The unspoken grief of when friendships end

“Most relationships end. Friendships, romances, they break”

“Most relationships end. Friendships, romances, they break”

These words, which open the trailer of Ava DuVernay’s latest film; Origin, floored me. 

The searing honesty. The heartbreak of this reality. The pain of it. The grief.

The grief of when a friendship ends, is one of the most painful and enduring experiences I’ve had and is something that is not spoken about nearly enough.  The feelings of betrayal, the humiliation, the confusion, the anguish. 

With the unwanted guarantee of the ending of so many relationships - I do wonder, why aren’t we more emotionally agile at navigating the grief that comes with this?

People often, and mistakenly, believe that grief only occurs when someone has died. But grief is a perfectly normal and human response to any kind of loss. Including the loss of a friendship.

Despite the lack of a hearse, an impassioned eulogy and the drama of a funeral, when a friendship ends, the shock is still there. The anger? Still there. The bargaining? There. The depression - still very much there and perhaps less so - the acceptance. 

There is something about the finality of death that almost makes this type of ending, dare I say, at times, easier to accept. Acceptance is harder to process when a close friendship ends through separation (at least for me), because they are still very much alive and kicking and therefore, so is the hope of a reconciliation that may never come. I remember sharing about how the swift ending of a decade-old friendship, even though they were, and are, very much alive, felt like they had died. From supporting each-other through babies and childlessness, through work wins and woes, marriage and divorce, to finding comfort and joy in the most menial of daily chats, to silence. The sucker punch. The confusion. The rejection. The grief was unbearable. And I don’t take this comparison lightly either, after losing my most treasured friend to breast cancer just three years prior.  But I and especially my body, recognise grief when I experience it. 

As much as we like to think there is, or at least ‘should’ be a hierarchy of grief - when you lose someone who has meaning in your life - when it comes to how you experience grief, there is no hierarchy. I learned that humbling lesson when I found myself wailing and curled up in a foetal position when my cat unexpectedly died in November. I was shocked by how my body shutdown - it didn’t make any logical sense.

When close friendships end, it is accompanied by an invisible grief. No right of passage at a funeral, no chance to share memories and commune in shared grief or shared experience. It is deeply lonely. It is a grief like when a pet dies, that is disenfranchised. 

Disenfranchised grief is when a society doesn't recognise or validate your grief / loss. This can be incredibly isolating because it also means you don’t get or have access to the same support as you would when a family member dies (bereavement leave or other reasonable adjustments at work for example) you’re expected to have just “moved on” you can also internalise this - and start self-harming with self-deprecating talk;- ‘why haven’t I got over this yet?’, ‘ Why am I so affected by this?’, ‘what is wrong with me?’. And not only do you face social exclusion, you end up diminishing your own grief and the truth of your experience in the process. You also experience secondary grief from the birthdays where their absence is palpable, the current affairs that trigger a giggling fit about a memory you share, alone. The companionship, the intimacy, the love. All gone.

The grief is incredibly discombobulating, disarming and disorienting.

I think the invisible nature of grief when a friendship ends is exacerbated with how careless we can be with friendships. There is no contract. There is no written agreement. Perhaps, a tacit agreement to choose to love one another, to show care and respect for one another, to trust. But in the same almost effortless way you choose to love one another, you can choose to leave. Friendships are a lot easier to discard than a marriage or relationship where you share children together. This makes me think the stakes are higher when you choose to love someone through friendship - the invitation is as my dear friend Lisa said “to keep knowing me as I evolve” and we face huge rejection when that doesn’t happen - which is often the case when you grow more into the wholeness of who you are. Rejection leads to disconnection, which leads to feelings of HUGE betrayal, which leads to shame and shame can trigger past trauma. It’s painful.

But it made me think - what are we actively and intentionally committing to when we enter into a friendship? What are you doing? What boundaries and expectations do you set with another - or are you trusting in that elusive tacit agreement?

What I've come to accept is, it’s ok to miss people you no longer have a relationship with, even if they hurt you.

Friendships are a mirror for us - they exist for seasons. They exist to replicate patterns that we need to first see and then break, show us what we want more of, or help us get clarity on what is no longer aligned. These endings, though painful, are our teachers too - they give us an opportunity to make changes (or not). They also, when we’re ready to accept love again, create space for something new, more loving and more aligned to emerge.

I heard

Nedra Glover Tawwab

say “people are allowed to leave” -  after recounting being ghosted by a long-term friend. It pissed me off because I have been there too. How can someone who you’ve nurtured years with just leave like that? No attempts to engage in dialogue, no attempts to repair. Just ghosting. I found it deeply disrespectful AND it is true. People ARE allowed to leave, in any matter they see fit - But what I know is I'm not interested in nurturing relationships where there isn’t basic care for one another to have the courage and respect to at least have a conversation and draw a line if it needs to end.

Finding the balance of giving grace for mistakes vs accountability, yielding vs holding firm boundaries, or indeed letting go, is a dance and a dance I am still practising. We can elongate the ending of friendships when we ignore signs, when we conflate the loyalty that decades worth of friendship represents, which clouds our judgement over alignment, so we end up accepting crumbs instead of abundance, enable misalignment, or even tolerate abuse - because the nostalgia and longing for the way things used to be, is seductive. Excusing what (if we are honest with ourselves) is a clear withdrawal of love and excuse ghosting, with them just being ‘super busy’.

But no response IS a response.

Accepting an ending in a friendship is hard AND as Nedra said - people are allowed to leave.

People are allowed to leave - Nedra Glover Tawwab

It doesn’t mean that we don’t try to reconnect, to repair where repair is required, it doesn’t mean that we don’t hold boundaries or hold one another accountable for hurt or harm, but there is also a powerful lesson in letting go and acceptance. Any relationship where you need to chase for love and respect is not a healthy one.

There might be perfectly justifiable reasons for relationships ending, either abruptly or through the painful burn of a slow withdrawal and there might not be. It may be blatant disrespect - because let's face it, avoiding conflict is preferred, so often we don’t respect one another enough to give each other the truth. Either way, it’s deeply painful and the weight of grief takes my breath away.

Most relationships end.

If it is true and I believe that it is -  then we need to develop our agility and practice acknowledging, tending to, NOT diminishing our grief and instead accepting and navigating our grief in all the ways that it comes. Because what I know for sure is this; there is no love without grief.

Photograph: Josephiné Elvis Photography

Nova Reid is a writer, author of The Good Ally, TED Speaker, Producer and Creative. You can find out more about her work on www.novareid.com