Getting Over a Friendship Breakup

The most difficult breakups I’ve experienced in my life have not been romantic in nature. While my failed dating partnerships may have caused more immediate pain and emotional damage when they first ended, I have suffered longer and obsessed more over the years about the disintegration of certain friendships.

My work as a therapist has assured me that I’m not alone in this, and that many people experience significant heartache when a friendship ends. But until recently I still wasn’t clear on why friendship breakups seem so tough to process and accept. Then my own therapist pointed out something crucial I’d been missing as I continued to feel the sting of friends I’d loved and (metaphorically) lost along the way.

It happened when I found myself circling back yet again to my sadness over a formerly deep and meaningful friendship that has been on an unexpected downward spiral over the past six months. I’d describe it as a “gradual ghosting” of sorts — a steady retreat into “surface-level friend” territory that was initiated by the other person and has left me feeling confused and hurt.

“I don’t know why I can’t get over this,” I told my therapist apologetically. “It’s not like we were dating.”

“Why do you feel you have to make that distinction?” she asked me. “What if you let yourself grieve this the same way you would grieve any other breakup?”

What if, indeed.

Heartbreak comes in many forms, but we often feel only certain forms are acceptable to acknowledge openly. Movies, tv shows and countless online articles normalize and offer tips for navigating the early stage of romantic heartbreak — the stage where you’re dissecting those final communications, struggling to make sense of things, and not yet ready to move on.

Many of us go through that stage when a friendship comes to an end, but we somehow feel we’re not allowed to admit it, or we need to get over it quickly. We suspect we’re overreacting, and we feel foolish, unentitled to the depth of what we’re feeling, and reluctant to talk about it with others. If we do talk about it, we often minimize or invalidate our emotions the way I did with my therapist.

But why? Friends are our first taste of love outside our families of origin; the first love we choose for ourselves. Is it a different kind of love than romantic love? Yes. Is it less meaningful? I would argue that in many ways, the answer is no.

So when a friendship fades or ends completely, we should expect to feel that loss deeply. And we should allow ourselves the same patience, grace and compassion as we would while healing from a romantic breakup.

As I write this, I haven’t yet made it to the other side of the heartbreak caused by my once-close and still-cherished friend. But I have reached the point where I can honor the powerful connection we had by properly grieving its end. I am giving myself time, feeling what I need to feel in order to process my sadness and disappointment, and talking about it with my therapist as much as I need to, unapologetically.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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