You can often hear children and teenagers loudly talking in school playgrounds, hallways and especially during the walk back home: forming “best friend” groups which slyly manage to push out unwanted intruders into their selective social groups. It’s not so unusual when you consider the many private adult clubs that exist in various locales, from high-end sports gyms to private rooms in expensive restaurants. It’s all about exclusivity.
And remember, kids hear about such clubs from their parents. No matter the age group nor the special interests of the people involved, from music lovers to film aficionados, the chance of losing your place in the pecking order of socializing is always present. So be aware: The nastier side of all this exclusivity can suddenly appear, whether in new friendships or relationships, which is a precursor to when one person decides to just walk away.
In other words, when one person dumps another, whether as friend or romantically. Unfortunately, it happens all the time. So how do people, from children to adults, learn to accept and handle being discarded from a former close friendship? Here’s what one very experienced school therapist once explained to me about the impact of a sudden loss of one or more friends’ loyalty: From her trained viewpoint as a professional social worker in the education system, getting dumped can be seen as a healthy experience if it occurs early in one’s life.
Why? Because it means when you get dumped or even .