Drifting Friendships & Inner Wounds
"I miss you even more than I could have believed;
and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.”
– Virginia Woolf, in a letter to her friend, Vita Sackville-West
Friendships are awakened through a unique bond of deliberate love. Friends of a true and intimate connection find pieces of themselves within each other, grounded in a journey of shared understanding and care. And so, it is easy to acknowledge the sadness that accompanies a drifting friendship. Yet, at times, we find it confusing to understand the intensity with which this sadness makes itself known. Some of us, for example, begin to foster feelings of misunderstood anger and resentment. Others may find themselves unintentionally reaching out for reassurance and validation.
Why do we react differently to drifting friendships, and when do our inner wounds re-open? Today’s blog will address these difficult questions, delving into the psychological concepts of our internal fears and struggles.
Loss Without Closure
Part of what makes drifting friendships particularly painful is that they rarely end in the ways we expect. There is no final conversation, no shared agreement that this chapter has come to a close. Instead, replies become less frequent, invitations grow sparse, and one day, we realize that someone who once occupied a significant space in our lives now exists only in memory.
According to psychologist Pauline Boss, this is what we call “ambiguous loss”. It is a loss that lacks clarity, closure or certainty. Unlike bereavement, where grief is acknowledged and witnessed, friendship loss is often unspoken. We are left wondering whether we should continue reaching out, whether there is still something left to repair or whether we have somehow imagined the closeness we once shared.
And the reason ambiguity is painful is because our minds are not fond of it. In many ways, certainty, even painful certainty, can feel easier to tolerate than prolonged uncertainty. Perhaps this is why drifting friendships can linger in our hearts for years. We are grieving in the absence of a goodbye.
Yet, ambiguity does not necessarily imply fault. Adult friendships are continuously shaped by changing circumstances, such as careers, parenthood, migration, illness and growth. Sometimes, two people simply stop inhabiting the same season of life. Understanding this does not always lessen the pain, but it may soften the tendency to interpret another person's distance as evidence of our own unworthiness.
And yet, there are moments when the pain feels disproportionately large. A delayed response leaves us unexpectedly anxious. A friend pulling away evokes an intensity of sadness that feels strangely familiar. It is then that we may gently ask ourselves: Am I grieving this friendship, or am I grieving something much older?
People We Have Internalized
How we react in relationships is impacted by the scripts we have internalized as children. The most popular theoretical foundation for this statement is the attachment theory developed by John Bowlby. However, many other psychological theories reflect the same notion, from cognitive to neurological models. At the core of it, most agree that as humans, we tend to follow the past tracks of love and care that have been ingrained throughout our development. And, while many of us grow to be resilient, flexible and smart individuals, these tracks sometimes leave small traces – inner wounds of forgotten pain.
Friendships instil in us feelings that we cherish: safety, warmth, care. Acknowledging the potential loss of such relational gifts can trigger inner pain, familiar to what we have possibly struggled with previously. For example, let’s consider the two common wounds of relational pain:
The wound of abandonment: This wound of abandonment forms when someone's early relationships taught them that closeness could disappear without warning. The nervous system learns that connection has to be actively maintained or it will vanish. In friendships, this potentially shows up as over-texting, over-apologizing, checking in repeatedly or chasing the friendship to fill any silence, because silence itself starts to feel like proof of loss.
The wound of rejection: When vulnerability once led to criticism or exclusion, the pain manifests as a fear of rejection. To protect oneself from this pain, the core fear becomes being found unworthy of connection. Sometimes, it can come up in a simple thought of "If I pull away before they do, it doesn't hurt as much."
In fact, these wounds are not just psychological. Much of it can be even tracked neurologically as our bodies prepare themselves for re-enactment of past experiences. Research shows that the distress triggered by rejection or exclusion draws on some of the same neural circuitry the brain uses for physical pain. A recent systematic review even concluded interesting comparisons, showing that this social pain responds to interventions known to reduce physical pain. These interventions significantly reduced both the subjective experience of social pain and the neural activity in these pain-related brain regions.
Hope for What Is To Come
The pain that you feel in drifted friendships is real, psychologically, emotionally and neurologically. How we respond to this pain is impacted by our own experiences, emotions and internal beliefs.
Today’s blog is a confirmation that your relational pain is universal, humane and worth addressing. If you’ve sat to wonder, “Despite all my other friends, why is this loss painful?”
I am writing to tell you, there will be many answers to this question. Most of which are held within you, and just require a listening ear and guided reflection