure from a thunderstorm.

Whichever way a friendship ends, or changes course, it can be a painful, disorientating experience. Experts have even commented that a friendship break up can be just as difficult, sometimes more, to deal with than a romantic relationship ending.

One big reason for this is that we haven’t been given the right language, or perspective, to look at our friendships with when they are coming to an end or changing.

Over the years, when friendships have faltered or failed, I’ve found it so easy to blame my own perceived shortcomings for things not working out. Was I too absent? Was I selfish with my time? Was my approach to friendship too intense? Basically: why has this person left me?

But as my twenties come to a close, I’ve found myself looking at things, particularly my friendships, differently. Many of those that ended, I realised, were rather “seasonal” in nature. They were attached to a part of my life – be it a city, a job, or a post-break up emotional spiral – that perhaps I’ve left behind. So it would make sense for the friendship to expire – or even evolve – as life moves on, and a new season begins.

Just like our romantic partners, our friends come into our lives and bring us love, memories and, if we’re lucky, they teach us important lessons about ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that these people are destined – or even obligated – to stick around until your final days.

We haven’t been given the right language, or perspective, to look at our friendships with when they are coming to an end.

The fact that we expect this is largely down to the “best friend forever” myth that we are fed from our childhood years, according to author and journalist Claire Cohen, who has recently written a book on the subject: BFF?: The Truth about Female Friendship.

“From the earliest age, we are taught that our friendships should last forever. That having a BFF – a soulmate who always has your back – is the pinnacle of friendship, particularly for women,” she tells me.

“While some women do maintain childhood best friends throughout their lives, for many of us it’s not achievable, and sets us up for disappointment. It’s a myth that many of us unwittingly carry through into our adult friendships, and it creates a harmful narrative around the levels of perfection we should expect from our friends.”

Some of my closest friends have been with me since school, some I met a handful of years ago at random house parties. Every friendship – and its expiration date, if it has one – is different. 

Meanwhile, partners in crime that I once couldn't imagine going a day without speaking to have faded into the obscurity of my Facebook timeline – sporadically checked up on when I'm bored, a random like given here or there, a mere shadow of the connection we once had.

Other friendships have ended – or been derailed, at least – with passive aggressive (sometimes just aggressive) WhatsApp messages, or a disagreement on a night out. What I've learned is to try not to view any of these events as failures – more the ending of a season. I feel gratitude for every single one of these friendships, and what they brought to my life at that time.

Besides, the idea of putting the pressure on every friendship to last forever is exhausting.

Claire agrees: “It can mean we spend years chasing an idea of female friendship that doesn’t exist for many of us, instead of appreciating what we’ve already got – or making a wider circle of friends, each of whom brings something different to your life, instead of expecting one person to fulfil all your emotional needs.

“This pressure around the longevity of a friendship can absolutely make you feel like a failure,” she adds.

It’s definitely time for a change in perspective, so these sometimes-inevitable friendship breakdowns or paradigm shifts hurt a little bit less. We should be viewing friendships less as something to obtain for life, and more a gift for a season – no matter how long.

“While I believe that the friendship gaps that open up as our life stages change can often be closed with a little patience and understanding, it’s also important to accept that some friends have a shorter role to play in our lives,” Claire says. 

“We may meet them at a particular time: when we’re going out a lot or rebounding from a break-up. During a particular job or while doing a hobby. That doesn’t mean the friendship is cynical or we’re using them to pass the time; it’s normal for some people to only have a cameo in your life.”

She adds that not only might this friend help you through certain stages in your life before moving on, they might help you to identify something crucial that matters to you when it comes to friendship.

“[Friendships ending] are part of the process that helps us work out what matters to us, and shouldn’t be yet another way for us to feel as though we’ve ‘failed’. Not all friends can be in it for the long haul and I don’t think we say that enough.”

This pressure around the longevity of a friendship can make you feel like a failure.

Another way in which seasonal friendships can work is that your relationship with a friend can shift into a different season altogether. This means that your dynamic may change – maybe you're less close, or communicate less or differently – but the friendship is still meaningful.

Claire suggests that this can be quite common, especially when “the tectonic plates of your lives shift and you're no longer on the same page”. All the same, beginning a new season together through a “shift in closeness” – whatever that may look like – may be a beneficial experience for you both, and your friendship.

“It's not easy because we are taught that our friendships should be perfect, consistent, conflict-free and the same forever and ever," she says. 

"We can get fixated on those things – but just as autumn must follow the warm embrace of summer, our friendships won't always be sunny either.”

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