S2 EP334 – Letting Friendships Fade

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Inner Bonding Podcast. I’m Dr. Margaret Paul and today’s episode is about friendships and why sometimes we need to let friendships fade away.

Many of us are taught that if a friendship ends or drifts apart, someone must have done something wrong.

We tend to think:

• “A good friend would stay connected forever.”
• “If I pull away, I’m selfish.”
• “If I stop reaching out, I’m abandoning them.”
• “If they stop reaching out, they must not care about me.”

But friendships, like everything else in life, are living systems.

Some deepen over time. Some remain steady for decades. Some are meant for a season or a specific reason regarding your learning and growth, and some naturally fade as you and your friends grow in different directions.

If you’ve been on a growth path and some of your friends have too, you might currently have deeper connections with them. But if you’ve been healing and growing and some of your friends haven’t, the connection you previously felt may no longer be there. And sometimes even if both of you are learning and growing, you might be growing in different directions, and your interests and values no longer align.

Many of my clients who are doing Inner Bonding and growing in their personal power, express to me that they are losing friends and this is scaring them. I assure them that this is very common when we learn and grow and evolve, and that in time new more aligned friends will be in their life. Until then, it can feel lonely but fading friendships can be expected if you are on a healing path and your friend isn’t.

Many people cling to friendships long after they have stopped feeling connected because they fear hurting someone, or being judged, or appearing disloyal, or facing their own sadness and loneliness.

Sometimes loving yourself means working things through with your friend, and sometimes loving yourself means letting go and moving on. While some friendships do last a lifetime, many do not. You probably had childhood friends who were very important to you, such as school friends, college friends, work friends, and neighborhood friends. Some may have been central to your life for years. Yet many of those relationships naturally evolved or disappeared. That doesn’t mean they weren’t meaningful and it doesn’t mean they failed. It just means they belonged to a particular time of your life.

We need to let go of unrealistic expectations regarding friendships, because you change and others change. You might not currently have the same interests or priorities or values as some of your friends.

Does your wounded child or wounded adolescent interpret change as rejection, and then judge your friends for not changing in the way you are?

The loving adult doesn’t judge but rather accepts that people change and that even though you might have had a wonderful connection with a past friend, that level of connection might no longer exist.

Sometimes friendships fade because one of you got married and has children, and your life and your friend’s life might be very different from each other.

Have you let go of friends due to being in a relationship with a partner, or getting married? It’s generally not a good idea to let go of close friends because you are now in a relationship. We always need our friends, even if our partner is our best friend. I’ve worked with many clients who realized too late that, no matter how good their relationship with their partner is, they still need the sharing and support of their friends, but if you have neglected your friends, they might have felt rejected and moved on.

Some friendships fall away because you are no longer aligned with each other, but if you have let go of good friends, you might want to think about prioritizing your friendships, as long as there is still a good connection with them.

But sometimes we hold on to a friendship long after it has changed. We know internally that it has changed and that we no longer feel connected with the person, yet we continue investing time and energy trying to keep it alive. If you are doing this, you might want to explore why you are doing it.

Often, the reason people hang on to friendships that are no longer working is because the ego wounded self fears loss, and from this fear, the wounded self judges you, saying things like:

• “If I let go, I’m a bad person.”
• “If I don’t maintain this friendship, I’ve failed.”
• “I owe them my loyalty.”
• “They’ll be hurt.”
• “People will think I’m selfish.”
• “What if I need them later?”
• “What if I’m alone?”

These kinds of thoughts cause fear, so you hang on to friends even though there is no longer a true connection.

Are you hanging on to a friendship from love or fear? It’s not loving to hang on to a friend out of fear, obligation, or guilt. Are you hanging on to a friend because of obligation or guilt, or fear of conflict, fear of disappointing someone, or fear of loneliness?

The loving adult asks a different question. The loving adult asks, “What is loving for both of us?” Not: “How do I avoid guilt?” or “How do I avoid discomfort?” but “What serves the highest good here?”

Sometimes that answer is to invest more deeply. Sometimes it’s to create healthier boundaries. And sometimes it’s to lovingly let the relationship become whatever feels right for it to become.

One common reason friendships fade is that they stop feeling mutual. Have you experienced that you are the one always initiating a call or time together? Are you the one always checking in and trying to make plans?

Are you chasing connection in these situations because you fear what the truth might mean? Are you telling yourself from your wounded self that you must have done something wrong for them to have pulled away, or that maybe if you try harder, they will reach out and care about you? If you are telling yourself these things, it means that you are taking their uncaring behavior personally, rather than remembering that you don’t control others.

Relationships are partnerships and friendship cannot be sustained indefinitely by one person. Of course, there may be temporary periods when someone is overwhelmed, grieving, sick, or struggling, but if a pattern continues year after year, your loving adult needs to pay attention. Sometimes the friendship is no longer a priority for the other person, and this will hurt if you take it personally rather than accepting the reality that there is no longer a connection between the two of you.

The loving adult doesn’t make the other person wrong or make themselves wrong. Instead, you accept reality and move on.

Before we move on, if you’re looking to create more meaningful friendships, I encourage you take my 30-Day video course, Wildly, deeply, Joyously in Love. This isn’t just for partners – it applies to all relationships, including friendships. You can learn more in the description below.

As I mentioned earlier, another reason friendships fade might be your emotional and spiritual growth. Nobody did anything wrong, but sometimes people evolve in different directions.

