"My childhood bestie didn't invite me to her wedding": Broken promises, drifting apart and the fragile bonds of friendship
Dial Emma
Emma Reed Turrell
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome back to Dial Emma! Each week, I'll be answering your dilemmas with honesty, empathy, and a few therapeutic truth bombs to help you make sense of life's stickiest moments. If you've ever wished you had a therapist in your back pocket, Dial Emma is here to help.
What happens when a friendship fades without explanation, or ends in a way that feels like a betrayal?
This week, I'm exploring the fragile bonds of friendship, and the lack of rituals for closure, clear endings, or language to help us process when they unravel. Our first dilemma involves a friendship that has been slowly, quietly drifting away with no explanation, leaving our listener wondering if they're asking for too much; the second sees a childhood promise broken in a very public way, creating a rupture in a 25-year friendship that is proving difficult to move past.
This episode is a reminder that friendships don’t have to be constant to be real - but they do have to be mutual. When they no longer are, the grief of their loss is both real and valid. By acknowledging it, we create the space for new connections that choose us back, in the here and now.
If you have a dilemma for Emma, please fill out this form.
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Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.
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Social media:
Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell
Dial Emma @dialemmapodcast
Email: [email protected]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is sponsored by ProteinWorks, on a mission to help you feel good and smash your goals through the power of nutrition. |
| 0:09.1 | Hello and welcome to Dial Emma, the podcast where your dilemmas meet my therapeutic insights. |
| 0:15.7 | I'm Emma Reid-Torrell, psychotherapist, author and well-recovering people-pleaser. |
| 0:20.3 | Each week, I'll be unpacking |
| 0:21.8 | real-life questions from listeners just like you. The big ones, the small ones, the ones that keep you |
| 0:27.3 | up at night, offering practical tools and gentle truths to help you find your way through. So if |
| 0:33.6 | you've got a question, you don't know how to ask out loud. You've come to the right place. |
| 0:45.8 | Welcome back to Dial Emma. |
| 0:48.0 | Today, we're exploring the fragile bonds of friendship. |
| 0:51.4 | What happens when they loosen without explanation? |
| 0:55.7 | And what happens when they break under the weight of hurt? We've got one dilemma about a friendship slowly slipping out |
| 1:02.1 | of reach, and another about a promise that was broken in the most public way. Both will ask us, |
| 1:09.5 | how do we grieve a relationship that's still alive? Let's hear our |
| 1:15.8 | first dilemma. My best friend lives far away and barely keeps in touch. Am I asking for too much? |
| 1:25.0 | Dear Emma, my best friend and I have known each other since university. She moved abroad five years |
| 1:30.8 | ago for work, and at first we were constantly in touch, video calls, long messages and planning |
| 1:37.1 | trips to see each other. But over the past year, it's dwindled to the occasional text message. |
| 1:43.8 | I'm almost always the one to reach out. |
| 1:46.5 | When I do, she's warm and responsive, |
| 1:49.4 | but weeks or months pass before I hear from her again. |
| 1:53.6 | I know her life is busy. |
| 1:55.6 | She has a demanding job and a partner, |
... |
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