Saying Goodbye to Sam

“I tried to help you out, now I know that I can’t. Cause how you think’s the kind of thing I’ll never understand.”

– Olivia Rodrigo

I pride myself on being a friend who shows up when I say I’m going to show up, and I think rightfully so, I expect the same in return. So when Sam texted our friend group to say she was looking forward to seeing us perform at our annual Choral and Orchestral concert, I expected to see her there. Spoiler alert! Sam didn’t show. We all got a text from her that morning saying she couldn’t come because she was “overwhelmed with work”. Suffice it to say, I was thoroughly disappointed when her Instagram story popped up that night showcasing Sam in a sparkly top and dramatic eyeliner. I would have thought she at least had the decency to hide the story from me.

I knew I was upset but I felt all the more validated when the rest of the group reacted similarly to me. I felt like I had taken the high road when I refrained from commenting “Super overwhelmed?”. Truthfully, I thought this moment and other rocky moments before it were just bumps in the road of our friendship. While the Instagram story disappeared after twenty-four hours, the lasting impact this had on our friendship was monumental. Eventually, our friendship faded away as well. This transition was filled with months of miscommunication, distance, and hurt I couldn't articulate. For a long time, I searched for the exact moment everything fell apart. Was it the unanswered calls, the one-sided effort, the patterns I'd ignored? But the harder I looked for a single breaking point, the more I realized the question itself was impossible to answer. There wasn't a moment; there was a bucket full of moments. Toxic patterns, unmet needs, communication breakdowns, and overlooked red flags all converged to create something I couldn't fix and couldn't fully understand. Without closure or honest conversation with Sam, I was left with only my own perspective.

I met Sam on our first day of rehearsals for Pippin, my freshman year musical. We were in the featured ensemble together and bonded over tough harmonies and complicated dance moves. Although she was a year younger than me, and we didn’t have any classes together, we quickly became thick as thieves. The next year we became even closer. Now we were both in high school so we could grab out lunch together and spend study halls chatting when we should have been studying. Junior year I went to hear Sam’s band, Get Comfy, at a club in the East Village called the Bitter End. I got the sense she was really happy our friend group was there to support her. But that year came and went and eventually it was the summer before Senior year. Our friend group wasn’t prone to texting much over the summer but we had the occasional hang out when everyone happened to be in the city at the same time. However, when I, or anyone else in our troop, suggested a meet-up, Sam was the only one to not respond. Not say no, or that she was busy, just no reply. By the time the first day of school rolled around, I hadn’t heard anything from Sam since June. This odd behavior quickly became a pattern, canceling plans at the last minute, not responding to texts, it seemed like it came out of nowhere. It wasn’t long before things turned from bizarre to hurtful. As I reflect on this experience as a whole, I see now that these actions were a warning to me that a “friendship breakup”, as described by Jacqueline Mroz, was imminent.

Reading Jacqueline Mroz's chapter on friendship breakups gave me language for experiences I struggled to articulate at the time. The various factors that lead to friendship dissolution, particularly the sections on imbalance in reciprocity, red flags, and toxic friendship dynamics, perfectly described what I'd lived through with Sam. Mroz's chapter discusses how women often ignore warning signs in friendships because we're taught to be accommodating. This resonates deeply with my situation; I can now see that I overlooked Sam's mistreatment of me and our mutual friends for far too long, convincing myself that our long history together meant the friendship was worth saving. Upon reviewing the situation, I started remembering the countless times that Sam simply didn’t show up for our lunch plans or the many incidents where she entered a group conversation and proceeded to hijack the topic and make it all about her.

According to Mroz's research, a toxic friend is “someone who isn't really authentic and doesn't have your back. She can't be happy for you and separate your success from what she imagines she should have” (Mroz, 141). This description could have been written about Sam. When she found out a guy she liked actually liked me, her first response was “Well men are stupid anyways”. Ouch. When I excitedly shared my college acceptances, I heard her saying “it’s all rigged”. Oooph. My best friend Livia witnessed these patterns firsthand. As she described it: “Sam would just kind of isolate herself. Like, I thought we were having a nice conversation, and I was trying to talk to her, and Sam would just kind of, like, shut down any attempt on my part of conversation.” This wasn't simple introversion or needing space, it was a deliberate pattern of withdrawal that left everyone around her feeling rejected and confused.

