Contemplating The End Of A Friendship

Long-term friendships ENRICH OUR LIVES, but what about the ones that BLAZE BRIGHT, then fizzle out? As Abigail Bergstrom contemplates the end of such a relationship, she finds joy in transience

- Abigail Bergstrom

A good friend of mine left my life recently. She hasn’t died or anything, she just doesn’t want to be friends anymore. I can’t say why for sure. Perhaps lockdowns pushed us apart, or we outgrew one another – or maybe the friendship was exactly how it was meant to be: intense and inevitably transient. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, ‘The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.’ Amy and I sure were on fire. This friendship fling was an unrivalled cocktail of adrenaline; we polished one another’s sentences as we discussed the book we’d just read, laced with dopamine hits of frantically messaging back and forth late into the night, and finished with a kick of oxytocin when she’d show up at my place, tote bag filled with groceries, insisting she cook me pasta after a particularly tough day. But on some level, perhaps I always knew the relationship would be – like many things in life – fleeting. Yet it’s left me feeling stung.

Julia Samuel is a leading psychotherapist and author who focuses a lot of her work on change and transience. Her forthcoming book is called