Some friendships end with no argument at all. Something happened, nobody named it, and the texts slowly stopped. If one of those comes to mind as you read this, the answer to whether you should reach back is usually yes, and you should go first. What matters is going with humility instead of a hidden list of grievances. The steps below help you name that one friendship honestly, read what Scripture says about going to someone after an offense, and write a first message that leads with your part.
You can work through it alone in one sitting or spread it across a week. A small group can use it over two meetings: the first for naming and Scripture, the second for the practice and what came of it. Anything personal stays optional. You can do every exercise privately and still talk about the passages with others.
Start with one name
On a sheet of paper, write the name of one person. Choose a friendship that cooled over something specific that neither of you addressed. It should be a friendship you can actually picture, not necessarily the most dramatic one.
Under the name, draw three columns and fill them in quickly:
- What happened. Only the facts a camera could record: the missed wedding, the comment at dinner, the unanswered text.
- What I told myself. The story you settled on afterward. He only calls when he needs something. We just grew apart.
- What I never said. The sentence you would have spoken if you had been braver or less tired.
The second column is usually where a friendship actually ends. BJ Thompson directs Build Better Us and counsels people about friendships as well as marriages. He says his own conflicts often grow from a feeling he has carried about someone, or because “maybe there’s an incident that occurred back in the day that I’ve never addressed.” When that old thing surfaces, the fight seems to be about today. It is really about the third column.
Answer one more question in writing. Is the unspoken offense something they did to you, something you did to them, or some of both? Hold the answer loosely. The next section may change it.
Two passages that point the same way
Read these two sayings of Jesus slowly. In each one, notice who is told to move first.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). Jesus has just been talking about anger and contempt. In his example, the other person holds the grievance, and the worshiper is the one who remembers it. The phrase “ought against thee” means “something against you.”
Later he addresses the reverse case: “if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother” (Matthew 18:15). This time you are the one wronged, and Jesus still does not tell you to wait for an apology. He tells you to go privately, and he names the goal of going. Many interpreters read Matthew 18 as instruction for the community of disciples, with later steps involving others. The first step is the one that matters here, and it is a quiet, private conversation.
Whichever side of the offense you are on, Jesus sends you toward the other person. Neither passage allows you to wait until the other person notices your silence and comes to you. So the question to work on is how to go well.
To discuss or consider: In each passage, what is named as the aim of going? How would your conversation change if that were your aim instead of being proven right? Why might Jesus rule out waiting in both cases?
Before you write anything, look for the beam
Going first does not mean going to accuse. Jesus puts self-examination first: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5). A mote is a speck and a beam is a piece of timber. The passage does not forbid helping your friend. It sets the order so that you can see clearly enough to help.
Thompson admits his instinct runs the other way: “I start with the other person and I want to fix them, and I wanna make them better first.” He ties the correction to Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah is speaking to Judah about misplaced trust, but his diagnosis covers every heart, including the one writing your version of events. Thompson’s conclusion is direct: “I can’t assume the best about my motives.”
Add a fourth column: What I brought. It might be a tone, a slow reply, a joke that landed badly, or a heavy season when your friend happened to be nearby. Thompson puts it this way: “just as offended as you feel, you can be just as equally offensive in that situation.” If the column stays truly empty, write down how you handled the silence afterward, because letting a friendship fade without a word is also something you brought.
Cover it or name it?
Here is an honest objection. Scripture also commends letting things go. Proverbs 17:9 says, “He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.” Proverbs gives wisdom about how life usually works, not a formula, and this is real wisdom. Some offenses should be covered and never raised again.
So test your situation against both passages. When you cover an offense, you truly release it, and it stops shaping how you see the person. An offense you only avoided is still alive in your second column, steering the friendship from underneath. If you have covered it, your message can simply be an honest reconnection with no mention of the old hurt. If you have only avoided it, Matthew 18 fits your situation better than Proverbs 17 does, and naming it privately and gently is the loving move.
