Ambiguous Loss and Change in Friendship
Loss and change in friendship can knock the wind from our sails when we least expect it. While countless songs and movies warn us of heartbreak from romance, far fewer cultural artifacts depict love and loss in platonic relationships. Whether a friendship ends in a blowout fight or a slow burn of canceled plans, realizing that you can no longer count on a former companion is an understandable reason for grief.
I often hear clients and loved ones minimize their feelings related to friendship loss, expressing confusion about the magnitude of sadness, anger, or disappointment they feel when a friendship changes or ends. There are few outlined rituals to commemorate friendship loss, often leading a person to experience disenfranchised grief in its wake.
Disenfranchised Grief in Friendship:
Disenfranchisement occurs when a person or group is deprived of certain rights within their social context. Disenfranchised grief occurs when a loss is socially unacknowledged and does not come with specific rituals for support-giving or meaning-making (Doka, 1989). Most cultures hold practices to help process the death of a loved one, such as prayers to honor the deceased or events that bring the survived together; we are provided a blueprint for responding to death, but it’s less clear, for example, how to comfort a person grieving distance from a friend who has become a parent and can no longer offer the same level of support in the friendship.
Friendship is a type of disenfranchised relationship or bond that is frequently undervalued compared to kin-based relationships, like a spouse or sibling; this disenfranchisement is reflected systemically in a lack of bereavement leave from work after the death of a friend or interpersonally when you receive more supportive texts after a break-up vs. the dissolution of a friendship (Harris, 2020).
Friendships often serve as our most flexible relationships in role expectations (Hojjat & Moyer, 2017); we might call some friends at 3 am sobbing in crisis while meeting up with others annually for a coffee. Sometimes, the same person shifts from the former to the latter role within a lifetime. Change in closeness can feel natural to both parties, or the distance can leave a sense of emptiness and confusion. The friendship has not been lost completely, but the same camaraderie no longer exists. A person might question whether anything has been lost at all. This is a form of ambiguous loss.
Ambiguous Loss in Friendship
Family therapist Dr. Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” in the 1970s to define losses that “remain unclear and without resolution” (Harris, 2020, p. 73). For example, after drifting from a friend, one might sense the relationship is over but lack clear communication or insight about what happened. I have had the experience of learning a friend was married by clicking on their Instagram story and thinking, “I feel like a stranger to this person who I once called my best friend.”
Grief is universal and encompasses a breadth of losses, including but not limited to death: moves, changes in values systems, acquired disabilities, LGBTQ+ experiences, change in religious affiliation, or simply having a friend cut ties with little explanation—can all trigger grief. Each of us moves through complex forms of loss in all our relationships. I asked people to share their experiences of ambiguous loss in friendship and how it affected them mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This is what they shared, along with strategies they used to begin processing their grief:
Ambiguous Loss After Moving
“After my best friend moved schools in the 10th grade, it always seemed like there was an inexplicable wall between us. While our hearts are connected… The realities of our lives keep us on different paths. I always hope that we’re going parallel, but there is a sense of insecurity that he may never be a regular part of my life again. Even if circumstances allowed us to be in the same place, we might have grown to have the past together. I fear that.”
• Strategy: Name the feelings associated with grief. Research shows that simply labeling our emotions helps alleviate their intensity (Fan, Verol, Veramesh, et al., 2019). • Strategy: Consider telling your friend how you feel. Especially if the distance between you is circumstantial, your friend may be unaware of how painful it is for you and may even feel the same. Sharing this information could rekindle closeness, even if it looks different from before.
Ambiguous Loss After my Friend had a Mental Health Crisis
“ I had a very close friend in college who had an abrupt psychotic episode that pretty permanently changed him. He was never the same person after that. I definitely thought of him as a lifelong friend. We had been close friends for four years. It was really sad, but it was confusing because we still talked. It took a long period of time for me to accept that he would never be the same and that I really did lose him despite us still staying in touch.”
• Strategy: Identify and validate the nuance of your loss. Even when a person is still in your life, the relationship's elements may be gone. Whether it be an intellectual connection or a shared interest, it is important to specify what was lost.
Ambiguous Loss When my Friend Started Dating
“We used to live our lives in tandem, spending hours talking on the phone in the evening, building our weekend schedules together. When I craved a deepening of a growing partnership in our friendship, he inevitably pulled away, seeing partnership as something he only wanted in the context of a romantic relationship. When he started dating someone, not only did I feel replaced, but in many ways, I was replaced. There was someone filling the role I once played. We continue to have a real and deep friendship, but I had to grieve the loss of our partnership. For my own protection, I allowed distance to grow between us.
