Exploring Relational Dissolution Behaviors within Friendships

This dissertation focuses on better understanding friendship dissolution. Participants (N= 358) who recalled a friendship that had ended completed a questionnaire that measured characteristics of the friendship prior to dissolution (satisfaction, commitment/investment, and quality of alternatives), reasons for friendship dissolution, emotional responses to friendship dissolution, dissolution behaviors, and post-dissolution social media connection. Those who were in friendships characterized by high commitment/investment and had high quality alternatives tended to attribute the friendship ending due to their partner committing a transgression and/or internal struggles within the friendship. This may be due to highly committed friendships tending to be stable until there are problems and alternatives are seen as appealing. Participants reported experiencing more negative and positive emotion if the friendship ended due to a partner’s transgression or internal struggles. They also reported more negative emotion if the friendship had been satisfying and committed, and more positive emotion if the friendship had been less satisfying and they had high quality alternatives. Four dissolution behaviors were investigated in this dissertation, and each was associated with different profiles of emotional responses and causes of dissolution. The mutual fade out was associated with the friendship ending due to external factors; being ghosted by a friend was associated with feeling negative emotions and the friendship ending due to external factors; ghosting a friend was associated with positive emotions and the friendship ending due to a partner transgression; and open confrontation was associated with the friendship ending due to a partner transgression and/or internal struggles. Finally, results showed that people were less likely to be connected on social media if the friendship had ended due to internal struggles and if they had either been ghosted or had ghosted their friend as a means to end the friendship. Those who reported that their friendship had ended due to external factors through means of the mutual fade out, on the other hand, were more likely to still be connected on social media. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the friendship dissolution process.