Romantic breakups are an accepted part of life, a rite of passage with familiar rituals—a dramatic haircut, eating ice cream and crying to rom-coms, rebound sex, nights out with your friends. Recently, I began to suspect that friendship breakups might be more common than they seemed to me back then. Kusuma - Getty ImagesMany pointed out the lack of social recognition of the pain of friendship breakups, saying this made their experience even harder. On the other hand, being on the receiving end of an official friendship breakup isn’t great either. Or maybe I’ll invent an entirely new ritual, just for the specific and hugely significant loss that is the friendship breakup.
