Mutual Friends After A Separation

A separation redistributes a shared social network. The process is largely undiscussed, follows recognisable patterns, and is frequently more painful than either former partner anticipated.

Friendships were held jointly

Couples accumulate friendships that belong to the pair rather than to either person, formed through joint invitations and maintained by whichever of them organised things.

After a separation these have no obvious owner, and contact frequently lapses simply because the mechanism that generated it has stopped operating.

This is why people often lose friends they had no falling out with, and why the loss is so hard to attribute to anything in particular.

Friends have no available etiquette

There is no established convention for how to behave toward two people who used to be one invitation, and most people improvise cautiously.

Caution generally means reducing contact with both rather than appearing to choose, which arrives as withdrawal at the point when support was most needed.

The withdrawal is usually about the friend's discomfort rather than a judgement, though it is rarely explained that way and often not explained at all.

Accounts circulate and settle

Both former partners give versions of what happened, and the versions reach different parts of the network at different times and in different orders.

The account that arrives first tends to anchor the listener's understanding, which is why the timing of the telling has effects well beyond the conversation.

Attempts to correct an established version generally fail and make the corrector appear invested, which is why most people eventually stop trying.

The division is rarely even

Networks tend to sort along lines of prior acquaintance, so the person who brought most of the friendships into the relationship usually retains more of them.

Where one partner moves away, changes jobs or was the less social of the two, the imbalance can be considerable and is felt as a compounding loss.

Rebuilding takes time and generally happens through new contexts rather than through recovering the old ones, which is slower than people expect.

Some friendships survive by being explicit

Friends who state plainly that they intend to keep seeing both people, and that they will not discuss one with the other, tend to manage it.

The explicit version works because it removes the ambiguity that otherwise makes every conversation a small negotiation about loyalty.

It requires both former partners to accept the terms, which is difficult early on and considerably easier a year later, by which point the pattern is usually settled.