Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("When Friendships End")

January 18—24, 2026 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: "When Friendships End"

Opening Line of the Week

This essay appeared in The Atlantic magazine (March 2022)

This is a stellar opening paragraph—in two different ways.

First, it beautifully advances the argument that, over the centuries, no reliable cultural mechanisms have been developed to help people deal with a common human problem—the ending of friendships.

And second, it provides lovers of language with several impressive metaphorical flourishes: an insolent cliché, a proper script for ending friendships, and boilerplate dialogue to crib from.

According to Senior, our culture has rituals, social structures, and shared language conventions for when a marriage ends in divorce or a spouse dies, but these cultural support mechanisms are absent when friends go their separate ways. As a result, when a friendship ends—especially when there’s a sudden and dramatic rupture—the absence of these helpful cultural “scripts” can make the breakup much harder to bear.

For more than 2,000 great opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

On January 13, 1955, this American novelist was born in Hartford, Connecticut (he celebrated his 71st birthday this past week). At age five, he was already an avid reader when he moved with his family to England, where his father assumed an executive position with a British paper company. It was during their three-year stay that he began writing his first stories.

During his childhood and adolescence, he continued his voracious reading regimen—as well as his fledgling writing efforts—all over North America as his family followed his father’s career in the paper industry. After living in Pennsylvania, British Columbia, and Massachusetts, he enrolled at Williams College in Massachusetts in 1972. Even though he majored in philosophy, from the beginning of his studies, he had his sights clearly set on a writing career. He graduated magna cum laude in 1976.

After graduation, he worked briefly as a newspaper reporter before accepting a one-year fellowship in Japan. He enjoyed the experience so much that he extended his stay two additional years in order to teach English and work for Time-Life Books.

After returning to Manhattan in 1979, he was working as a fact-checker at The New Yorker when he realized it was time to get serious about his long-held dream of becoming a writer. Two years later, in 1981, he had made only a few fledgling steps when he met and befriended one of his writing heroes, Raymond Carver. A year later, he began to study under him in a graduate creative writing program at Syracuse University. And in 1982, he published his first short story, titled “It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?” in the Paris Review.

In 1984, he achieved unexpected success with his debut novel Bright Lights, Big City, a bestseller that was quickly adapted into a 1986 film, starring Michael J. Fox and Keifer Sutherland. After that auspicious beginning, he went on to write seven additional novels—including Ransom (1985), Brightness Falls (1992), The Last of the Savages (1997), and The Good Life (2006)—as well as two collections of his short stories.

This week’s Mystery Man is also an acclaimed oenophile (pronounced EEN-uh-file) and the author of three books chronicling his love affair with wine: Bacchus & Me (2000), A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006), and The Juice (2013).

His fifth novel, The Last of the Savages (1997) opens with what many regard as one of modern literature’s greatest opening lines:

This isn’t just a great opening line, it’s also a wry and witty comment on the fact that we don’t choose our families, we inherit them. And while family members can be endearing, entertaining, and lovable, they can also be exasperating, obnoxious, and impossible to be around. To make up for this downside of family life, the institution of friendship is God’s way of providing the happiness that people are unable to find in their own families.

You should know, however, that the idea is not original to our Mystery Man. He was piggybacking on a famous remark from the English writer Hugh Kingsmill, who was quoted in 1970 as saying, “Friends are God’s apology for relations.”

Who is this person? (Answer below)

A Brief Taxonomy of Friendship Endings

Since ancient times, friendships have proven to be the most meaningful relationships that many people will ever have. Their significance has shown up in some of quotation history’s most remarkable observations:

Despite these glowing words, we know that friendship, like all human institutions, has no guarantee of permanence. And the ending of friendships can range from the inconsequential to the catastrophic—as you shall see in my brief taxonomy of friendship failures below.

Neglect

If you’ve ever said about a friend, “We were once close, but we drifted apart,” you’re describing this kind of friendship failure—the most common way in which friendships end. For the most part, these are friendships that have been taken for granted, an expression that means to assume something will continue without giving it the attention it deserves. This kind of ending is aptly captured by the proverbial saying that a friendship is like a garden—those that are not tended regularly will never flourish, and it’s only a matter of time before they go to seed.

Flameout

I’m not sure if flameout is the precisely correct term, but these are friendships—often close friendships—that end suddenly and spectacularly. The rupture often occurs at emotionally-charged events, like weddings, funerals, reunions, or holiday parties, where alcohol is often present. Sometimes a third person is involved, but the spark that ignites the flame can emerge from anywhere—and almost out of nowhere.

Post-mortems of these friendship flameouts, however, typically reveal long-standing rivalries, suppressed resentments, and unspoken grievances that have been quietly accumulating for years. Like a dormant volcano, things seemed stable on the surface, and few people—including the feuding friends—had any inkling that a major eruption was about to occur.

Development Disparity

We saw last week that some people are far better at living up to their potential than others, and when one person in a friendship grows while the other remains largely where they’ve always been, cracks in the foundation begin to appear. In some cases, one person begins to shows signs of pride, or condescension, or smugness, while the other begins to feel a sense of resentment, or envy, or insecurity. As disparities between friends increase, conversations that once flowed easily become less enjoyable, or even strained—and time spent together begins to require more effort than it used to. In some cases, the friendship adapts, in others, it falters or fails.

Lack of Reciprocity

In this kind of friendship failure, there’s an imbalance or asymmetry, with one person over-functioning and the other under-functioning in key ways. The pattern shows up most dramatically in classic giver–taker relationships, and it is also at the heart of the many one-sided friendships where one person is the main performer and the other a member of the audience.

