The question of what to say to a friend experiencing heartbreak is one that’s never been definitively answered—at least, not really. Be too supportive, and you risk giving your friend a shred of false hope. Be too negative, and you push your friend to defend the very person who just hurt them. There’s no roadmap for how to have a post-breakup conversation, likely because there’s no real roadmap for how to get over a breakup, either. Sometimes, you need a shoulder to cry on.
I got lucky. I found someone who was able to identify the sentence I needed to hear, and to deliver that sentence with frank compassion. Sometimes, we are not so fortunate. Our friends can offer a near-endless array of perspectives and never unearth the silver bullet that will finally inspire recovery. I say this as someone who has spent a lot of time on both ends of this interaction.
“Sometimes you don’t get the ‘closure’ you’re seeking.” “Sometimes you just don’t get the ‘closure’ you’re seeking. And sometimes, chasing ‘closure’ is really just another excuse to not let go and to keep that person in your life. You can’t always end a relationship with a neatly tied bow, as much as you might like to.” —Mia M.
“You don’t have to figure out exactly what you two are right now.” “This was difficult for me for so long, and I still go back and forth between calling him my ‘boyfriend’ and my ‘ex-boyfriend.’ We still loved each other a lot when we broke up, and that didn’t go away automatically. Were we friends? Yes, but I think we were a little more. Were we in a relationship? No, we’d both discussed we didn’t want to do that.
“Even amicable breakups hurt—and that’s OK.” “My ex-boyfriend and I didn’t break up because someone hurt the other person, or because there was this big falling out. I graduated college and was moving back across the country. I was leaving, and he didn’t want to come with. Even so, it was a really painful breakup. I didn’t think that mutual, relatively amicable breakups would or could hurt so much, but it did.” —Jessica B.
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