Ghosting, Fading, and the Unfinished Endings of Modern Friendship
The quality of our connections isn’t just measured by how well we begin them, but by how gracefully we let them transform.
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with unanswered texts. You send a message. Then another. You could try a different platform. Eventually, you stop trying. The friendship hasn’t ended with a conversation or an argument. It’s just... evaporated.
So much communication today seems to fizzle out. You might have been chatting to a likely prospect on a dating app, or messaging someone you’ve known for years. Maybe it’s the easy convenience of modern messaging tools, instead of the deliberate and detailed written letter? All too often, closure seems elusive.
Romantic breakups regularly come with rituals and social scripts - these may be deeply traumatic or surprisingly benign - but there will inevitably be many communications even in the worst circumstances.
Even long-time friendships can end without explanation. Someone drifts away, messages go unanswered, and suddenly, a once-close connection exists only in your photo library. So why do friendships end this way, and is there a better path forward?
The Disappearing Act
The term “ghosting” usually conjures images of dating apps and ignored texts from potential romantic partners. But research shows that 38.6% of people have been ghosted by a friend. That’s more than one in three of us who’ve experienced a friend simply vanishing from our lives without explanation.
And the phenomenon is widespread. A recent survey found that 50% of Gen Z and millennials have been ghosted by a close friend, and 49% have admitted to ghosting a friendship to avoid confrontation. We’re not just talking about acquaintances here. These are friendships that mattered, connections we thought were solid until they weren’t.
Emily Langan, a friendship researcher and associate professor of communication at Wheaton College, points out that when friendships end, they tend to end by fading out rather than with confrontation or a breakup conversation. She notes that conversations about breakups are exceptionally rare among friends.
For me, ghosting is a deliberate act of laziness or avoidance. I’m not sure ghosting of friendships is the correct term; perhaps it’s more subtle, a slow fade, a gradual drift apart.
Why We Don’t Say Goodbye
Langan offers an intriguing theory. Research suggests that 70% of our close friendships in adulthood don’t last longer than seven years. Yet, despite this reality, we assume that friendships should last forever. When they don’t, we’re unprepared for how to end them with grace. And I think that’s the crucial point, we assume friendships, like marriage, are until death do us part, except of course neither friendships nor marriages generally last the distance.
Deborah Tannen, who interviewed over eighty women about friendship, found accounts of both cutoffs and ghosting from those who’d suffered from it and those who’d done it. She discovered that for many, explaining why they’re ending a friendship feels like opening a conversation, implying they want to work things out, which they don’t.
“Why cut someone off without saying why? For one thing, explaining opens a conversation, implying you want to work things out, which you don’t. But there’s another reason, too. Many of us find it hard to say anything negative outright, so we swallow our hurt—until it chokes us. Ghosting means still not saying anything negative.”
Tannen is making the point that generally, we don’t want to say something negative, we are poorly equipped to reprimand another person constructively. Hence, we swallow our thoughts and say nothing. Ghosting is how we choose to do nothing because it seems the path of least discomfort, even if it’s more painful in the long run.
The Cost of Silence
The problem is that a friendship is bidirectional; if you are on the receiving end of the fade out, all you are left with are questions. What did you do wrong? How real was the friendship to start with?
Research shows that being ghosted is associated with grief-like emotions, self-blame, rumination, feelings of worthlessness, and trust issues that can affect how someone relates to others in the future. These aren’t trivial impacts. They shape how we approach future friendships and whether we’re willing to be vulnerable again.
Research reveals that ghosting friends can negatively impact the ghoster’s well-being as well. People who stated they had ghosted friends were more likely to report increased depressive tendencies four months later. The silent treatment hurts everyone involved.
I think about my own experience following my separation six years ago. [See The Silent Drift article] I was reluctant to “bother” the men I’d spent years connecting with through kids’ sports and activities. I now feel sad, perhaps a little angry with myself, that I didn’t reach out. I lacked the courage, emotional maturity, and communication tools to pick up the phone. The silence I created to protect myself from potential rejection created its own kind of loneliness.
As researcher Brené Brown reminds us in her work on vulnerability:
“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection”.
But how can we be deeply seen when we disappear without a word?
Not all friendship endings look the same. Research identified three broader strategies for terminating friendships: gradual termination, immediate termination, and a middle ground, with the fade-out being the most popular.
“Participants indicated that they were more willing to use the “Gradual termination,” and less willing to use the “Immediate termination” strategy.”
The gradual fade starts innocently enough. You’re both busy. Plans get cancelled and rescheduled. Text responses take longer. The intervals between catching up stretch from weeks to months. Before you know it, you’re strangers who once knew each other intimately.
