Dissolving Friendships

Abstract

In the previous part of this work neither the conflicts in friendship relations nor the reasons for the ending of a friendship were named or described in detail. In contrast to kinship, which despite the academic criticism is still often seen as an ascribed and stable status, friendship is commonly connected to an idea of voluntarism and correspondingly to a notion of fragility. Grätz, Meier, and Pelican show that friendship has processual character and that it does not consist of emergence and persistence, but also permits a transformation. At the same time the authors also point out that this transformation has limits, and that friendship might break under certain circumstances (Grätz, Meier, Pelican 2004: 27). Kinship relations on the other hand would be more consistent because of a higher degree of obligation (Komter, Vollebergh 1997: 748). It can thus be assumed that the termination of friendship is more socially acceptable than the termination of family contacts. This however does not mean that the dissolution of a friendship is a casual process that happens without affecting the people involved. On the contrary, I argue that the dissolution of friendship can become a serious problem for the individual, and is furthermore the point at which the idea of an ideal group is brought to its limits.