The friendship break-up

Kanisa George

WHY DO we trivialise the power of friendship? As though it is not in the bosom of a friend that we seek refuse. Why are we taught to idealise romantic pursuits but relegate those relationships that hold our fondest memories and secure our well-being?

It's laughable how strictly we sometimes apply the "friend does carry yah but doh bring you back" telling, with a crater-sized broad brush, that perhaps it never occurred to us that the warning didn't intend for us to simply write off friendships. Needless to say, whether through positive examples (Sesame Street) or our internal value system, most of us still find value in friendships.

When friendships are real (as Ralph Emerson preferred them,) they are not glass threads or frostwork but the solidest things. Whatever your views on friendship, the undeniable truth is that friendship adds immense colour to our lives and reinvigorates our spirits when we're at our lowest.

But for those of us who wish to subscribe to the beauty of friendship and even those who reject the notion but find themselves somehow entangled, the end, like most things, is difficult to navigate.

The end of a friendship is a burdensome, agonising affair that not only we fail to acknowledge but aren't prepared to deal with. When intact, friendship floats, some say, untethered between a romantic relationship and a familial one, verging either left or right depending on the intensity and needs.

Upon its demise, a friendship is left in a space of ambiguity, a void far worse than what we experience in a romantic or even familial fallout. As Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Senior aptly puts it, society lacks the proper script for ending friendships. "We have no rituals to observe, no paperwork to do, no boilerplate dialogue to crib from." This lack of recognition only adds to the pain.

What makes this scenario far more daunting than most dare to admit is that a friendship break-up can be an excruciatingly painful experience.

Anyone who cherishes a healthy friendship relishes the extensive benefits that naturally flow from the interaction. Regardless of the obvious difference in personalities, friendships influence our identity and perception of self, and when they end our sense of self is often rattled. As unlikely as it seems, a friendship break-up can be, and often is, far more painful than a romantic split.

"While we have so much language to grieve and digest romantic splits, it seemed like platonic friendships operated with not only far less emotional clarity but brutal psychological consequences, more so when they meet their demise."

If you ask people directly about betrayal in relationships, social psychologist Mahzad Hojjat found in her research on the topic that most people will say feeling betrayed by a friend is equally as painful as feeling betrayed by a romantic partner.

What's shocking, based on Hojjat's findings, is that most people think that romantic relationships have more power to hurt them than friendships. However, when asked to consider the actual reality, they offerred that both endings can hurt just the same.

What makes a friendship break-up far worse is that friendship break-ups are often a private kind of pain, as society doesn't fully acknowledge the immense pain surrounding endings of this nature.

Like romantic endeavours, quality friendships take considerable time to develop. What separates platonic friendships from romantic ones is the profound level of candour. Those who share a close connection through friendship found that they were likelier to share embarrassing, unbearable or even vulnerable moments with their close friend than with a romantic partner.

What's also quite interesting is that when you look at a love interest and a close platonic one, you'll discover that one is more likely to contemplate a potential dissolution of their romantic relationships than emotionally intimate friendships. That is to say, a friendship break-up is usually far more unexpected and ultimately far more damaging.

One thing about friendships that can make moving forward tricky after they end is shared history and emotional investment. When you share your successes to traumas and everything else, there is an exchange of a fair amount of emotional security and support that solidifies your bond and further concretises the relationship.

This, I believe, above all, is what makes friendship break-ups so brutal. It's like being forced to write a new chapter without making mention of the characters who starred in the last.

Even the very essence of friendship, vis-à-vis social support and connectivity, lends credence to the notion that when a friendship ends it might just rock you to the core. Before we even dream about romantic pursuits, it is our desire to connect with others socially that drives our interactions. Our friends are our first port of call for advice, comfort and connection.

When a friendship ends, it can completely change the landscape of your social support, leaving you feeling vulnerable and impacting your trust and ability to be authentic in other relationships.

When one thinks of relationship loss, familial or romantic connections are usually the only ones that come to mind. Columnist Jeremy Godwin believes that it is society's failure to acknowledge the end of friendship that makes the grieving process so painful.

"Unlike romantic break-ups, where it's often publicly acknowledged, and people tend to be supportive and understanding, friendship break-ups don't always receive the same recognition, or at least the same level of understanding of what you're going through, so you can be dealing with unacknowledged grief…which can make the grieving process lonelier and more confusing."

A break-up of any nature can be an emotional nightmare and often difficult to deconstruct. With friendship break-ups in particular, we might be tempted to push our emotions away and not give them the dignity they deserve.

We could run from them, but we'll never truly set ourselves right if we don't acknlowdge the pain that remains after they are no more. Losing a friend can sometimes be hard, and some people live the rest of their lives never really getting over the loss. So go ahead, mourn the loss because as much as we try to pretend, the loss of a friend is pretty painful stuff.