It's over

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True friends stab you in the front," Oscar Wilde supposedly said.

Breaking up with a friend, either as the breaker or the breakee, can be just as painful as a romantic split, says Irene Levine, a psychologist, friendship blogger at Psychology Today and author of Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup With Your Best Friend.

We asked Levine about the nature of friendship and breaking up with friends.

Q: We have this idealistic idea that "good" friendships last a lifetime. Is that true?

A: People read novels, watch TV sitcoms, and see movies like Sex and The City that provide a mythical picture of friendships. The large majority of friendships, even very good ones, don't last forever.

Q: What are the limiting factors of friendships? Is it the major life events like marriages and babies, or something else?

A: Women typically undergo a series of major transitions in their lives -- graduations, marriages, moves, becoming a mother, changes in careers, etc. Each of these can be destabilizing to friendships. It can make them logistically inconvenient and also can increase the psychological distance between friends. No two people follow the same trajectory in their lives, so paths often diverge as do friendships.

Q: Why do people find the termination of a friendship as distressing as the termination of a romantic relationship?

A: Because women have such close emotional ties to their female friends, the loss of a friend can be devastating. The two women may talk to each other constantly, share their problems, and have connections through friends and family. To lose a friend whom you thought would be (there) forever can feel even more painful than the loss of a romantic partner.

When you lose a lover, at least you have your best girlfriend to understand and buoy your spirits. It is particularly upsetting when you are dumped by a friend, having no say in the decision and, often, unable to understand why it was made.

Q: What are the most common reasons for dumping a friend? Can these friendships be saved or reclaimed?

A: Although dramatic breakups are the most memorable, the majority of friendships drift apart as women's lives diverge. Some of them are resurrected. For example, if two women drift apart because one becomes a mother, the two may get closer again as the other becomes a mother, too.

If there has been a simple misunderstanding, communication and apologies can go a long way. Chronic problems in a relationship, often due to personality conflicts, are harder to resolve.

-- Postmedia News

Friends have benefits

Five things Rachel Bertsche learned about why we need friends and how to make them

1. Social integration equals longevity.

Or, as Rachel Bertsche puts it, a large network of friends is "a powerful deterrent against an early demise."

The evidence: A 2010 study found that social integration increases the odds of survival by 50 per cent. "Researchers found that having low levels of connection is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic, more harmful than not exercising and twice as harmful as obesity," Bertsche notes.

An Australian study of people 70-plus years old found that those with a large network of friends were 22 per cent more likely to survive the next decade than those with fewer friends. Surprisingly, having a spouse, close relatives or loving children had no effect.

2. It's all relative.

Social scientists use a theory called "social comparison," meaning that we compare our circumstances to those of others, says Bertsche. "It's why researchers say loneliness peaks during the holidays -- inundated with pictures of Christmas parties and loved ones gathering around the tree, our own small dinner party feels not good enough."

She suspects that one of the reasons why she feels lonely is because she watches so much television and enjoys shows like Friends, Entourage and How I Met Your Mother that show frequent and lively interactions.

"If these are the models I live by, I should have three or four good BFFs who I meet for coffee or beers or cosmos every day, sometimes twice."

3. My enemy's enemy is my friend.

Like dishing the dirt about a mutual acquaintance with a new friend? Social scientists call this the "negativity bond." We are more likely to bond over mutual dislike of a common acquaintance than a fondness for that person.

4. The more often you bump into a person, the more likely you are to like that person.

This is called the "familiarity principle" and Bertsche vowed to use it by following up more often with potential friends when they failed to call her back -- two or three times if she was really interested in the friendship.

"If they don't reach out, it's not that they don't like me (well, not necessarily), but that I am not top of mind," she says.

"Clicking," that immediate sense of connecting with someone, has five accelerators, according to Ori and Rom Brafman in Click: The Magic of Instant Connections. Proximity is one of these accelerators, along with sharing similarities, being willing to be vulnerable, being present and engaged and sharing a safe place.

5. Speaking of being vulnerable, intimacy between friends starts with self-disclosure -- you tell friends something about yourself, preferably something that not everyone knows.

This is strengthened with reciprocity -- the potential friend tells you something that is not well-known, says Bertsche. But this has been complicated in the Facebook and blogging age.

Bertsche says she felt like "something of a voyeur" when she read potential new friends' blogs and Facebook revelations before she met them in person, and worried that she might slip up and reveal what she knew when she got to meet face-to-face.

"Because we all Facebook-stalk, the protocol is not to admit it."

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 28, 2012 E1