Forget ‘Snail Theory’—Sometimes It’s OK to Let a Friendship Go

It was 2009 on The Hills when Heidi Montag stepped into her ex-best friend Lauren Conrad’s workplace in order to take one last shot at saving their friendship. “How can we not ever move on?” she asks, blue eyes staring into the middle distance, lip gloss glistening beneath the camera lights. Lauren sighs. She’s been here before. “I remember always being, like… so lucky to have you as a friend, and having you be someone who I almost aspired to be,” she semi-whispers, before delivering the final blow. “I feel like since you’ve been with [your boyfriend], I’ve just watched that… slowly go away.” There’s no going back, and they both know it. It hurts to watch, but the friendship is beyond resuscitation.

We hear a lot about pushing on with friendships these days. Friendship theories abound even more than relationship theories do: The “7 friends theory” (the idea that we should have at least seven friends), “Dunbar’s number” (the idea that we can maintain 15 good friends, 50 friends, and 150 meaningful contacts), and, more recently, “snail theory” (the idea that we ought to build friends slowly, gradually, and with purpose if we want to forge meaningful connections). It’s easy to see why we’re prioritizing friendships like this. They are, genuinely, one of the most important aspects of living. One oft-cited meta-analysis found that those with good friends are less likely to die from all causes, including heart problems and chronic diseases. So when your mates send you funny memes, they are literally elongating your life.

But I also think that—like with Lauren and Heidi all those years ago—sometimes it’s OK to let a friendship go. Have you ever come back from a group hang only to feel lonelier than you did before? Or have you ever met up with someone, only to realize that you don’t have that much in common anymore? I had this incredibly smart and funny best friend as a teenager. We did everything together. When we laughed on the bus to school sometimes, I used to feel as though I physically might die from the joy of it. But then we fell out, or we grew up, or someone hurt the other—it’s hard to remember the specific wound—and it was as though gravity was pushing us apart. No snail theory-ing would have been able to save us. Had either of us forged ahead, I truly believe we might have wound up hating each other.

And then there were all the nearly-but-not-quite friends that slipped through the cracks. The girl I went to college with who moved and never reached out. The girl who I see at parties literally every time I go out, but has a boyfriend I just can’t gel with. The guy who asks me to go for breakfast sometimes, but I’m always busy, so then I ask him when I’m free, but then he’s busy, and on it goes. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that friendships are important—maybe the most important thing—but if it feels really hard to maintain one, even one that used to be close, then there’s very little to be gained from attempting to move the earth. There have been times in which I’ve felt anguished that a friendship isn’t working out, only to feel immediately freer as soon as I relinquish control over the inevitable.