When a Good Friend Stops Speaking to You

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Relationships are some of the happiest and most pleasant things we can experience. When they’re going well.

And they can be some of the most difficult and painful when they’re not.

I have been a professional mediator for over twenty years, and one of the many types of conflict I encounter very frequently comes from sudden disruptions in previously good, solid-seeming relationships.

How can it be happening? What could possibly have gone wrong?

For my own mediation work, I have drawn on the excellent scholarship from the Harvard Negotiation Project. Two books from this group, which are classics in the field, are Getting to Yes by professors Roger Fisher and William Ury, and Difficult Conversations by professors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

They both offer wise counsel and great inspiration. I recommend them. In my own practice, I deploy a five-step program that I quite often use in situations that involve the sudden disruption of a previously strong relationship. It consists of statements designed to be said by the person feeling the disruption to the other person, felt to be initiating the disruption.

1. “We used to be very close, but something has happened and now we’re not even talking!”

2. “I don’t know what happened. It may be because of something I did. But if so, I’m not aware of it. Please help me understand what it was that caused the problem.”

3. “If the problem was because of something I did, I apologize for it.”

4. “Please understand that I greatly value your friendship and don’t want anything to stand between us.”

5. “I hope we can start over and be friends again.”

This five-step strategy is very simple, but it involves two of the most important and difficult things in human relationships. It involves the willingness to admit to making a mistake. And it involves a willingness to apologize. And they are both essential.

These two actions are especially difficult for men. We currently live in a culture dominated by the winner/loser standards of what is often called "toxic masculinity". Humility is all too often viewed not as a virtue but as a liability and a weakness.

But in terms of getting along with other people and providing a vibrant society where we value one another and show kindness in all our relationships, two of the most valuable traits we can exhibit are an ability to admit our mistakes and a willingness to apologize when we’ve been wrong.

It could help us bring about a better world, with less war and conflict.

© David Evans