Why Friendships Fail

By Ruby

Photo by Bobby Rutledge

College friendships are fickle in nature: here’s how they are made, kept, and ended.  

The friendships we make in those heady days of late-night study sessions and existential musings at 3 a.m. are special. There’s a certain magic that comes with making friends in college. Yet, many of them just disappear. 

The bonding experience in college feels organic, often sparked by proximity. However, unlike a business partnership or a marriage, there aren’t specific rules for friendship. No one hands you a handbook. No one says, “Here are the expectations, and here are the consequences if you don’t meet them.”  

In the business world, if you want to make a partnership work, you talk about deliverables, timelines, and expectations. Your responsibilities are defined. Marriage has its own long list of expectations as soon as you say “I do.” But friendship is murky. Friendship is a vague social contract, and when that contract is not explicitly defined, it’s easy to trip over the fine print.  As time goes on in a friendship, you realize you never really talked about what your expectations were. Do you both assume you’ll be each other’s plus-ones at every single event? Do you expect daily check-ins, weekly hangouts, or is it the type of friendship where you pick up where you left off every few months?  

These unspoken friendship rules can start to mess with your head. It’s easy to assume that a good friend will always be there, but if they suddenly don’t show up to your birthday party or fail to acknowledge your major life milestone, you might start questioning the validity of your bond. That’s when the fade-out begins. The slow and silent drift from talking once a week to becoming a distant memory.  

This isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault. The thing about college is that it’s a time of transition. People change. You enter as one person and, if you’re lucky, leave as someone else. College friendships, by nature, tend to be temporary. You were both thrust together into the chaotic environment that is higher education, but once those forces dissipate, the connection becomes harder to sustain.

This isn't a tragedy; it's just life. People grow, and people grow apart.  

There are some things you can do to maintain your friendships. Communication is key. Making time for occasional check-ins can work wonders. Show up, even if it’s just sending a thoughtful text or paying for a coffee.  

Hannah Hartsburg and Mak Moretto have been close friends their entire senior year at Simpson University. 

“We were in leadership training and we sat by each other and she was talking about going to the gym,” Moretto said, explaining how they met. 

“And then I was like oh I’ll hook you up with the student discount. And we started going to the gym together and we started yapping,” Hartsburg said. 

“That’s what makes a true friendship right there,” Moretto said. “When we first started to get to know each other we went to Theory and we told each other our testimonies and shared that with each other and that brought us close together.” 

They also weighed in on what qualities are the foundation for good friendships. 

“It was so easy to talk to you and you were just so fun. Those are just the characteristics I look for in friends and I was like, this girl is easy to connect with and be friends with, it was just easy,” Hartsburg said. 

Moretto stated that trustworthiness was important to her. 

“Trust for sure. Can you trust the other person with information you tell them, to keep it between you two. Kinda like a relationship honestly. Literally communication, forgiveness,” Moretto said. 

Sometimes friendships require a little bit of maintenance—like watering a plant. Don’t let the years slip away without ever making an effort, because in the end, it’s the small gestures that keep the connection alive. And if the spark dies despite all your efforts? Well, at least you tried, and you’ll still have fond memories. 

According to Hartsburg and Moretto, friendships fade for a number of reasons. 

“Sometimes thinking that you have to update each other constantly…it’s not going to be daily, and I think just knowing that,” Moretto said. 

“Updating each other on the hard things, like when I’m away from my friends I like to call them,” Hartsburg added. 

 Friendships in college are often spontaneous, carefree, and a bit like a road trip with no destination. The key is not to get too caught up in the expectation that every friendship you make in those four years will stand the test of time. Some will last; some will fade.  That’s the beauty of it all. The fleeting nature of college friendships is precisely what makes them special. You get to experience the highs without the heavy weight of long-term commitment. And if some of those friendships do survive the test of time, that’s just the cherry on top. Either way, having friendships in college is important. 

As Hartsburg said, “I feel like in general it is important to have a sense of community around you, it’s important to have friends even outside of relationships.”