Relationship dissolution in the friendships of emerging adults: How, when, and why?

Maintaining high-quality friendships is a key predictor of well-being during emerging adulthood, yet factors leading to friendship dissolution—defined here as actions that may decrease friendship quality or end the relationship completely—are poorly understood. Using an open-ended interview paradigm, we elicited 179 emerging adults’ (55.9% female; M(age) = 20.42, SD = 1.54; 95.0% full-time university students) description of their behavioral responses to 53 hypothetical vignettes involving challenging situations with same-gender friends. We systematically coded participants’ 9,487 verbatim responses, identifying three types of friendship dissolution behaviors: completely ending the friendship, distancing from the friend, or compartmentalizing aspects of the friendship. Examining the occurrence of each response across different types of challenging situations, we found that transgressions by friends were more likely to elicit reported use of distancing and ending strategies. We also began to investigate associations between interpersonal goals and dissolution strategies, finding that stronger endorsement of the goal of asserting oneself was linked to greater odds of reporting ending the friendship, whereas the more participants reported that they would be trying to stay friends, the lower the odds of reporting either ending the relationship or distancing from the friend. Implications for future research on interpersonal processes in friendships are discussed.