When you’re friends with both people involved in a break up, what’s the protocol for being a supportive friend to one without bashing the other?
A few years ago, my husband introduced his friend Jack to Leila, a friend of a friend. (All names have been changed.) Leila and Jack began dating, and soon the four of us were spending time together. Leila and I developed our own friendship, and confided the details of our respective relationships to each other. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that after she and Jack split up, my husband and I became sounding boards for both of them. At first neither of us minded—we had definitely relied on them for relationship advice—but after a few months, my husband summed up both our feelings quite succinctly when he said: “I’m not Team Leila or Team Jack. I’m Team Shut the Hell Up.”
When you’re friends with both halves of a couple and they break up, the fallout can be significant. All of a sudden, you’re hearing stories of bad behavior and long-held grudges that you never even suspected; you’re being asked for intel on what she did last night or how he looked at happy hour the other week; and, perhaps most frustrating, you’re expected to pledge allegiance to one friend at the expense of another. While all of this pales in comparison to the hell of a romantic breakup, it’s undeniable that being party to a breakup is a unique stress of its own.
This is a phenomenon to which I’ve been both a witness and a participant. My ex-boyfriend Ike and I had a number of friends in common while we were together, and after our breakup we decided to stay friends ourselves. This decision proved rocky at times, even long after we should have gotten over each other. While I wasn’t so close to any of his friends as to subject them to hours of venting and crying, that doesn’t mean they were spared the tension and awkwardness of two exes clumsily navigating the perimeters of their new relationship.
One afternoon stands out in particular: a wedding reception for friends I’d met through Ike. Not only was he in attendance, but so was his new girlfriend. This party was a decade ago but I still wince when I think about that long summer afternoon, and how utterly ridiculous both Ike and I were to think we could be in the same place at that particular time.
But it was an indication of how desperately I wanted to feel normal in the aftermath of our breakup that I decided to attend the reception knowing full well that his new girlfriend would be there. If Ike and I were still together, I reasoned, I would have gone; so I should go anyway, because that would mean I was over him. This is the kind of logic that makes perfect sense when you’re still adjusting to a post-breakup life, and the worst part is that there’s no real timetable for how long that adjustment will take. If you had asked me a week before the reception if I was sure this was a good idea, I would have given you a half-dozen reasons why it made perfect sense. But actually seeing my ex dancing and laughing with another woman totally shattered any belief I’d held that I was over Ike.
Our afternoon culminated in a bitter argument held around the corner from where people danced and ate wedding cake; the only saving grace was that we kept our voices down. Later that night I stood next to my car talking to Ike’s best friend, an incredibly polite man who cloaked the message “you guys are terrible together” in such kind and eloquent words that I almost began crying for the fourth time that day.
So I understood when, long after Leila and Jack split up, she still agonized over whether to attend a party to which he’d also been invited. I was cautiously optimistic when they eventually reunited, and when the relationship fell apart again, I listened to her dissect What Went Wrong once again … and again … and again.
After months of endless relationship rehashes, I sent Leila an email. Email is an impersonal medium, but in a way, that made it the perfect medium to let me set down my thoughts carefully rather than just blurting this out: that while I valued our friendship, I couldn’t continue to listen to her talk about Jack to the exclusion of everything else in both her life and mine. Leila wrote back and suggested that we talk about this in person, but we never managed to meet up for that conversation. In fact, we&mmp;rsquo;ve never talked about my email. And even though she and Jack are now close friends again, my friendship with Leila effectively ended the day I sent that email.
I didn’t want to have to choose; I didn’t think that was my responsibility or my obligation. But Leila chose for me, and while I wish she hadn’t done that, I understand.
Sarah Erdreich is the author of Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement. A Southerner at heart who grew up in the Midwest, she now lives on the East Coast. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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