People tend to think of friendship and relationship as two terms that mean two completely separate things. As a society, we are raised to believe that being in a romantic relationship with someone automatically means that it has reached the top tier of importance, above all other friends. This logic is also flawed, but that’s a different discussion. What we tend to believe is that we should hold our friendships to completely different standards than our relationships with our significant others. While there are some things that don’t quite intersect between the two, it’s vital to remember that friendships are just as much a relationship as our romances.
When you’re younger, your friendships have a much heavier impact on you than your romantic relationships. After all, you've had friends way before you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Even when you’re in college, and after, you spend a majority of your time with your friends. You have classes with your friends and you spend your breaks with friends. They’re the people that you always try to keep in touch with. In theory, they’re supposed to be there for you before and after your significant others come and go. For all intents and purposes, it’s exactly like having multiple significant others without the physical intimacy. This is why people need to talk more about the fact that friends can cause the same kind of pain that romantic partners can.
Friendships can do the same things that romantic relationships can do. I’ve seen a million articles about boyfriends and girlfriends who are emotionally abusive, or physically abusive. There’s so many things out there about what to do when your significant other is lying to you, or if you think the person that you’re with is manipulative. But no one ever talks about the fact that someone who is supposed to be your best friend can also do all of these things. Friends can be just as detrimental to your self-esteem just as much as someone that you’re dating. It’s harder to talk about though because no one has ever really started the conversation.
We’ve all had friends that treated us poorly, and through a series of painful events, finally got them out of our lives. I’ve been there more than once, but there was never a how-to guide on how to break up with a friend that is being manipulative or abusive. Everyone is so focused on how to navigate romantic relationships, that we never think about the fact that our social circle(s) are made up of others besides the person we’re dating. These people are just as capable of hurting us as someone with a romantic title.
There’s no resources out there that teach us how to deal with unhealthy friendships, or how to end them. When you’re dating someone and decide that things aren’t going to work out, or that you need to get out of the relationship, it’s heavily implied that it’s going to affect you and the person that you’re with the most -- if it'll even affect anyone else at all. But when it’s someone within your own circle of friends who is doing the manipulating and the controlling, there are seemingly more variables at play. You don’t want to be the person who breaks up the friend group, or the one that gets left behind because the people you hang out with don’t see what you’re talking about.
Romantic breakups can be messy, but trying to platonically break up with someone presents a whole different kind of struggle because there isn’t a real “clean” way to do it. You can tell your boyfriend or girlfriend that, “Things just aren’t working out,” or, “This relationship isn’t going anywhere,” or pretty much any cliché line that’s ever been used to try and let someone down easy. But what are you supposed to say to the person who has been your “best friend” for the past five years? It’s not as socially acceptable to meet up with them, sit them down, and say, “I know we’ve known each other for a long time but this friendship no longer suits me and I think it would be better for the both of us if we didn’t talk or hang out anymore.”
If you do say that, it’s probably not going to be the end of the discussion like it tends to be with romances. People are constantly changing, and for some reason there is an expectation to stick it out with your friends when they are changing. Even if they are changing into someone you wouldn’t be friends if you had just met them. When it comes to romantic relationships however, if your partner’s behavior is changing it’s much more acceptable to break up with them, saying that they aren’t who you thought they were.
There is a lot of weight put into our friendships. Apart from family, they are our primary social interactions. Friends are the people that we confide in, we talk to them about things that we wouldn’t ever dare to talk to our families about. We look to them when we’re upset, or excited, or anything in between. It’s a mutual understanding that you’ll be there for each other and look out for each other, but just like anything else in life, it might not work out.
Ending romantic relationships is something that people consider to be a part of progressing in life and moving on. When we choose to burn those bridges, there is an air of understanding around it. However when we cut off that contact with someone who is our friend, there is always a looming question from everyone as to why we would do that. People act as though you’re never supposed to move on from some friends the way that you move on from some romantic partners. I think that it results in situations escalating farther than they should, as well as people being uncomfortable asking for advice about how they should handle the situation.
I’m not sure that I have an answer to the problem. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of platonic breakups. I’m not an expert at addressing issues within a friendship the way that I am