Sometimes, the decision to end a friendship wasn’t made by the friend themselves, so both are victims. Life transitions create natural breaking points. One person moves cities. Another has kids. Someone’s partner doesn’t like the friend. The friendship becomes collateral damage to circumstances that neither person fully controlled.
And sometimes, people explained that they would pursue a friendship, then feel overwhelmed by the closeness they’d created and flee. The intensity of real connection can be frightening, particularly for those of us conditioned to maintain emotional distance.
Is There a Better Way?
So if ghosting hurts everyone and the slow fade leaves us feeling empty, what’s the alternative? Langan shares a story that points toward a different path.
She once felt neglected by a friend who prioritised his wife, kids, and other obligations above their friendship. Instead of breaking up completely or fading out, they sat down and talked about ending the friendship they had and maybe starting a new kind of friendship. She told him, “I get it. You have a lot of family demands right now. Based on that, I’m going to walk away here a little bit. We’re still friends, but I’m not going to prioritise this friendship like I did because I don’t think you can either”.
The result? They’re still friends, but he’s not in the inner circle. It’s a mature acknowledgment that friendships can change shape without completely disappearing.
This is where Langan makes an important distinction. There’s a difference between normalising breaking up and normalising ending. We don’t need to import the drama of romantic breakups into our friendships. But we could benefit from honest conversations about what we need and what we can offer.
Sometimes negotiating differences means acknowledging that what you both need from the friendship has changed. I wrote about techniques to reduce relationship fragility in April this year.
I’m not suggesting we need formal friendship breakup conversations for every connection that fades. Some friendships are meant to be seasonal. The mate from your previous job, the parent from your kid’s footy team, the person you bonded with during a particular life phase. These connections serve their purpose and naturally conclude when circumstances change. That’s not ghosting. That’s life.
But what about the friendships that meant something more? The ones where you shared vulnerabilities, created memories, and genuinely cared about each other’s well-being? Those deserve better than silence.
Brown writes that “vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change“. It’s also the birthplace of honest endings to friendships. What if we borrowed a bit of courage from the vulnerability that created the friendship in the first place?
This doesn’t mean elaborate breakup speeches. It might be as simple as: “I’ve noticed we’ve been drifting. I wanted to check in about where we’re at.” Or: “I care about you, but I don’t think I have the capacity to be the kind of friend you need right now.” Or even: “Things feel different between us. Can we talk about it?”
These conversations are uncomfortable. They require us to risk rejection, to name hurt feelings, to admit that something we valued is changing. But they also offer something precious: the possibility of clarity, of mutual understanding, of maintaining respect even as the relationship transforms.
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you won’t get the conversation you need. The friend might not be capable of it, willing to have it, or even aware that it’s needed. When ghosted, research points to strategies that may help you move on and ease the pain.
Acknowledge your feelings. Grief-like emotions are a normal reaction to being ghosted. Accept your emotions and express them in healthy ways rather than suppressing them. Being ghosted by a friend is a loss. It deserves to be mourned.
Seek social support. Talk about your experience with friends, family or a mental health professional. This can help reduce feelings of isolation and low self-worth. You don’t have to carry this alone.
Create your own closure. You may never get an explanation, and waiting for answers will only make it harder to move on. Writing a letter you don’t send can help create closure and is linked to a range of psychological benefits.
This last point resonates with me. Sometimes we need to write our own ending to the story, acknowledging what the friendship meant and what we learned, and letting ourselves let go. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than staying stuck in unanswered questions.
Friendship endings are rarely tidy. Life isn’t a television series where every plotline resolves before the credits roll. Sometimes people drift away, and we never really know why. Sometimes we’re the ones doing the drifting. Sometimes, both people want to stay connected, but life’s demands make it impossible to maintain the closeness you once shared.
The key is recognising that we have agency in how we handle these transitions. We can choose avoidance and ambiguity, or we can choose clarity and compassion. We can ghost and be ghosted, collecting unfinished stories and unanswered questions. Or we can risk the discomfort of honest communication, even when friendships are changing or ending.
As Brown reminds us, recognising and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace. Perhaps that includes the vulnerability of saying goodbye with intention, of acknowledging that a friendship has run its course, of being honest about our capacity for connection.
The friendships that fade without explanation leave ghosts behind. Not the absent friend, but the phantom of what was, haunting the corners of your life with its unresolved presence. We owe it to ourselves, and to the connections that once mattered, to do better than silence. To speak of the ending, if we can. To create our own closure if we can’t. To honour what was, even as we acknowledge what is no longer.
The quality of our connections isn’t just measured by how well we begin them, but by how gracefully we let them transform.