Raina Cohen

If someone is suffering because a friend is gone from their life, that should be a really clear indication of how much the friendship meant to them.

not that they are making too big of a deal of it.

I think as a society, we're probably, you know, we're pretty uncomfortable with grief in general, but there's a dismissal of platonic relationships that you should just, you know, it's just not that big of a deal.

But the proof is in the pain that it is a big deal.

The most recent encounter I had just a few days ago where a woman came up to me crying, probably in her 40s, maybe 50s, and said that she felt like she had had a divorce with her friend.

And that it was devastating and that nobody understood it.

And she and her friend have since reconciled.

But that is the kind of thing that people have to sort through.

So I think to the extent possible, removing any judgment of yourself for the pain is maybe the best advice that I can offer.

We also just don't have really good concepts or language for this.

I mean, I've thought about leveling down in friendships or transitions, but the kinds of ways that we think about loss are really about categorical shifts.

Like, somebody was your partner, and now they aren't.

Or somebody was alive, and now they're dead.

This kind of gray area is a lot messier.

I will say, like, I have dealt with the gray area, and I found it really hard both to talk about because it felt like, well,

Maybe am I making too much of this because it's not like we're not friends anymore.

It's just we are less close than we were.

But there is a kind of loss to grapple with.

But also it's not like, okay, this person's gone from my life and now I come up with some story about how they were, you know, we were never a good fit or they were a terrible person.

It's like you're having to then rework, like, who are you to each other, which means potentially ongoing conversations.