The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

by Rhaina Cohen

when a platonic relationship folds, a particular breed of shame can set in. The editors of an anthology called The Friend Who Got Away write that compared to romantic relationships, “friendship is supposed to be made of sturdier stuff, a less complicated, more enduring relationship. Because of this, the story of a breakup with a friend often feels far more revealing than that of a failed romance, as if it exposes our worst failings and weaknesses.” You can part ways with a monogamous romantic partner believing they’re a wonderful person, but you simply weren’t compatible enough to wake up next to each other for the rest of your lives; it’s more disheartening when someone drops you as one of their many friends, as if you’d failed to pass a much less demanding test. The writer Patti Miller describes friend breakups as “shameful; it is certainly not something to talk about with other friends. I’ve been found unworthy by one friend—why would I advertise the fact to another? Somewhere in all the neural pathways of memory, or perhaps further back in the DNA of our survival, there is the dark sliver of fear of being cast out of the tribe. I must not talk about the rupture in case it spreads.” That isn’t an outlandish concern. One woman told me that when she says she “used to be friends” with someone, people are aghast. “Used to?” they ask with disapproval, as if she must have done something wrong—a judgment they probably wouldn’t have leaped to if she had referred to an ex-boyfri...