Study Shows How and Why Friendships End

Social discovery apps are all about finding like minded people and making new connections. One new study has shown the importance of such friendships, but highlighted how sometimes friendships need to die to make room for new fulfilling ones.

Menelaos Apostolou is a Psychologist from the university of Nicosia – and their new study looks into the strategies people use to terminate undesirable friendships. Even good friendships can be hard work, they just need to remain rewarding. Apostolou says in the study:

“The network of friends people can have is limited, so by terminating friendships with individuals who are not good friends, people release space in their network for individuals who could be good friends.”

The study in fact asserts it is for the good of people’s mental health to end friendships that do not have a good balance. You should be getting as much out as you put into a true friendship. 

But how do you end a friendship? The study showed that most people adopt a gradual approach to it, unless there’s some form of inciting incident. Slowly spending less time with a person and making a few excuses to avoid them is done to avoid bad feelings or any kind of retaliation. In that way the winding down of a friendship is more likely to feel mutual between parties.

When a window closes, a door opens, they say. The main advantage of ending a friendship is the time it frees up to find other connections that are more meaningful and rewarding in your life. Online dating through apps has for many supplanted the traditional ways of finding new romantic connections. Could apps and online platforms be the new normal for friendships too in the coming years? Such solutions can certainly take the ambiguity out of situations. When you find a new friend on a social discovery app – it’s much clearer they are there for the same thing as you – and hopefully the balance of a good friendship can be achieved.