Friend Breakups Will Stick With You Forever

We don’t have rituals for breaking up with friends.  Romantic breakups come with scripts—we know how to mourn them, process them, even joke about them. But when a friendship falls apart, we’re left in a strange cultural vacuum.

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, still carry the unresolved ache of the loss. Their absence haunts me in a way that lovers never have.

Why is this? Why don’t we talk about the grief of losing a close friend—especially another woman? Is it because we still undervalue platonic love, or because the intimacy of female friendship is too complicated and layered to fit into a clean narrative? And why do so many of us carry this particular heartbreak quietly, without naming it?

Our guest today is Susan Shapiro Barash, author of Estranged. Inspired by the emotional undercurrent of my new novel Everyone Is Lying To You, this conversation dives deep into why friendship breakups hit harder than romantic ones, the red-flag friendships to look out for, and why it's time to admit that not all friendships are meant to last forever. 

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