If you’ve ever gone through a breakup with a friend, you have the unfortunate wisdom of understanding how unique that pain is. With the recent emphasis on female friendships in media, we’ve only now become more conscious of the specialty that friendships bring into our lives. That newfound appreciation leads to murky waters when dealing with their unfortunate end. Sometimes, those breakups could sting and hold you in an emotional hostage incomparable to a breakup with a significant other. Alix Earle recently jumped on her podcast Hot Mess to talk about her experience with friendship breakups.
The 23-year-old Tiktoker has never been shy in all her GRWMs, and the new episode continues that same trend. In the episode, Earle states that friendships have never come easy for her. Growing up, she had always struggled to make friends due to her shyness and insecure nature. It was only when she got more secure with herself that she found friends that matched her energy. However, when she graduated, she decided to have a smaller, more personal circle. In doing this, that meant she had to go through the unfortunate round of friendship breakups. So, it only made sense that she had a lot of stories to tell on her own podcast. Here are the top three lessons she revealed.
Ghosting works… sometimes.
Although this is the general go-to for most people when it comes to friendship breakups, Earle emphasizes that this is not the way to go. What ultimately happens is that the person who ghosts ends up looking terrible, or in her words, “a b*tch,” no matter what their justifications for it are. It’s also pretty difficult to do this if everyone’s in the same friend group.
On the other hand, when Earle had been the victim of ghosting, she made sure to have stayed self-aware. In an instance that occurred to her, she had enough self-aware to understand that she shouldn’t shove her friendship down someone’s throat, especially if they’ve gone out of their way to show that they don’t want to be a part of her circle anymore. Honestly? I respect it.
Cut out friends that don’t value you.
In the podcast, Earle revealed that she had a best friend from the 7th grade up to her sophomore year of university that she deemed almost like a sister at one point. Apparently, her friend had started drifting away from her in university, in favor of someone else she had met. Though initially understanding, it wasn’t until Earle had broken up with her boyfriend had problems emerged. She had found out that her best friend tried to set up her ex with her new friend which, rightfully, infuriated Earle to no end.
In a blind rage, she called her best friend demanding an explanation only for her to deny what had happened. This marked the end of their friendship and despite it all, Earle does look back and believes that she could’ve handled the situation better. Without proper closure, Earle says that even now she gets tempted to reach out even years after the fallout. Like relationship breakups, friendship breakups are hard, especially when they end.
Treat friend breakups like real breakups.
Throughout the entire podcast episode, Earle goes on about how hard it is to sit someone down and just talk to them about the festering problems in their friendship. She believes that it’s never the wrong way to go, even if it might go awry. In her experience, she’s gone through friends who have stopped talking to her whenever they get into new relationships to those who have created competitive environments out of sheer jealousy and has even had to deal with people acting like her best friend when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in those situations, she just had to do the difficult thing and address it. Those conversations never bandage what had happened, but it sure is a better way than leaving everything in a state of miscommunication.
Earle shared a story in which she gave someone the benefit of the doubt, despite their previous toxic behaviors. She then realized that she didn’t want to have someone in her life who did everything in their power to get what they wanted, even if that meant using other people to get where they wanted to be. As Earle says, sometimes values just don’t match up. If that’s the case, then they’re just not a friend she can fully commit to.
In this episode of Hot Mess, Earle never beats you over the head about what you should or shouldn’t do regarding friendship breakups. She’s learned that you just have to find a way to read the room, assess the situation, and find the best way to do what needs to be done to keep your peace.