This post will show you how to navigate friendship changes in college, from falling out of touch to friendship breakups.

Starting college is a time for new experiences, more independence, and for most of us, new relationships and new relationship dynamics.

As any veteran college student can tell you, your friendships will evolve in different ways as you grow and change throughout college.

Your friendships from freshman year might become closer, or they may take the opposite turn — you may become more distant or the dynamics of the people you are with may change.

Friends may lose closeness in college for may reasons, whether it’s due to a heavier workload, mental health issues, a new relationship or even just growing apart.

How do you cope with all of that?

If you’ve noticed a changing friendship or just want to be prepared for when it happens, read on. This post will give you some tips on how to deal with friendship changes in college.

Table of Contents

1. Evaluate the Relationship

Throughout your time at college or anywhere you’ll have interactions with a plethora of different people. And obviously you’ll have different relationships with those different people.

Think of it like three circles inside each of other:

The outermost circle is all your acquaintances, people that you know on a superficial level. For example, you know their name or what their major is, maybe they live on your floor or you have a class together.

The inner circle after that are casual friends, friends that you may study with or even actually enjoy their company but you wouldn’t talk to about the real things in your life.