Don’t let one bad night delete a five-year friendship. Weigh the whole file, not the last page.

Recent events feel larger than they are, and one fight at midnight can briefly outweigh years of evidence. That is a trick of timing rather than a judgement. Long friendships last because both people occasionally decide not to let the worst hour stand in for the whole record. Some things genuinely are enough to end it, and most single bad nights are not among them.

Before deciding anything about someone you have known for years, give it a week and no audience. Then ask whether that night was out of character or the clearest version of a pattern. Answer that honestly and the decision tends to make itself.