• Strategy: As much as it sucks, practice adjusting to the new reality. This could mean allowing distance by letting yourself do activities you pictured with them, with someone new. While making these sorts of choices can bring sadness, they can also bring growth and acceptance.
Ambiguous Loss when Graduating
“I distinctly recall sitting in classrooms before graduation and reflecting on all the ups and downs of my different relationships at school. While I felt excited about the future, I felt a sense of loss knowing that all my relationships with friends, acquaintances, professors, and mentors would transition into a new phase with less interaction or even end completely. I found myself staring into space with a constant, dull pain that was so heavy yet also so cathartic.
• Strategy: Reflect on your relationship history and what it has meant to you. Know that change in friendship is normal but can bring about heavy emotions. Try to work through those grief emotions rather than avoiding them. Knowing the story of the relationship you are grieving can help you get started.
We grieve the myriad of disconnections that are a natural but painful part of life. Knowing that grieving is a lifelong process that gets easier the more we allow ourselves to feel and understand it. Here are some steps that might help you to create clarity:
Steps to Help Process Grief:
1) Name the source of your grief. Loss in friendship is often overlooked. It might take reflection through writing, art, or talking with a safe person to identify what was lost and how grief emotions were triggered. Are you questioning whether to invite a friend to a party and feel saddened because they would have been first on your guest list before? Do you wish you could pop next door to say hi to a friend who now lives across town? There is no loss too small to trigger grief. Be honest with yourself and articulate what is at the root of these feelings.
2) Accept Ambiguity and Challenge Binary Thinking. Some losses are more definitive than others, allowing for a greater sense of closure. We, as humans, tend to prefer certainty, but this is not always possible. Allow for flexibility in your thinking. This means acknowledging the multiple truths of a situation. Start by noticing binary thinking and then nuancing your thoughts. Here is an example:
• Binary thought: “After she moved away and stopped calling, I realized she never cared about me at all.”
• Rephrase with nuance: “When she stopped calling, that really hurt me. At the same time, it does not undo the care she showed in the past.”
3) Honor positive memories: It can be easy to forget beautiful moments once shared with a friend and hyper-focus on hurtful endings. By allowing yourself to acknowledge positive memories and your grief and hurt, you honor the fullness of the relationship and how it shaped you.
4) Make meaning. Explore how the loss impacts your identity and beliefs. As humans, we form our beliefs through our relationships. When we lose an important friend, life can feel unpredictable. Our core expectations for relationships may have been shaken; ask yourself how your loss has re-shaped your views on trust or fairness. Do you find yourself less drawn to certain activities? Are there aspects of yourself that have changed due to your loss? Naming how this loss has changed, you can help validate its significance.
5) Live with the facts of today to build new dreams for the future. We formulate hopes for the future based on our current understanding of reality. Maybe it’s the road trip you always planned to take with a friend or the wedding toast you wanted to give. It’s possible to feel stuck living hoping these dreams will come true. They may still happen, but they may not. Reassess the facts of your friendship as it exists today, and incorporate new visions for the future based on this information. Maybe you won’t give the wedding toast but can enjoy a dance on the sidelines. This does not mean eliminating hope and moving on from the past, but rather allowing yourself to move forward despite ambiguity.
6) Create rituals. Consider a practice that fits the uniqueness of your loss with your own strengths and needs. When my childhood best friend and I significantly decreased contact with one another, I wrote and performed a short story marking our relationship's slow but apparent dissipation. This process helped me identify the transitions that subtly occurred between us and receive support publicly by sharing my story. Reading the story occasionally reminds me of this relationship's importance in my life. Whether privately or publicly, creating traditions to honor your loss can provide comfort.
My good friend commented, “When I get really close to people, I sometimes hear their voices.” It’s understandable to miss the friendships that made us who we are. Grief is universal, and losses of all forms deserve recognition. By making sense of our grief with each new day, we let ourselves experience the fullness of life. Know that you are not alone in the process.
Sources:
• Doka, K. J. (1989). Disenfranchised grief. In K. J. Doka (Ed.), Disenfranchised grief: Recognizing hidden sorrow (pp. 3–11). Lexington Books/D. C. Heath and Com.
• Fan, R., Varol, O., Varamesh, A. et al. The minute-scale dynamics of online emotions reveal the effects of affect labeling. Nat Hum Behav 3, 92–100 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41562-018-0490-5
• Harris, D.L. (Ed.). (2019). Non-Death Loss and Grief: Context and Clinical Implications (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429446054
• Moyer, A., & Hojjat, M. (2017). The Psychology of Friendship (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.