Losing Friends in a Divorce Sucks (Even if You See it Coming)

Most divorces force friends to "pick sides." And when you're not picked, it hurts--even if you understand why.

This is an article for anyone who’s ever been divorced, or whose had friends/family members get divorced.

Not Picking Sides

Except for extreme cases, most friends of couples who are divorcing begin the process by “not wanting to pick sides.” You’re familiar with this, yes?

While such an intent has a beautiful heart behind it, this posture often gets abandoned as time goes on. And look, no judgment here. This stuff is complicated and messy. Adult friendships all by themselves and even under the best circumstances can be challenging. Add on top of that the distress caused when one of the couples in the friend group separates? Woof.

This can especially be true when one or both people in the divorce fall prey to the temptation to juice up their subjective narrative of “why the divorce happened.” Which makes sense. The sympathy of others feels good—I know this first hand. In the ensuing months after our separation, during my deepest grief, it felt good to have people rally to my side; to have friends reinforce my narratives; to have people tell my how it’s probably better for me that I’m not with the other person any more anyways. This kind of full-throated support can act as salving balms to a bleeding heart.

So I get it. It’s human to bend the truth a bit, or omit certain details when we are hurting because it might generate the kind of sympathy that brings temporary relief from the grief.

But one of the many side effects of juicing our side of the story like that is how it inevitably impacts the friends and family doing their best to “not pick a side.”

So today I want to explore the phenomenon of losing friends from a divorce. Specifically my own experience of it. Though I knew such friend-loss is a thing that happens, I wasn’t prepared for how it would feel—even now, 3.5 years later—when it happened to me.

Dividing (Relational) Assets Post Divorce

If a divorced couple is able to quickly pivot from “married” to “good friends,” then everyone in their social orbit (as well as family!) exhales with great relief that they won’t have to take sides.

But such a thing doesn’t happen very often. It is the exception that proves the rule.

Even in cases where a couple might start out with intentions of navigating post-marriage life well, often times the unfolding of the divorce process jostles those intentions enough to cause disruptions in the fabric of the friend group.

So let’s just call it like is: in most divorces there’s not only a division of financial and material assets, there’s also a division of relational assets.

The Pain of Losing Friends in a Divorce

As the title of this post says, even though I knew this would (very very very likely) be the case with me and my ex, it still hurt(s) real bad.

There are a handful of people who were our closest friends that I might not realistically ever see or talk to again. And even if we do cross paths, clearly the friendship has been severed.

Grieving the loss of friendships at the same time as grieving the loss of a spouse, while also grieving the loss of being full-time parent, is truly (pardon the gendered language, but I am me) a nut-punch of epic proportions.

Here are a few ways it hurt and still hurts: