A woman says ‘breaking up’ with her best friend of 11 years was much harder than any romantic split, with the process even leaving her in therapy.
Sabrina Kirberg, 31, had a decade-plus long relationship with her now-ex-best friend until the friend ended up ghosting Sabrina after an argument.
The NYC-based mental health counselor said she went through the ‘five stages of grief,’ and emphasized that it was not as easy as ‘eating ice cream and having time with your girls,’ as with romantic breakups.
She ultimately sought therapy to help her ‘grieve’ the friendship and still thought about her friend everyday.
‘Breaking up with a friend is like grief. You go through denial. It’s so much worse than relationship breakups,’ Sabrina said.
‘You think you’ll be fine and you just need to get through the rough patch – but then comes the depression and you just find yourself crying all the time.
‘When it comes to a romantic relationship you’ll be sad, have your ice cream and go out with your girls.
‘But losing my best friend was like having my support system ripped away from me, all at once.’
Sabrina met her ex-best friend at an athletics club when they were 16, she said.
They shared a number of ‘firsts’ together over the years, from coinciding first boyfriends, to passing their driving tests at the same time, and being allowed to hang out sans parental supervision.
But as they got older, they began bickering a lot more, Sabrina claimed – and she felt left out when her friend started spending time with other people.
After Sabrina met her partner, Nathanial Baker, 29, she said the two grew even further apart.
The pair had one last argument during which they fought about Nathanial.
Sabrina claimed that the friend then ‘decided to ghost me, instead of talk to me about it,’ in the aftermath of the fight.
‘I reached out so many times trying to get her to talk to me to explain what is going on between us, and she never put in the effort to do that,’ she said.
‘I think that hurts more than the ghosting or anything, is that, I wasn’t enough for her to reach out and talk to me about it.’
Sabrina reflected of the rift: ‘There’s a lot that triggered the breakup – there were a lot of mean words and anger thrown around.’
‘I wish I could have read her mind,’ she admitted. ‘It would’ve helped a lot.’
She’s still coming to terms with her friendship breakup five years later – and has gone through the five stages of grief in order to accept it.
‘She broke my heart, absolutely destroyed it,’ Sabrina said.
‘I never imagined her out of my life. I imagined her being my maid of honor when I got married, I imagined her being the godmother to my kids. I imagined growing old with her.’
At first, she was in denial that the breakup was truly happening, believing the pair would make up just like they’d done before.
But, as time marched on without any word from the friend, she became angry, as well as depressed, recalling she ‘cried all the time.’
‘All you do is ruminate,’ she admitted.
‘You go through the memories all over again.
‘I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the catalyst for our breakup – everything I could’ve done better.
‘I just got angry and ashamed of myself for seeing the red flags in the relationship and ignoring them – and why didn’t I end the friendship earlier?
‘You go into bargaining a lot when you’re reliving the memories, which is just like the third stage of grief. I kept thinking, “If I’d done things this way, it would’ve happened differently in this way” – and it spirals out of control.’
Sabrina still thinks about the friend on a daily basis, but she has worked through her feelings in therapy.
‘Years after, I still think about her every day,’ she said.
‘But, I think acceptance happens.
‘Therapy was how I coped with it – I learnt to love myself so much, I don’t feel like I need another person to feel complete.
‘I just allowed myself to feel everything – anger, rage and sadness. I realized, the more you push it away, the longer it’ll stay.’
Laura Davis is an entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to Broadway, she offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
