Breaking Up (With Friends) Is Hard to Do

Acknowledging the heartache that comes with the end of a friendship

Friendship loss is a normal part of the human experience. As we make our way through life, we gather people that come with the places and spaces we are moving through. We make friends and lose friends as we:

• Change schools

• Start a new job

• Get married

• Have children

• Move to a new place

• Invest in new interests

When we have really close connections it can be heartbreaking when they end because there is a level of intimacy that has been lost. We have shared with and opened up to this person. There are times when we give of ourselves inside of a friendship in ways that we haven’t with our partners. There can be historical context and this person may have been with us for multiple years and iterations of ourselves. When we look at the totality of the relationship, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was, the fact that it has come to an end can be devastating. 

Sometimes a friendship ends in a way that is amicable, but there can be:

• Bitterness

• Competition

• Backstabbing

• Betrayal

• Personality changes

When a relationship ends, I  center my thoughts on the wonderful times we had together. I recognize that if we can’t have anything wonderful anymore, I can be ok with nothing and the memory of wonderful. If we can think about the good parts of the friendship, and remember when we needed that person, they were there, then we can begin to make peace with the relationship ending. 

I think we’re all looking for these Golden Girl, Laverne and Shirley type relationships. There aren’t as many examples in the media when it comes to friendships between men, but that is a vacancy in representation rather than an absence in reality. Men also have deep, intimate, platonic relationships, and it is just as heartbreaking for them when they end. The existence of these friendship icons for women is both a blessing and a hardship. On the one hand it is important to see the portrayal of healthy, nurturing relationships between women, but it also sets the expectations that every friendship is a lifelong friendship with no end. We develop high expectations of what the relationship should and can be. We need to embrace what we actually have and continue to honor that relationship even after it’s ended. 

Here are a few friendship behaviors that we should keep:

• Speak fondly of the person

• Do not disparage the person to others

• Honor their secrets

• Be mindful of the good times you shared

• Give them credit or accolades for the positive influence they had on your life

• Honor the value the friendship had in your life

There is less recognition of the hardship of friendship breakups in our culture. There are all kinds of songs and breakup kits geared toward partnerships endings. Yet, I have experienced some pretty intense grief over losing a friend that I have not experienced when losing a partner. That grief isn’t reserved for losing a romantic partner. 

This is a call to show up at your friend’s house with Ben and Jerry’s ready to watch 50 First Dates when she tells you that she and Chantal aren’t friends anymore. We need to rub her back and let her cry on our shoulder because she is grieving the loss of her friendship. We need to stop expecting people, including ourselves, to just move on. 

Journal Prompt

What soothes you after a breakup?

A Few Things That Caught My Attention This Week

• The Lifelong Gift of Sibling Friendship, by Catherine Pearson in The New York Times. 

• Stop Telling Everyone What You Do For a Living, by Rachel Feintzeig in The Wall Street Journal. 

• How We Learned to Be Lonely, by Arthur C. Brooks in The Atlantic. 

• Being Mary Tyler Moore. You can watch this documentary on Max.