The space between us: Friendship, change, and the unspoken grief of growing apart
Some spaces are easy to name—the boardroom, the hospital waiting room, the shared desk in an office. Others are harder to define, yet just as significant. They are the spaces between relationships, between life stages, between expectations and reality. These invisible spaces shape women’s experiences just as much as the physical ones, but they are rarely acknowledged, let alone designed with intention.
This article is part of The Waiting Room series, exploring the spaces women need—not just the ones we fight to access, but the ones we struggle to hold onto as our lives evolve. Much has been said about the professional spaces women navigate, about leadership and workplace equity, about access to healthcare that recognises women’s full humanity. But one of the most fragile, unspoken spaces women inhabit is the space between each other—the shifting nature of female friendships, the quiet recalibrations that happen as we grow, and the moments of disconnection that can feel like loss even when no words have been spoken.
Women’s friendships have long been celebrated as one of the most powerful sources of support and resilience. From childhood through adulthood, these relationships act as mirrors, anchors, and lifelines. They offer emotional refuge in a world that often asks women to give more than they receive. But these friendships are also shaped by the realities of time, circumstance, and change.
There are the transitions we expect—moving cities, career shifts, marriage, parenthood. And then there are the subtler changes, the ones that happen without fanfare. The friend who was once the person you called every day but whose texts now come months apart. The standing Friday night plans that quietly disappear. The relationship that is still intact but no longer feels the same.
Friendship is often assumed to be static, a constant we can rely on. But in reality, it is as subject to change as any other relationship in our lives. The waiting rooms of friendship are rarely named, yet they exist everywhere—in the pause before reaching out to a friend you haven’t spoken to in too long, in the hesitancy of wondering if a friendship is fading, in the quiet hurt of realising you are no longer part of the inner circle.
As we move through different stages of life, the time and emotional energy available for friendship shifts. Research suggests that women in early adulthood prioritise friendships above all other relationships, while midlife often brings a pivot toward family, career, or personal introspection (Menkedick, Ordinary Insanity). This transition is not always intentional, and it is rarely spoken about openly.
Few transitions challenge friendships as much as motherhood. The shift from shared experiences—spontaneous weekend plans, long, meandering conversations—to schedules dictated by feeding times and nap windows can be disorienting. For those on different timelines, or for those who may never follow that path at all, the change is often accompanied by an unspoken grief: the grief of missing out, of feeling left behind, of friendships that no longer seem to have room for the same kind of intimacy they once did.
For many women, particularly those without children, this shift can be jarring. Friendships that once felt like a given become less certain. I once wrote for Mamamia on the expectation to show up for every milestone—every baby shower, every first birthday—and the emotional and logistical strain that this can create. Not because these moments aren’t important, but because friendship is often expected to revolve around certain life experiences at the expense of others.
This can create an unintended hierarchy of relationships—where friendships are expected to adapt to family life rather than exist alongside it, where major transitions like divorce, career milestones, or personal reinvention are given less social weight than marriage and motherhood. The question is not whether friendships survive these shifts, but how they evolve in a way that honors the full spectrum of women’s lives.
For those who have wanted children but have been unable to have them—whether due to medical infertility or social infertility—the shift in friendships can be particularly painful. The arrival of a friend’s baby can bring joy and heartbreak in equal measure, emotions that often go unspoken because there is no cultural language for them. Unlike grief over death, which is widely acknowledged, the grief of being left behind—of a future imagined but never realised—often exists in silence.
When friendships change, we often lack the language to articulate what’s happening. Unlike romantic relationships, which come with clear labels—dating, engaged, separated—friendships exist in a more fluid, undefined space. This can make it difficult to navigate the emotions that come with change.
We might experience grief over a friendship that has quietly faded but feel unable to name it as such. We might feel guilt for not having the capacity to be as present as we once were. We might hesitate to acknowledge that a friendship no longer serves us, because women are taught that to walk away from any kind of emotional labor is selfish.
Grief, when it enters a friendship, can be destabilising. We are conditioned to believe that friendship is where we go to escape pain, not where we bring it. And yet, the reality is that many friendships falter not because of cruelty or neglect, but because they cannot make space for the emotions that come with change—envy, sadness, longing, loss.
