What happens after a friend breakup
On old friends, new friends, and ex friends
Friend breakups have been making headlines in recent months, and the consensus is the same: they hurt.
In my book, Drinking Games, I wrote about a friend breakup I experienced in my twenties, and why the loss felt so great. This friend cited my drinking as a major cause of wanting space; she was tired of cleaning up my messes after drunken nights out together. I couldn’t accept the truth behind her words, so I got defensive and carried shame about our split for years. The end of our friendship felt like further support of a thesis I had been developing for nearly two decades: friends often needed to be replaced, so it was best not to get too attached.
The kernels of this idea were first planted the summer before third grade. We were moving from the suburbs of New York City to Boston, just in time for the start of school. I had spent the first seven years of my life forming friendships with the same classmates; we blew out birthday candles and squeezed into sleeping bags, tethered to each other by our shared history. But when we left for Boston in the middle of July, I had no email address and didn’t know my new phone number. There were no goodbyes, but it didn’t matter. My friendships were wiped from my memory quickly and replaced with new ones.
After a year in Boston we moved to New Jersey, where I was, once again, new in school. I began to approach my friendships with the kind of detached energy reserved for picking an ice cream flavor. Some friends I liked, but others were a life raft – a way to learn the ins and outs of a new social scene without sticking out too much. I hid within friend groups for the next decade, focusing my energy on crushes, schoolwork, and extracurriculars instead of getting close to individuals. I had friends to sit with at lunch, but I reserved real intimacy for my family and romantic relationships.
By my early twenties, I began to understand the necessity of friendships. Despite boyfriends and academic successes, I was lonely. I craved a different kind of emotional support, and so I let myself lean into deeper relationships with peers. Admittedly, alcohol helped with this. Before my drinking became problematic, it helped loosen me up around potential friends and helped us form new shared memories. In time, I allowed trusted friends to see me at vulnerable points and lowered the wall that I often kept up around other women. Having close friends, it turned out, was wonderful. It felt good to be seen, not only as a “nice” or “fun” girl but as a real, whole person who was accepted, flaws and all. Which was why it hurt so much when that friend – my best friend, at the time – walked away from our friendship at 24.
A younger part of me – the one that had kept friends at a distance for so long – was furious with myself for letting this happen. If I hadn’t gotten so close to this friend, she wouldn’t have been able to hurt me. There were two options: retreat back into myself and return to familiar hiding spots like a new boyfriend or job. Or continue allowing myself to be seen in my existing friendships and remain open to forming new ones.
The force of my hurt feelings propelled me down the second path, but it took time. I overcorrected; I gossiped exhaustively about the breakup; I threw myself into other friendships that eventually fizzled and faded. When I got sober a few years later, I returned to this moment, replaying it over and over, until I was able to take responsibility for my own part in how and why the friendship ended. It was only once I really let it go that I was able to continue forming the kinds of connections I had come to value.
Now that I’m a new mom, I find myself leaning heavily on my friends. I still feel lonely sometimes (which I wrote about here), but I can’t imagine navigating this stage of life on my own. I am so grateful for my connections with other moms and non-moms alike; getting attached, it turns out, has both risks and rewards. I’m also forming new friendships with moms in baby classes, which feels a lot like being the new kid in school. There is an urge to retreat; to hide so that I can’t get hurt. But I know how good it feels to be seen and belong to a community. And that knowledge continues to propel me forward, along with the understanding that these friendships aren’t just for me anymore. When Leo reaches out to grab for another baby in class, he is planting tiny kernels of his earliest bonds, and I want him to grow up understanding that these relationships are worth the risk. That attachments are not to be avoided but, rather, sought out. That friend breakups are hard, but a life without friendships is, for so many reasons, harder.
Have you had a friend breakup? How did you heal?
Xx
Sarah