If you have become deeply committed to emotional healing and spiritual growth, but one of your friends is still devoted to blame, gossip, or victimhood, you will no longer feel connected with each other.

I’ve found that as I’ve evolved in my Inner Bonding practice and continue to develop my spiritually connected loving adult, being around friends who are in their wounded self just doesn’t feel good. And since the research shows that only 20-30% of people are consistently open to learning, this is limiting. But because of my years of practicing Inner Bonding, I can generally tell fairly quickly who’s open and who isn’t, and I’ve become very picky about my friends. 

One of the things that important to me in friendship is shared values. I cannot tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, and any form of violence to people, animals, and the planet. As I’ve learned to define my own intrinsic worth, I easily see the intrinsic worth of everyone and feel a oneness with all of life and with the planet. I love being around people who have these same values.

When values diverge significantly, maintaining deep connection is difficult. Sometimes, like with family who might have different values than we do, we do the best we can, but with friends there’s no point in trying to force compatibility. Trying to recreate the past rather than being honest with yourself about the present can cause stress, because it’s not based on the reality that the previous connection no longer exists.

You might want to be aware that whenever a friendship changes significantly, grief is often present, and grief deserves compassion.

You might miss and grieve the loss of shared memories and shared dreams and shared history, or a sense of belonging and what you hoped the friendship would become. Your wounded self might want to discount and resist feeling the grief, telling you to just move on and get over it. But it’s not emotionally healthy to ignore grief. The grief needs time to be expressed with love and compassion, not as self-pity or feeling victimized, but as a natural response to life’s transitions.

Sometimes friendships end without conflict, or without anyone betraying anyone. They just end due to the lack of connection – of being in the same place regarding your life journey and important values. But regardless of how the friendship ends, endings deserve to be honored and the more lovingly you allow grief, the more gracefully you move into the next chapters of your life.

Sometimes people confuse loyalty with self-sacrifice. They stay in friendships that are draining, one-sided, manipulative, critical, competitive, emotionally unsafe – out of what they believe is loyalty. But often it’s actually self-abandonment. True loyalty does not require betraying yourself. True friendship does not require shrinking yourself. True love does not require tolerating ongoing feeling drained, disconnection or disrespect.

The loving adult recognizes that attempting to maintain connection at any cost is not loving. There are friendships where your energy consistently feels depleted, where you leave interactions feeling worse than when you arrived because there is little openness, curiosity, empathy, or reciprocity. Instead of judging yourself or the other person, pay attention to your experience, and as a loving adult, take responsibility for tuning into what is loving to you and in your highest good.  

The loving adult learns how to stop forcing relationships, while the wounded self resists moving on, hoping to get your friend to change and feel close again. But given your experience, is this possible? We have no control over another’s intent, and if you are open to learning and they aren’t, you won’t be able to have the deeper connection you want. If you consistently feel lonely with the person, or drained by their needy energy, or bored with the conversation, then consider that it’s time to move on.

Sometimes it’s obvious to both people that the connection is no longer there and the friendship just fades away without even having to have a conversation about it. Not every friendship requires closure. But if you stop being available and the other person asks you why, you will need to be honest and say that the two of you have evolved in different ways and you no longer feel the connection you used to feel with that person.

Or sometimes months or years go by and then you reconnect and there may be a reconnection – or it may never be there again.

If you have been a caretaker, being the friend to listen to the other person but feeling that the other person isn’t interested in listening to you, and you’ve done your inner work and now know that you and your feelings are important, you will likely no longer tolerate one-way friendships. If you’ve been the taker, you might be dismayed when your friend backs off due to your lack of interest in them. When this is the case, you might want to do your own work to become a good friend.

One of the gifts of releasing outdated friendships is that it creates space for new relationships, new experiences, new communities, and new opportunities for growth. When you cling to relationships that no longer fit, you likely have less energy available for relationships that are emerging.

New people often appear when we’re willing to let go of what no longer serves our highest good. But if we’re clinging tightly to the past, we may miss those new connections. The loving adult trusts that connection is not a finite resource, and that love is abundant, and that friendship is abundant. There are always opportunities for meaningful connection, but you have to be willing to put yourself out into the kind of experiences where you will meet like-minded people. I’ve had clients who met friends through a hiking club or a biking club, or in an extension class at a university, or at a church or temple, or in a yoga or meditation or dance class, or through other friends and social events.

The more you practice Inner Bonding, the more discerning you become regarding whether someone is open or closed to learning.

If you’re struggling with a friendship that seems to be fading, I invite you to approach yourself with compassion. You don’t need to try to force connection or force distance. You don’t need to make anyone wrong.

Instead, compassionately ask yourself:

• What is the truth here?
• What feels loving to me?
• What feels loving toward the other person?
• Am I holding on from love or from fear?
• Am I honoring reality or resisting it?

Some friendships are meant for a lifetime. Some are meant for a season. Some transform and deepen. Some quietly fade. None of this diminishes the value of what was shared. Every meaningful relationship leaves gifts. Every friendship teaches us something. And when we allow relationships to evolve naturally, we create space for greater authenticity, deeper alignment, and more loving connections.

Remember that loving yourself includes honoring the truth of your relationships—and trusting life enough to let them become what they are meant to become.

If you benefited from today’s episode and you’re ready to let go of friendships that no longer feel aligned, I invite you to check out my 30-Day video course, Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love. It’s designed for anyone who wants more loving relationships and helps you do the inner work you might need to be able to create loving relationships. You’ll find the link in the description.

Thank you for joining me today, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings on your healing journey.