You're the Romy to My Michele

Friendship loss deserves a mourning period too.

You’re the Romy to her Michele. The Toni to her Candace. The George to her Meredith. The Cher to her Dionne. The White Chick to her fellow White Chick in an aggressively pink bodycon dress, running through danger in heels and loyalty. These are not background characters. They are co-authors of your emotional life. The people who have seen your worst haircut, your panic-cry on the kitchen floor, and your spreadsheet for how to text someone you “accidentally” stalked on Instagram for 2 hours. To lose them is not an inconvenience. It’s a demolition.

If someone took your left arm, you wouldn’t say, “We just drifted.” You’d spiral. You’d scream. You’d re-learn balance. But when you lose your best friend, the person who knew your favourite meal and your biggest fear and the playlist you made for when you're spiralling, you’re told it’s not that deep. No breakup playlist. No sympathy cards. Just a weird silence where your other half used to be.

We are so wildly unequipped to grieve platonic loss, and it’s absurd when you realise how central those relationships are. Your best friend isn’t just your support system. They’re often your therapist, your stylist, your sex-and-salary agony aunt, your life admin accountability officer, and your co-defendant in court if things go left. When you go through breakups, lose jobs, have moral breakdowns or skin flare-ups, they are the first call. And yet if you lose them? The world shrugs like it’s just a scheduling issue.

“You’re my person. You’ll always be my person.” — Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy

That line wasn’t said to a boyfriend. It wasn’t whispered during a dramatic kiss in the rain. It was said in a hospital hallway to her best friend because some of the most anchoring, long-lasting, soul-defining love stories of our lives are platonic. And we treat them like filler. Like background music to the main romantic plot. Even though, statistically and emotionally, they matter just as much — if not more.

According to a 2023 study by the American Psychological Association, quality friendships are a stronger predictor of long-term health and wellbeing than romantic relationships for women. Other studies show that women rely more heavily on close friends for emotional regulation, safety, and crisis navigation. In short: your best friend is good for your nervous system. A Harvard study even found that people with strong social bonds had better cardiovascular health, less cortisol, and lived longer (regardless of whether they had a romantic partner).

So why do we minimise the grief of losing a friend?

Because friendship, especially between women, is rarely seen as structurally valid. It’s considered optional. Disposable. A bonus, not a foundation. Romantic partners are celebrated with anniversaries, holidays, laws. Friendships don’t get government paperwork. They get a WhatsApp chat named after a private joke. And when they end, there’s no process. No closure. Just a phone that never rings and a timeline that stops updating.

And sometimes, you have to be the one to end it. Even when it was the person who felt like your spine. The girl who held your hair back while you cried about a boy who now sells crypto. The one who knew how you liked your eggs and when to text just one sentence: “Don’t spiral. He’s 5’7.” But when a best friend starts showing up in ways that hurt (when they’re dismissive, cold, unreliable, unaccountable) the grief gets sharper. Because you’re not just losing a person. You’re losing the place you used to go to feel like yourself. And letting that go, especially when you've already explained, and waited, and hoped they'd meet you where you need them — it takes courage no one claps for.

Here’s what no one tells you about platonic heartbreak:

• You can’t block them without it feeling petty.

• You don’t get a playlist.

• They’re still in the group chat.

• You still see their name when you type someone else’s.

• People don’t ask, “How’s the healing going?” because they don’t realise there is healing.

• You see something and want to send it to them, and then remember you can’t.

• You grieve a version of yourself that only existed when they were around.

• You dream about them.

• You miss them in places where they never physically were — because their emotional GPS was always switched on.

We need to start talking about this like what it is: a form of heartbreak that deserves space, language, and validation. Because platonic love isn’t a backup. It’s not the thing that tides you over until the boyfriend arrives. For many of us, it isthe main event. The thing that kept us alive. The one who saw all our drafts. The person who knew our voice before we had one. So when it ends (especially without warning, or after trying to hold on) it deserves more than a shrug and a rebrand as “growing apart.”

Maybe one day, friendship will be seen as worthy of grief leave. Of closure dinners. Of emotional logistics. But until then, I’ll keep saying it: losing your best friend is a death of a version of you that you can’t get back. It’s romantic loss without the fanfare. A silent unpairing. And just because it isn’t written about in pop songs doesn’t mean it didn’t shatter something sacred.

Love is love. And sometimes the biggest love stories don’t end in marriage.

They end in a long silence from someone who once knew everything — and still, somehow, deserves to be mourned.