dear bear: how do I handle a friendship breakup?

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Dear Bear,

I had a friendship breakup and now I feel betrayed and hurt and just. so. freaking. tired. For a long time I have had 2 buckets, one for people who come and go, the other for people who would stay for life. I decided a long time ago this person was the stay-for-life bucket, so when they decided to end the friendship, I was in a state of disbelief, and just so much sadness. Worse still, there's no music about friendship breakups, no advice column, no essays or books to make sense of what's going on. Can you help me make sense of this complex emotion?

Hi Bear,

It’s a universally acknowledged truth that friendship breakups can be more traumatic than breakup-breakups, but we still have no idea how to make sense of them. Because we hold our romantic partners to such a high bar—they’re our lovers and our logistical partners and our Best Friends—it sort of makes sense when someone breaks up with you. You’re just not the person who can be Everything (or at least 85% of everything) for them, and it’s not your fault. When a friend breaks up with you, on the other hand, it’s like… what, I’m so awful we can’t text occasionally and hang out a couple times a month?

I’ve had three major friendship breakups in my life, and I’m still haunted by each other of them. Each of those friendships had an incredible intensity to them, and just as you write, I put them all in the “stay for life” bucket. Each of the friendships ended for a different reason, but I would sum it up this way: we got so much and expected so much from each other, and when the friendship stopped feeling good we just didn’t know how to handle it. It was so painful. In each instance, I think we made a genuine effort for months to make the relationship work, but did not get it to the point where it felt good again.