Friend breakups (I mean good, longterm, very close and intimate friendships) are, in my experience, much more emotionally devastating than romantic breakups. And yet, unlike romantic relationships, we have almost no socialization (even in media images) on how to navigate them.

With romantic relationships, whether this is healthy or not, there is the hope (however remote) of finding another person where you can enrich each other’s lives in that very unambiguous, modeled through societal messaging way romantic relationships function.

But there’s none of that with friend breakups. What you have with each friend is unique. Functions uniquely. Doesn’t follow a “this is what it basically looks like” framework the way romantic relationships do. It’s losing something that, even in the abstract, feels irreplaceable.

And yet people rarely talk about it.