Are Friendship Breakups Harder Than Romantic Breakups?

And why don't we have better language for them?

A lot of you have been asking me about writing retreats lately and my recommendations for good ones. I have so much more to say on the subject and lots more to share from the Adriatic Writer’s Conference I taught at earlier this year. But I wanted to flag this one from my dear friend Glynnis MacNicol that is happening this fall. Check it out. Everyone that did the last one RAVED ABOUT IT.

“A Writer's Retreat That Changed How I Write–and Live.” Looking for a break from *waves arm around*? Want a “retreat from the ordinary, a chance to write, to think, to adventure, and to immerse yourself in the pleasures of Paris”? THE BLUE HOUR is returning this fall! Early bird pricing has been EXTENDED.

We don’t have rituals for breaking up with friends. Romantic breakups come with scripts. We are taught from a very young age to know how to mourn them, process them, even joke about them. It’s one of the top tropes in the kinds of teenage shows that kids start watching around age eight. Even the Harry Potter series has a half dozen romantic plots that go south.

But when a friendship falls apart, we’re left in a strange cultural vacuum without the tropes, the memes or the french fries. We’re supposed to just accept it and carry on.

My female friends are the backbone of my life and I adore them.

If a man ghosts you, people check in. They bring wine. They say all the things….he’s an asshole, he didn’t deserve you, you’ll be fine, let’s eat a cupcake.

When a friendship ends, we blame ourselves. We convince ourselves it wasn’t a real loss because we didn’t share a lease or a bed. We rarely ask for space to grieve and we almost never get it.

When a female friendship ends it is often the loss of a witness to and a co-author of, your life. The person who remembers how you stalked your high school crush at Chik-Fil-A (guilty) or who showed you how to swaddle a baby or shoved your nipple into your baby’s mouth when you couldn’t figure out how to make them latch. They let you drink a bottle of vodka on their couch once when you got dumped by some douchebag they told you not to date in the first place. They did all the things at all the right times.

This is something I ended up writing into Everyone Is Lying to You without even realizing it. At the center of the book is a friendship between two women—Lizzie and Bex—who were once inseparable but had a falling out after college and didn’t speak for 15 years. Readers keep telling me that part of the story hit harder than the murder. And I get it.

The few times I’ve experienced a friendship breakup, they’ve hit me harder than the romantic ones. I still think about the women I’ve lost as friends more than the men I’ve dated. I still stop myself from texting them, still wonder if they think about me. Their absence haunts me in a way that lovers never have. After a period of time, those men feel disposable but the women never do.

Why is this? Why don’t we talk about the grief of losing a close friend, especially another woman?

LESS THAN A WEEK UNTIL PUB DAY FOR EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU. If you’re psyched about this book order it now and it will make all the difference. I’ll be ending the offer of a free subscription for this newsletter for orders of Everyone is Lying to You on pub week so get those orders in. If every single subscriber to this newsletter gets it now we may defeat the patriarchy and JD Vance will cry and then his eyeliner will run.

Here is the Amazon link. I know it is often the easiest one. This is a list of more purchasing options, but it is also available at a lot of indie bookstores and you can get signed copies mailed to you here and here. Tour stops are here!