Friendships are vital to our holistic well-being: Friendships can help you recover more quickly from illness, lower your risk for heart disease, alleviate depression, and even help you sleep more soundly. So when meaningful, long-term platonic relationships end, it can be as painful as a divorce—even though many people don’t think about a friend breakup the same way. If this is the case, even though you may no longer feel the same about them as you used to, you can still wish the best for each other and respect and support each other’s choices without trying to force yourselves into propping up a wobbly friendship. There’s no shame in outgrowing a friendship—it simply means each of you has found a path that works for you, and at this stage in your lives, those paths don’t converge. Moving away from best-friend status in a respectful way also keeps the door open for a future relationship if it makes sense to reignite it later on. Ideally, none of us will ever have to break up with our best friends. But if you do think your friendship is no longer serving you, know that it’s OK to take a step back for your own best interests.
