Eunseo Kim/ Ending Friendship/ Wed 1-2

Ending Friendships

"The friendship that can cease has never been real". Said Saint Jerome. It is quite tough to agree with him. Ending friendship is not something catastrophic; it just happens. It is not at all different from breaking up between couples. There may be reasons such as betrayal, contradicting values, conflicting characteristics, quarrels, and the list can go on. To briefly state two common factors of ceasing friendships, they are betrayal and different values.

One reason for a breakup between friends is betrayal. Friendship among two or more friends are persisted through trust. Friends trust and rely on each other and emotional bonding takes place between them. Often they talk about their secrets, sorrows and sometimes run people off. All this can take place thanks to strong friendship between one another. However, the pitch of trust and even friendship differs among them. While one friend is totally devoted into the relationship, the other may not. Such discrepancy starts from a minor discord, leading friends to break up relations. For instance, a to-the-grave secret that was told only to the trusted friend may not be of much importance to the other. This difference is what starts a petty conflict to a heavy betrayal. Moreover, other betrayal may take place as well, such as financial issues.

           Differing characteristics or values is another factor of broken friendships. Due to the different background that people grew up, every person has different beliefs or values. It may be religion, characteristic, moral values and more. While some values are surmountable up to some extent, there are others that can never be agreed. The complicated part here is that friends find it difficult to find a middle ground in some values, especially when it comes to different characteristics or religion. I would like to further elaborate by giving my own example. I am an extremely extroverted person who enjoys meeting new people and mingling with them, while my friend was an introvert who liked forming intimate but narrow relationship. She was jealous when I made new friends and wanted to keep me as an only friend in the class. She never tried to understand me as who I am; she wanted to have full control over my relationship. Moreover, we also had conflicting views when it comes to religion. I do not have a religion, but she was a committed Christian. She always wanted me to go to church with her, but I wanted to have Sundays for myself to relax. This argument went on for years; she always looked for the chance to take me to her church and I constantly made attempts to avoid going. Due to the impossible agreement between out differences, we naturally grew away from each other.

           Maybe ending friendship comes from the lack of attempt to keep it. However, I believe that there are some differences that people can never overcome; especially when it comes to the peoples' personality and religious or political views. People do not always have to struggle to keep friendship, if friends do not want each other as friends, that's it. Friendship can meet an end.