Not every offense was mutual. Going first does not mean taking blame you do not owe. If the wrong was mostly theirs, Matthew 18 asks you to name it, not to apologize for it. A small fourth column is an honest answer, not a failure of humility. Paul also admits that peace depends partly on the other person: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). Lisa Fields suspects that truly irreparable friendships are a small minority, but she adds the condition that matters: “if two people work together.” Thompson suggests asking what lies behind the conclusion that a friendship cannot be repaired. Was the person abusive or neglectful, or did the season change? A friendship can be readjusted rather than ended, so that someone becomes a “fringe friend” you still love without the same closeness. If the friendship you named involved abuse, or if naming the hurt would put you at risk, this practice does not ask you to re-enter it. Your safety comes first, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233.
To discuss or consider: How would you tell, in your own life, whether you have covered an offense or only avoided it?
The practice: draft, cut, then decide
Set aside about forty minutes. You will write a message you may or may not send.
- Draft freely. Write it as if you were sending it today. Don’t polish.
- Mark every sentence. Put a T beside each sentence about what they did and an M beside each sentence about what you did or felt. Count both.
- Reorder. Move your part to the top. If you have no M sentences, go back to your fourth column first.
- Strip the excuses. Thompson observes that people have drifted from plain apology: “We love giving excuses, right?” Look at every because that explains away your part and decide whether it belongs. Often the strongest sentence is the shortest one: I’m sorry.
- Check the tone. Read the message aloud as if a stranger had written it to you.
- Decide. Send it, rewrite it, wait a day, or ask a trusted friend to read it first. Leaving the draft in a folder forever is not a decision.
The tone check matters because closeness tempts us to stop being careful. Lisa Fields describes an assumption that once got her into trouble, that “if I’m your friend, I could share the truth with you any kinda way.” She was later surprised by “how many offenses that I brought because of the way I’ve shared things that I thought should have been taken in a way of love.” Thompson draws a principle from this: “the closer the proximity, the more revealing of our maturity.” He also spells out what it means in practice: “if you find yourself very short with the people who are closest to you, that means you are a short person.” Fields warns that “sometimes keeping it real can be really damaging.” Being honest with an old friend does not give you permission to be harsh.
After you send it
You control the message, not the reply. Before you send, write down three possible outcomes: a warm response, a cool or partial one, and silence. Beside each, write what faithfulness would look like. A warm reply might lead to a call. A cool one might mean the friendship becomes the readjusted kind Thompson describes. Silence might mean you have done as much as lay in you, and the door can stay open without your standing in it.
Thompson suggests that anyone who keeps backing away from friendships after conflict “may want to check your ability to engage the gospel, or how you understand how life works and how God treats you.” Fields gives the example that makes his point concrete. On the night of the arrest, the disciples fled, yet “they abandoned him at his lowest, but he still let them reign with him.” Here is why that matters for your message. A person who knows they were restored after failing does not need the friend’s reply to settle their worth. That frees the message from being a test the friend has to pass. You can write it as an offer, because you are passing on something you first received.
For a group
Let people keep their names and columns private. The passages give everyone something to talk about without exposing anyone. Assign the drafting practice between meetings, and in the second meeting ask what people noticed while drafting, not what they sent. Watch for two opposite errors. One person may use the study to confirm that everyone owes them an apology. Another may take blame that belongs to someone who harmed them. Gently bring both back to the passages.
- Thompson claims that closeness reveals maturity. Can you think of a case where that claim seems wrong, where someone is harsher with close friends for a reason other than immaturity? What would count as evidence for or against it in your own friendships?
- What makes a plain apology without explanations so hard to give?
- When does moving a friendship to a lower level of closeness honor the person, and when could it become a polite way of disappearing?
- Fields points to Jesus restoring disciples who had abandoned him. Does that example seem to you like a pattern to follow, a standard out of reach, or something else? Explain your answer.
Has your answer to the first section’s question, whose offense this was, changed? If it has, that change is where repair begins, whether or not the message is ever sent.