Friendship habits formed in adolescence have lasting impact, experts say

A friendship coach highlights how teen relationship patterns influence adult bonds, emphasising the importance of healthy communication and supportive networks during formative years.

Friendship habits learned in the teenage years can echo well into adulthood, according to Sheri Gazitt, a friendship coach who works with adolescent girls and their parents. In a recent conversation with Nina Badzin, Gazitt said many of the patterns that shape adult relationships begin with insecurity, including gossip, rumour-spreading, staying emotionally guarded and forming sides within a group. Research on adolescent friendships supports that broader picture: studies have found that peer support, parental support and the quality of social networks all continue to shape how young people relate to others, and those habits can carry forward.

A major theme in Gazitt’s advice was reframing rejection. She argued that not being invited to something is not always the same as being excluded, and that jumping straight to the conclusion that “nobody likes me” can make a child or adult behave in ways that damage the relationship further. The distinction matters, because friendship research shows that adolescent bonds are fragile and can end for many reasons, from shifting group dynamics to simple drifting apart. Learning to see alternative explanations, Gazitt suggested, can keep a painful moment from becoming a lasting story about one’s worth.

She also urged parents to be careful about the language they use when talking about their children’s social lives. Adults often project their own teen experiences on to their children, she said, which can lead them to label ordinary disappointment as cruelty or to assume girls are simply “mean”. Yet the social world of adolescence is more complicated than that. Studies of teen friendships show that support from parents still matters and that friendships are strengthened when young people have room to be vulnerable and practise self-disclosure.

Gazitt was especially firm on conflict. In her view, many girls are taught to soften their own feelings so other people will not feel uncomfortable, which can make direct conversations seem risky. She teaches a simple framework: start by expressing appreciation, name the specific problem, take any real responsibility, and then state the change you want. That approach, she said, works with parents, friends and peers alike. The research on vulnerable self-disclosure points in the same direction, suggesting that sharing feelings in an honest but safe way helps build emotional intimacy and more mature social functioning.

She also challenged the idea that a large group automatically provides security. According to Gazitt, some teens and adults stay attached to a popular crowd even when they are routinely overlooked, because being inside the group feels safer than standing alone. But that can leave people with shallow ties and little real support. Her advice was to invest in individual relationships and build parallel connections elsewhere, rather than relying on one circle to meet every social need. Peer-relationship research backs up the importance of this broader social web, showing that young people are strongly influenced by the groups around them, but not always in healthy ways.

The final message was one of repair rather than resignation. Gazitt said friendship endings often lead people to build walls that protect them from getting hurt again, but also keep them from forming deeper bonds later. That pattern can appear in both teenagers and adults who have been disappointed before. Even when a friendship does not survive a conflict, she argued, it is still worth asking what was learned, what was missing and what should be done differently next time. As the broader research on friendship dissolution suggests, endings are part of the social landscape; what matters is whether people use them to close off or to grow.