The friendship is over. Or not? Part 1: Requests for counseling regarding problems in friendships are quite common. Stories, of course, are always individual, but there are also common features. For example, two girls are friends, meet at school, move from class to class together, experience successes and failures in school together, share secrets, go together to see the boy they like from high school, grow up together and blossom into beautiful young girls, together gather in the same company of peers, learn to communicate, fall in love, express themselves and their opinions. The list can be endless, but the point is that they passed all the major milestones on their life path hand in hand. The best friend, as a rule, knows much more than the parents about what warms and what excites the young soul. There is an agreement between friends that we don’t fall in love with the same guy, we don’t leave without the other for other companies. It happens that girlfriends develop a common style in their appearance. Communication 24/7: at school, on a walk, on the Internet. And then suddenly something happens, and the friendship that seemed like such an unshakable stronghold begins to crack. Something starts to go wrong. There are many reasons. For example, one friend started dating a guy with whom the other had just broken up or dreamed of dating; went to university/work and devotes time only to new acquaintances, or is completely embarrassed by her “old” friend. Here the feeling of betrayal comes to the fore and it is all difficult and painful to experience. This needs to be worked through with a psychologist in personal consultations, so that later you will not be afraid to build new friendships, not have problems with self-esteem and old resentment that wears away from the inside. And there are other reasons, for example, moving. Alas, not every friendship can be a long-distance friendship or an online friendship. Some relationships have been formed and can only be viable “offline”, only with a constant exchange of energy, with tactile contact (“hugs”, braiding hair, manicuring each other - these are important aspects, especially for those people for whom the sense of touch is one of the leading channels of perception). However, before diagnosing the sad end of a friendship in this case, it is still recommended to give it a chance and try to support it in a new format, without nostalgia and without comparison. It is very possible that you will be able, albeit not immediately, to switch to the voice message format and listen to each other’s stories and reflections like your favorite podcast. The main thing, at the same time, is to understand that this communication is communication without reference to time, so that there are no offenses due to the fact that the message was not listened to, there is no answer. It is worth agreeing that you will respond within a couple of days. By the way, a great diagnostic of how you feel when a message hangs unread? Anger, resentment, fear? Anxiety? Is this only the case with this person, or in general? What answers to the question, why is he silent, come to mind at that moment? The most painful and frightening? This is all a reason to consider, preferably with a psychologist. What do we do when a friend suddenly exhibits behavior or adherence to beliefs that are fundamentally different from our moral values? Sometimes this realization comes as a shock, and it becomes unclear whether to continue this relationship, and if so, how? After all, what is terrible and unacceptable for me is in the order of things for him? Such situations need to be discussed using specific examples, since the concept of morality and moral values, despite some of their general meanings, are still individual. As an example, I will give the relationship to animals: someone will nurse an old, sick animal, an animal, an animal with, say, an evil and disobedient disposition, because for him it is responsibility for the one who was trained and nothing else (run to re-read “The Little Prince” , or watch with subtitles and listen to the charming French musical of the same name, if this well-known phrase resonates). A.