Asymmetry is not intrinsically a bad thing, and some yin-yang friendships work precisely because of complementary differences. Think introvert/extrovert, big-picture thinker/detail person, and planner/improviser. However, when one person begins to feel like a supporting character in another’s life rather than a full participant in a relatively co-equal friendship, it can be the beginning of the end.

Boundary Violations

In human interaction, a boundary violation occurs when someone crosses a clear line that almost all people naturally set about their bodies and their personal lives. Common examples include confidentiality breaches, where a friend shares your private information without your consent, or personal intrusiveness, where you’re expected to drop everything when they call or unexpectedly show up at your home. In male-female friendships, it commonly includes physical touching that borders on the inappropriate or extra-long hugs that feel more like a straight-jacket than a show of affection. Friendships don’t usually collapse from a single incident, but from the emotional exhaustion of having to defend one’s boundaries over and over again.

Values Differences

It happens all the time. We hit it off with someone at work, school, or in a shared activity, and a promising friendship begins to take shape. Then, just as the connection starts to feel real, we learn something about the person that runs counter to one of our deeply held values. The possible “offenses” are so many and varied that I won’t try to list them here, but I will say that I once walked away from a budding friendship with one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met after learning—and confirming—something pretty disturbing about his private life.

When discoveries like this occur early in a developing friendship, no explanation is required. And while courtesy might suggest a “clearing the air” discussion, my own experience is that such conversations often slide into defensiveness or open hostility. Decisions like this clearly need to be made on a case-to-case basis.

Political/Religious Differences

This type of friendship failure could be folded into the previous category of values differences, but it’s become distinct enough—and common enough—to be mentioned on its own. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I never consider a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” For much of my life, that sentiment felt like a widely-shared American norm, with political and religious disagreement assumed to be compatible with friendship, not a threat to it.

That assumption began to weaken in the 1960s and now feels quaint, even antiquated. Political and religious identities have hardened, becoming less about personal opinions and more a reflection of one’s moral character. The result has been predictable: the ending of what were once meaningful and mutually satisfying friendships.

Borrowing & Lending

Going to a friend for a loan can feel natural and harmless—sometimes even easier than asking a bank—because the request is wrapped in familiarity, goodwill, and shared history. Both people may tell themselves that friendship will make things flexible, that everything will work itself out.

But once repayment is delayed, disputed, or avoided, the relationship changes. Conversations grow awkward, resentment creeps in, and what finally ends the friendship is not the money itself, but the strains and stresses of a friendship that has evolved into a lending institution. Speaking personally, I’ve lost two valued friendships by ignoring Mark Twain’s legendary advice on this very matter:

Business Ventures

It happens all the time: best friends decide to jointly purchase a piece of property or become business partners. Such decisions don’t necessarily ruin a friendship, but they immediately make it more complicated.

Trouble begins when the realities of a work environment set in. One friend may work harder, take more risks, or assume greater control, while the other may begin to feel neglected, overpowered, or shortchanged. Disagreements that might have been shrugged off in a friendship take on a whole new meaning when making money—and losing money—is involved. Over time, the only thing that’s clear is the dawning realization that the relationship no longer knows which rules it’s supposed to follow.

Betrayal of Trust

These friendships end when a core trust is broken in a way that cannot be undone—most often through a major form of disloyalty or deception. With betrayal, we’re not talking about petty offenses like poor judgement, social blunders, or jokes that backfire, we’re talking about the relationship equivalent of a major felony.

Back in the days before cell phones, I had a client who was driving to work one morning when, halfway there, he realized he didn’t have his driver’s license. When he arrived back home 30 minutes later, he opened the front door to find his best friend making love to his wife on the living room couch. I can still remember him saying, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love and trust again.” Happily, he was wrong. But if you’ve ever experienced a major betrayal of trust, then you’ve already discovered that it’s almost impossible for a friendship to survive the assault.

Ghosting

Ghosting is a modern term that first appeared in the online dating world a few decades ago and has now gone mainstream. I’d define it this way: abruptly cutting off all contact with someone—almost always without explanation—and no longer accepting or responding to phone calls, text messages, or other attempts to communicate. It’s somewhat similar to the old-fashioned word jilting, which means to cast off or reject someone capriciously or unfeelingly, but in ghosting, the essential features are abruptness and silence. The result is predictable for those who’ve been ghosted: confusion-bordering-on-bewilderment, a tendency for the victims to wonder what they might have done wrong, and a lingering sense of unreality.

Death

Just like a marriage or a love affair, a friendship comes to an end with the death of one of the parties. And when it’s the death of a best friend, the loss can be emotionally and psychologically devastating. In such cases, though, our language doesn’t help, and may even make things worse, as Jennifer Senior suggested in her comments about cultural “scripts” earlier.

With married couples, at least we have words—widow or widower—to describe the one who survives. We still don’t have a comparable word for a surviving—and grief-stricken—friend, even though the problem was compellingly described nearly 150 years ago:

Thanks for your patience as I’ve offered my thoughts about friendship endings. Perhaps some of them will be familiar to you. If you can think of something I’ve missed or misstated, please let me know in the Comments section below.

This week, give some thought to the friendships you once had but that ultimately came to an end. As you do, let your thinking be stimulated by this week’s selection of quotations on the subject:

• No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world. — Aristotle

• Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely admit it) extremely exhausting. — Elizabeth Bibesco

• True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. — Charles Caleb Colton

• Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after. — William Hazlitt

• Don’t flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

• Friend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling. — Harriett A. Jacobs

• To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage. — Samuel Johnson

• Though friendship is not quick to burn,/It is explosive stuff. — May Sarton

• It’s important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not. — Mignon McLaughlin

• You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. — Woodrow Wilson

For source information on these quotations, and more on FRIENDS & FRIENDSHIP, go here.

Cartoons of the Week:

Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:

Jay McInerney

Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:

Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “Humility”

Mardy Grothe

Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com

Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note