A major player in Sam’s life that consequently impacted my life was her boyfriend, Nigel. I never had any problems with Nigel. I thought he was great, but their relationship was the most topsy-turvy melodrama I had ever witnessed. Haoyang Zhang’s study done on how romantic relationships affect adolescent friendships provides ample context for Sam’s big switch up. The concept of “dyadic withdrawal” (1626) explains how romantically involved individuals pull away from their friend networks, which perfectly described Sam's behavior once she started dating Nigel. As Livia observed: “Most of the time I think I spent with Sam was talking about Nigel. Sam was always comparing their relationship to her parents' relationship. She talked about marrying Nigel.” Every conversation became about their relationship, their future, their problems. When they broke up because Nigel said Sam was being "too much," her behavior toward friends deteriorated even further. But the romantic complications extended beyond simple withdrawal. Our friend group harbored a complex web of romantic tensions that affected every interaction. As Livia and I discussed, Sam had a romantic history with multiple people in our circle, creating underlying tensions that poisoned group dynamics. Sam was constantly in romantic relationships, bouncing from partner to partner. I now wonder if her romantic involvements contributed to the imbalance of our relationship. Her rollercoaster of romance was not a ride I wanted to buckle into. The Zhang and Felmlee study helped me understand that Sam's romantic entanglements weren't just a side issue, they fundamentally altered her capacity for friendship. The constant romantic drama became both an excuse and a catalyst for treating friends poorly.

The research on communication breakdowns in Mroz's chapter particularly resonated when I reflected on my final attempt to save our friendship. Dr. Katie Jalma's research, which Mroz cites, found that many women experiencing friendship dissolution "had no conversations about their breakups” (Mroz, 139), they simply stopped communicating. This perfectly described my experience of reaching out repeatedly, only to be met with silence. By October of senior year, tensions had been building for months. Sam's behavior had become increasingly erratic, alternating between oversharing about her college aged boyfriend and completely ignoring our friend group. Despite everything, I believed we could work through our issues if we just talked. So, I went up to her in the library after school one day asking if we could grab brunch that weekend. Sam responded enthusiastically saying she would love to. I remember texting her later that night following up:

That’s it. That is the end of my digital communication with Sam. Suffice it to say, brunch did not happen. So I suppose, if I was looking for an ending moment, a curtain drop, this might be it. But there was no fight or blowout so I was left wondering if this was a real finale. If this was the “end” it didn’t bring me any comfort or closure, just a lot of confusion and complex feelings.

While many incidents contributed to our friendship's dissolution, my eighteenth birthday party crystallized just how toxic things had become. This wasn't just another disappointment, it was deliberate manipulation that hurt multiple people. My eighteenth birthday was a few months after this whole brunch debacle. I was interested in doing something more lowkey but my mom had the grand idea to throw me a surprise party. Now, my mom had no idea things had gone completely off the rails with Sam, so she invited her along with my entire friend group. Sam never responded to my mom’s invitation. My mom was in touch with all the other friends who had responded that they were coming to confirm details about restaurant and timing. The day before the party, a Friday, Sam texted my mom that she would love to join the party. My mom called the restaurant and extended the invitation from 12 to 13 guests. The day of the party, Sam texted the friend group to say that “something had come up” and she wouldn’t be there but she never let my mom know. When we all arrived at the restaurant after a super fun scavenger hunt around NYC, there was an extra seat at the table. I asked who that was for. Some famous mystery guest? A long lost cousin? Livia quietly told me that it was for Sam who had apparently told everyone she wasn’t coming EXCEPT for the hostess. That was the final straw. All these months of asking, begging, pleading to try and salvage our friendship culminated in this lightbulb moment. I would never understand Sam. Trying to make sense of Sam was like attempting to read a book in another language. I thought if I recognized enough of the letters it would all make sense. But staring at that 13th chair, something clicked. I was done trying to make our relationship make sense.

I’ve continued to process why our friendship ended. By writing this paper, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will never really know the full answer because my brain doesn’t work the same way Sam’s brain works. However, I did learn a lot about myself. I learned that I have a tough time when writing about intensely personal topics. Thinking about these issues bring up uncomfortable feelings and memories that I don’t love reliving. But now that I am at my conclusion paragraph, I can happily conclude that I did learn from this rocky relationship. I learned to watch out for red flags and how much better it feels to surround yourself with friends who have your back, genuinely care about your well being and show up when it counts.

So, goodbye Sam.