Choosing Sides: The Complicated Truth About Friendship After A Breakup

Have you ever been left in the wreckage of a friend's breakup? Not the breakup of a couple you knew, but the breakup of your own friendship with one of them.

It's an experience more common than we’d like to admit. My husband and I were friends with another couple for over a decade before their marriage ended. We gave them space as they navigated a new normal, but then something unexpected happened. My girlfriend completely ghosted me and our entire friend group, not even a Christmas Card. I viewed my friend as an older sister, a mentor, a confident.  Our husbands worked together for years and we spent a lot of time together.  Naturally, the questions flooded my mind: Was I a bad friend? Did I not reach out enough? Or was she resentful that we still maintained a friendship with her ex? Perhaps our friendship had simply run its course. Whatever her reasons, the loss of her company was a different kind of heartbreak. I mourned the friendship, but I also respected it, perhaps she just needed to distance herself for her own healing and sanity.

This experience, and others like it, have left me wondering: when a friendship ends—or two friends in a circle have a falling out—who gets "friend custody" of you? Can you stay friends with both without it becoming a sticky, uncomfortable situation?

On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself caught in the middle when two friends in my circle have a falling out. Suddenly, it feels like I'm being forced to pick a side—a situation I never asked to be in. The juggling act begins: making separate plans with each person, navigating two different versions of the same story, and feeling an unnecessary guilt for hanging out with one without the other. It's a complicated, exhausting dance, which is why there’s so much relief when they finally reconcile and the group feels whole again.

I’ve had a few friendships "pause" over the years, and I’m fully aware I'm a factor in that. I don't have the best reputation for being empathetic, and I’m always going to give you the cold, hard truth—sometimes not as softly as I should. But it’s not my style to be anything but a real, unfiltered sounding board. A friend once told me they purposely wouldn’t call me until they were ready to face that reality,  I respect that. I've learned not to take it personally if a friend needs a break from my "unfiltered reality"—I sometimes need a break from my own internal noise, too.

So, I’m putting this question out there to all of you who have been in this situation: Why do we feel the need to choose sides? Is it a form of self-preservation? Is it how you heal from the original breakup? Or are you simply moving into a new chapter, and some characters from the previous one didn’t make the cut?

I'm genuinely curious about your thought process. What has your experience been like, both as the friend in the middle and as the friend who was put on pause?