In Ordinary Insanity, Sarah Menkedick writes about how modern motherhood has been stripped of the communal support it once had, placing enormous pressure on individual relationships to hold all of a person’s needs. But what is often overlooked is how this applies not just to mothers, but to those on the outside of that experience—friends who may want to share in the joy but also need space for their own grief, friends who fear becoming burdens, friends who are unsure how to navigate the growing distance.
Unlike miscarriage or the loss of a partner, where there are clear rituals of mourning, the grief of social infertility or of friendships drifting apart is rarely acknowledged. There are no cards that say, I see you. I know this is hard. I am still here. There are no scripts for how to be both happy for a friend and devastated for oneself. And so, many women carry this alone, unsure whether their sadness is valid, unsure how to ask for care.
Alex Alexander, in her podcast Friendship IRL, explores the complexities of changing friendships, emphasising that most shifts are not about failure but about growth.
“People talk about the effort needed to maintain friendships, but we don’t talk enough about the effort it takes to let them change,” she notes.
If we could talk more openly about these transitions, we might be able to move through them with less shame, less hesitation, and more understanding.
Jessie Stephens has written about the deep, unspoken grief of friendships shifting with life stages—the quiet heartbreak of realising you are no longer central in someone’s world in the way you once were. As she explores in Heartsick, loss isn’t always dramatic; sometimes, it’s the slow, imperceptible drifting apart, the missed calls that become fewer, the inside jokes that no longer land quite the same way. Friendship, like love, carries its own kind of heartbreak, one we rarely acknowledge with the same weight.
Authentic connection—especially as we move through life’s waiting rooms—requires a kind of vulnerability that can feel uncomfortable. It requires acknowledging when we need more, when we feel left out, when we are struggling. But too often, women are conditioned to be easy friends—to be undemanding, accommodating, flexible.
Brené Brown’s research on belonging reminds us that real connection isn’t about never experiencing disconnection—it’s about being willing to navigate it with honesty.
“People who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect,” she writes. “They have the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others” (Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection).
This means making room for hard conversations. It means acknowledging that just as a new mother needs support, so too does the friend who is watching her world change from the outside. It means resisting the urge to say, you’ll understand when you have kids, and instead saying, I see you. I know this is hard.
It also means recognising that being present in someone’s joy doesn’t mean silencing our own sadness. That celebrating a friend’s baby doesn’t mean denying the ache of wanting one. That being there for someone doesn’t require erasing ourselves.
This is where female friendships have the power to be transformative. Not just in their longevity, but in their ability to hold space for imperfection—for the times when we cannot show up in the way we want to, for the moments when we need to reconnect after distance, for the friendships that evolve in unexpected ways.
If we are to rethink the spaces women need, we must also rethink the way we talk about friendship—not as something that must always be sustained in the same way, but as something that can change without losing its depth.
What if we made more room for friendships that don’t fit traditional molds?
What if we allowed space for different kinds of presence, for friendships that thrive in bursts of intensity rather than constant communication?
What if we acknowledged that friendship, like all relationships, has seasons?
What if we allowed friendship to hold more complexity?
What if we stopped treating change as something that weakens relationships and instead saw it as something that could deepen them?
And what if we created space for honesty—not just about the joyful moments, but about the ones that ache?
Friendships, at their best, are spaces of refuge. They are places where we are allowed to change, to step away and return, to be seen in all our complexity. They are the spaces in between—the waiting rooms of our lives—where we process who we are and who we are becoming.
Female friendships are among the most enduring and meaningful relationships in many women’s lives. But they, too, require care. They require adaptation. They require a willingness to hold space for what is difficult, not just what is easy.
And maybe, if we recognised the quiet shifts in these spaces, we wouldn’t see them as losses but as necessary parts of the rhythm of connection. Because the spaces between us don’t have to be places of distance. They can also be places where something new is quietly taking shape.
The spaces between us do not have to be places of loss. They can also be places where something new is being built—something that, if tended to with care, might just be stronger than what was there before.
I really enjoyed this article, especially because I am the friend for whom marriage and parenthood didn't materialize. Dealing with this pain has been hard but have also helped me to discover what I am made of.