Why Friendship Breakups Are Harder Than Relationship Ones
Breakups are hard. How do you move on from someone you spent a lot of time on? do you forgive and forget? But, what’s worse is when the break up is between friends. That’s the thing about friendship breakups: no one ever tells you how difficult it really is.
Here are a few reasons why friendship breakups are harder than relationship ones!
You Never Really See It Coming
The thing with friendships is that you believe they are for life. As opposed to dating, once you find yourself a friend who you get along with well, you don’t really think about the ending, because you don’t believe the friendship will ever come to an end.
It takes you by surprise, so you don’t even have time to prepare for the outcome.
Whether the decision is mutual, you’re dumped by a friend or you are the one who decides to no longer be friends with them, you are never braced for the impact.
It Takes Longer To Heal
If you’ve recently seen a really good film and want to recommend it to your friend, you won’t be able to. If something embarrassingly funny happened to you and you just want to share it with your friend, you won’t be able to. If you need advice on a relationship issue, you won’t know who to turn to, because your go-to friend is no longer in your life.
It takes longer to adjust to real-life situations and to get back into the habit of things, because a lot of your everyday life would have involved your friend.
With a partner, you just search for the person who piques your interest. With friends, compatibility is more of an issue.
You Realize You Were In The Wrong
If your friendship breakup involved you getting dumped by a friend, then there were obvious reasons behind the decision. Although at first you might be in denial and defensive, over time you will start to come to terms with the fact that, this one time, you might have been the toxic person in the relationship.
What’s worse than a friendship breakup is the fact that you were the one that caused it. There’s nothing worse than hurting a friend’s feelings, as they are someone who’s been there for you all the way. Guilt will slowly start to make its way to your mind and sour your mood.
You can attempt to fix it, but sometimes friends aren’t compatible, which is the sad truth.
All you can do now is learn from your mistakes and adjust your friendships with everyone else so the breakup doesn’t spread onto your other friendships.
Mutual Friends Have To Pick Sides
With a relationship, picking sides is easier, because usually, the first person who has known you should automatically side with you. Or if you dated someone your friends had never met before, then there doesn’t even need to be side picking, because your partner will not have a hold over them.
With mutual friends, however, picking sides puts everyone in a difficult position. In the end, you might end up losing more friends than just one which is the worst thing to happen in a friendship breakup. They sometimes involve more than two people.
Avoiding them may become harder too.
You Might Have To See Them Even After The Breakup
With romantic relationships, it’s easier to avoid the person you previously dated, because it’s quick to ignore them.
With friendship breakups, you will probably end up bumping into each other. Spending so much time with a friend means that you know each other very well, especially what places they like going to or where they usually eat. If you have the same interests, then one of you may have to find new places to go to if the breakup was tough.
It will be hard to avoid them, especially more so if you run in the same circles.
It Says A Lot About You As A Person
Since friendships are usually set in stone (or so you hoped they would be), it’s hard to answer questions like “Oh, what happened to your friend? Where is she?” or “What did you do?”
Since no one bats an eye when romantic couples break up, it’s a bigger deal when friends break up due to the fact that something must have really been wrong for it to come to an end.
Are you not friend material? What must you have done for the friendship to end?
People will judge you on the basis of the breakup, but just remember that no one really knows the true story. There are two sides to every story, so just stick to yours.
You Miss Them All The Time
You will catch yourself wondering what they’re up to, if they’re enjoying that Netflix show you both started watching together and whether they’re thinking about you. It’s easily arguable that friends are closer than partners, so the breakup will be harder to deal with.
You will be wondering about all the “what-ifs”, but just like a relationship, friendships come to an end and can be more toxic than romantic partners.
Things change, people leave, and in the end, life doesn’t stop for anybody. It’s difficult at first, but it gets better over time.
Learn from your mistakes and make new friends who will stay by you forever.
