Why don't we treat friendship break-ups as seriously as romantic ones?

Cosmopolitan

a day ago

When I imagined my wedding day, long before I pictured my groom, I knew with certainty who my maid of honour would be. Jane* was my forever best friend, my ride-or-die or, as it's known in Grey's Anatomy (a show I forced her to watch with me), my person.
We met on the first day of university. Our rooms were opposite each other and, amid the chaos of unpacking with our parents, we just shared a quick 'hi' and 'bye'. But after a few days, we were inseparable. So much so that if I turned up at the uni bar without her, people would ask where she was. And it stayed that way even after we left Bristol and moved in together in London. I never imagined that our friendship would end, let alone in the way it did: with a ghosting.
When we talk about romantic relationships ending, we talk about the loss of the imagined future we thought we'd share, but what's rarely discussed is how that shared future also exists within platonic relationships. Jane and I, for example, had planned our hen-dos even when there wasn't a boyfriend in sight; and long before we'd turned 25, we had cemented our joint 30th birthday plans — a luxury five-star holiday to somewhere with a beach and preferably a villa over the sea.
In romantic break-ups, we have a shared — if cliché — language, whether that's 'it's not you, it's me', 'let's just be friends', or acknowledging that we want different things out of life. Friend break-ups are murkier waters. There's no script for how to handle them, how to grieve them, or how to grapple with the guilt you might feel or the fear that you're a 'bad friend'. And so, while most of us have come to accept that romantic heartbreak will, one day, come for us, few of us are prepared for friendships breaking down in this same way.
Jane and I had been best friends for eight years when we got embroiled in the argument that would ultimately end our friendship. It was about her boyfriend. The night before she ghosted me, we'd been at her housewarming party. After seven years of living together, she'd recently moved out to live with Jonathan*. Although I wouldn't have picked him as a friend, he and I always got on well enough. There'd been times he'd treated Jane in ways I didn't agree with — mostly on nights out when he'd been drinking — but nothing so major that I'd ever brought it up.
But that evening, he made inappropriate comments from the start, sharing information about me that Jane had passed on to him. It felt like an invasion of my privacy — and it went on all night. At one point, he publicly humiliated me in a speech to the room, mentioning a past fling I'd had with his best friend. While Jane had always laughed off this kind of behaviour, this time, I was unwilling to.
Knowing he'd had a lot to drink, and not wanting to cause an issue in my friendship with Jane — I'd learned from past experiences that you never win by talking negatively about a friend's partner — I decided to wait until the following morning to talk to her about it. I was due to give a talk that day, and on my way, I texted Jane to tell her I was upset about a number of things from the night before and that I wanted an apology from her boyfriend. The conversation escalated quickly — she defended him, saying he would never say that and I was simply jealous of how happy they were together. And then she stopped replying. By the time I arrived at my talk, my make-up had streamed down my face from crying.
Although another friend was there to put me back together — greeting me at the door, helping me tidy my face, and supporting me through the talk — I was devastated. How could she blindly believe him over me when I'd known her twice as long? I knew she was conflict avoidant, but surely not enough to lose a friend of eight years?
I also couldn't help but feel a little resentful. If you walked into your workplace and said you'd just ended a romantic relationship of eight years, you'd be met with compassion, empathy, and understanding — but I felt that if I were to walk in that day and tell people I'd fallen out with my best friend, somehow I'd sound like a 13-year-old having a squabble in the playground.
When I came off the stage, I ran to my phone to see if she had replied and she hadn't. I texted, 'Are you just not going to reply?' I didn't know it at the time, but that would be the last time we would speak. It's now been more than five years.
I've had my fair share of friendship break-ups since, but losing Jane in this way felt particularly heartbreaking. The part that hurts the most is that, after such a long and close friendship, she didn't feel like she owed me a proper goodbye or any kind of closure. Instead, what I was left with was vagueness, ambiguity, and confusion. To this day, I still don't know where the accusation of jealousy came from when I'd always been so happy for her and Jonathan. I often think about how things could have been different if we'd had the conversation in person or even picked up the phone.
In the years since, I've ruminated a lot on this break-up, as well as other friendships I've lost or let go of (and when I say a lot, I mean I wrote a whole book about it). Friendship break-ups can rattle your world and make you question your identity, especially if being a 'good friend' is something that's especially important to you. It can make you doubt yourself and the other friendships in your life; it can make you fearful of judgement from others.
But you're not a bad friend for ending a relationship or having someone end one with you. In fact, the irony is that having better friendships in your life and having more friendship break-ups are two sides of the same coin. In order to have more fulfilling relationships — and to be a better friend yourself — there might be some hard conversations along the way and even some friendships that don't survive. The important thing is that, just like in romantic relationships, you give it all you've got first: you communicate with your friend, set your boundaries, and give them a chance to change their behaviour, if you feel that you're being treated badly. And vice versa!
I believe more friendships would survive if we talked about issues as they arose, rather than waiting until they pile up. This is something we practise regularly in our romantic lives, so why don't we do it with our friends? Good communication = fewer friendship break-ups. Or, if friendships still break down, at least both parties would have greater understanding about what actually happened.
That's not to say it isn't devastating when someone you love becomes a stranger. The grief that exists in romantic break-ups exists in platonic ones, too, and it's time we validated them in the same way. We can't heal if our emotions are shrouded in shame. Seeing and acknowledging your grief is the key to letting go and moving on. Will there be times when your heart still pangs with reminders of them? Yes! As I say in my book, Bad Friend, we leave fingerprints on the people we touch and we impact one another — for better and worse. But with every friend break-up I've had, it's created space for new people to enter and it has helped me learn exactly what I want from my friends and the kind of friend I want to be to them.
When I look back on the day my friendship with Jane ended, I also remember the great act of love and kindness from my friend who greeted me at the door of my talk. The way she helped me compose myself, held my hand on stage to help me get through the event, and reassured me as I cried to her afterwards. It was the kind of platonic love that's often overlooked. For someone to hold me so deeply in such a vulnerable moment and validate my emotions meant more than she will ever know.
Ultimately, my experience with Jane made me realise that while I might have had a best friend in title, I didn't have one in behaviour. And in that case, what's the point in having one at all?
*Names have been changed
Bad Friend: Why Friendship Break-ups Hurt And How To Heal (Renegade Books) by Michelle Elman is out now
Michelle Elman, known as the 'Queen of Boundaries', is a life coach, author, broadcaster and public speaker. Best known for her campaign Scarred Not Scared, Michelle hosts her own podcast 'In All Honesty' and shares her experiences and expertise with a combined social media following of over 400,000. Along with her three bestselling books, Am I Ugly? (2018), The Joy of Being Selfish (2021) and The Selfish Romantic (2023), Michelle's debut children's book, How To Say No (2023), sparked a crucial conversation for teens about boundaries. Michelle is often praised for her straight-talking approach and has appeared on ITV daytime show, This Morning as their resident life coach. She was named as one of the Sun's 50 most inspirational women in the UK and was recognised as one of the top 100 creatives creating change.