The Fracturing of Female Friendships

“You can love them, forgive them, want good for them…but still move on without them.” —Mandy Hale

The first time I realized I was breaking up with a female friend, an Irish friend I’d met during my year at Trinity in Dublin, a wild, talented, impossible woman with whom I had shared many drunken nights, the stage, family sadness and other things, came when I realized she had pursued and captured my ex-boyfriend for whom I pined, while he remained elusive. I had called from the States to talk to her, and her sister told me she was with him in his faraway country, a place I had longed to visit. The message I left. “Tell her I will never speak to her again.” Of course, we did speak, years later, and in a wine frenzy playing Scrabble, we wrote awful messages to each other, mine all about betrayal, hers all about jealousy, and finally cried and swore to never allow a man to separate us again. Years later, I visited, and we had a massive fight at the Tate Modern, which was interpreted by spectators as a brutal American woman (me) screaming at an Irish mother holding a baby, but this was not the real story. Still, we again made up and remained long-distance friends until she died of a brain tumor, and I recognized how much I had loved her and regretted the erosion of our connection.

photo by Audri Van Gores

There is another sort of breakup that remains a mystery and a pain, the relationship that was once so close, so trusting, and then suddenly it is over, the breakup never clearly defined, but the trust evaporated, and things said that could never be forgotten. The most recent of these caused me so much pain and bewilderment that I lacked the ability to attempt a conversation. I didn’t like her new boyfriend; he certainly didn’t like me, and the next thing I knew, we were no longer friends. We tried, remembering how we had been such a comfort to each other when our respective fathers died, our years of having one another’s backs, the shared secrets and laughter, but nothing could mend the rupture. I grieved, assuming it was all my fault, although I pretended to believe it was a mutual split. I still miss her.

“You are the meanest person I’ve ever known in my life. Everyone thinks you are mean.” This was said to me in a loud whisper in a chaotic airport in Mexico after an unfortunate travel experience with someone who made a point of being punctual (me) and someone who found time a vague construct (her). Yes, I can be mean, and travelling together was a mistake. I was sad that our relationship ended, but the fact remains that sometimes we fail.

One of the most painful splits came with a friend I had known since childhood, high school, college, and beyond. She moved to another country, and I visited her a few times. When we moved to London, she came over to meet my baby and ex-husband. We had several misunderstandings over money, including my insulting her with an offer to pay her fare when she visited. I was desperate for her to meet my baby and knew she was struggling financially. After that, things were strained, and somehow my change in circumstances, marriage, and motherhood, seemed to make our earlier friendship simply disappear. Or maybe it was the fact I was publishing fiction while her writing did not get the same attention. I still have no idea what ruined us.

“The absence of closure conversations means you're often left with unanswered questions. What happened? Could it have been fixed? Unlike romantic relationships, where expectations are discussed, friendships operate on unspoken understandings—until they don't. This ambiguity keeps your mind cycling through scenarios, searching for answers that may never come.” –Sarah Thompson

I think this ambiguity is the worst aspect of the female friendship breakup. Although honesty may be the way to solve the mystery, do you really want someone telling you, as I once experienced, that everyone in a large city thinks you’re mean? The way a friendship grows, organically, gradually, doesn’t reflect the rupture that often accompanies the end of these relationships, the name-calling, and the tears. I still miss certain friends, while others have not meant as much; the loss was mitigated by the drama that came with the end. Oddly, I recall my mother frequently talking smack about her best friend after my father died, but when I asked her how she could be so close to someone she seemed to dislike, she told me this same woman was her best friend. I remain confused. Do you have close friendships that ended abruptly? Was grief an aspect of the aftermath?

–Molly Moynahan