Have you ever had a friendship breakup?
Question of the day
Have you ever had a friendship breakup?
For those of you who are new here, I’m Zoe Minikes, a designer, artist, and writer exploring friendship from all angles. For the next six weeks, I’m asking a question a day about friendship.
This is a personal one for me. I have experienced some epic friendship breakups! Most recently, I lost a dear friend of almost 20 years who was deeply angered by my vocal support of Palestine. I’ve been on both sides of the decision to end a friendship. I’ve experienced “cold” and “hot” breakups. Only once have I had a conversation with a friend about the need to break up. It’s a fascinating, painful, truly misunderstood phenomenon, and I want to hear your experience with this.
Feel free to share as much or as little as you’d like. If you’d prefer privacy, reach out to me directly via email or DMs. If you reach out privately, I will not share your name or handle if I quote your response. You can also follow along at @friendshipstudies (or @zoehavingfuntimes, my personal account) on Instagram.
Your friend,
zoe
A few years ago I reached back out to an old friend who had I lost touch with amidst a whirlwind of moving away, being lost in a bad relationship, COVID, covid anxiety, etc. I wanted to reconnect after a handful of years.
I received a really brave and honest email reply explaining they felt a lot of hurt at the distance that had come between us, (that I had put there, in their eyes) and didn’t want to be friends again. It was so sad. I sobbed on vacation (lol) and called another close friend in the extremely early morning, time zones be damned, asking through tears “Am I a terrible friend?!” I understand the friend’s perspective, I’m regretful about how things went and my part in causing hurt, and still I feel the loss of that friendship all the time.
It is not always apparent why some friendships can survive years of distance or changes in frequency / intimacy, and others can’t. I love and am grateful for the friendships I’ve had for decades that have weathered big periods of quiet without missing a beat, but I’m trying now not to expect that will always be the case.