Pop Culture’s 12 Messiest Friendship Breakups
How many times do we have to watch a scorned woman sob into a pint of ice cream on a bed littered with tissues because of a man? Personally I’m sick of it, and while I’ve had my share of devastating romantic breakups, some of my own most painful splits have happened with friends, not lovers. Where’s the representation for those of us who have hit send on a risky text to a suddenly distant BFF, or those of us who have been unable to hold back tears after watching one too many Instagram Stories of everyone else hanging out without us?
Falling out with a friend sucks as much as going through a romantic rift, if not more, and seeing friends split up in pop culture might even help you deal with your own friendship breakup. Here are some recommendations to get you started.
Insecure
Molly and Issa are the real love story in this HBO series; they ride for one another, offer each other comfort and love in the down baddest of times, and tell the hard truths the other needs to hear. So when the cracks in their friendship widen into gaping ravines starting in season four, it hurts more than any of the romantic entanglements we’ve watched them both get in to and out of since the beginning. I won’t spoil whether or not they repair their relationship, but their falling out is worth watching carefully either way; it’s a lesson on power imbalances in friendships, boundaries, and true platonic love.
Am I OK?
This movie begins when Jane (Sonoya Mizuno) tells lifelong best friend Lucy (Dakota Johnson) that she’s moving to London for work. This is devastating news for Lucy, and over the course of the film, leading up to the move, their codependent dynamic is stripped bare as they stop speaking before distance has a chance to separate them. They each go on a personal journey of growth in the meantime, showing how the comfortable space of an old friendship can sometimes hold us back.
Friendship, by Emily Gould
Written by New York’s very own Emily Gould, this moving novel centers on Bev and Amy, a pair of long-distance best friends in their early 30s whose friendship might become collateral damage in their vastly different but somehow parallel journeys into “real” adulthood.
Bride Wars
If the friendship-breakup genre has a canonical classic, it’s Bride Wars. Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are besties who would each do absolutely anything for the other — until they accidentally schedule their respective weddings for the same day and at the same location. Chaos of the extremely entertaining variety ensues!
Mikey and Nicky
A box-office bomb turned cult classic, this film stars John Cassavetes and Peter Falk as a mafioso and his childhood best friend. When one is employed to kill the other, things get … dark.
How Should a Person Be, by Sheila Heti
A portrait of two artists as young women, this novel centers on the tortured Sheila, who takes the life of her painter friend Margaux as artistic inspiration, crossing several boundaries along the way and causing a friendship breakup for the ages.
The Banshees of Inisherin
Imagine you wake up one morning to go hang out with your best friend, and he won’t speak to you — in fact, he would rather die than talk to you for another second. That’s basically the plot of this Martin McDonagh movie starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. It’s funny and weird, but it’s also genuinely heart-wrenching Irish excellence.
Jennifer’s Body
Demonic possession? Well, that’s one way to end a friendship. In this cult classic, best friends Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried) are just your average popular-cheerleader and girl-next-door duo. But after the members of a local band try to kill Jennifer in a virgin sacrifice, she transforms into a succubus who kills and eats men. Despite Needy’s best efforts, it doesn’t end well for either of them.
The Craft
A desire for power brings four teenage girls together in this ’90s classic, and it’s ultimately that same hunger that eventually tears them apart. But watching them join forces to get revenge on their bullies and oppressors before everything goes south is still a dark delight.
The Social Network
Technically this movie is about the founding of Facebook. But it’s really about how Mark Zuckerberg is an absolutely terrible friend, and no amount of money could change that!
How Could She, by Lauren Mechling
This book centers on Geraldine and her two friends Sunny and Rachel, both of whom seem, to Geraldine, to be thriving in New York while Geraldine withers away in their shared hometown of Toronto. So she decides to catch up by moving to the big city herself, and nothing goes as planned.
Gossip Girl
So many great television shows lean on a romantic will-they/won’t-they dynamic to keep us watching. But on Gossip Girl, we watch Blair and Serena’s friendship careen from giggling on the Met steps to plotting one another’s downfalls. Their tortured friendship was more of a reason to watch this show than the mystery of Gossip Girl’s real identity.
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