“Costco has a good one A deal on Airtags; Shall we divide them?”
Writings of this nature were not uncommon to receive among us Family group chatExcept for the minor details that we weren’t family — well, not in any traditional sense of the word, at least.
Instead, we were a group of five friends who came together during the COVID-19 lockdown – two couples, me and a kid.
we Bonded over shared interests and developed new ones together. During the worst of Covid-19, we spent three to five nights a week with activities including cooking dinner, casual wine nights with games, poolside hangouts, walks and — when allowed — the occasional dinner. Not to mention overnight trips to Montreal for girls out and the occasional “family” vacation to a cottage or wine country. For those of us who were not the child’s parents, we thought of him as our own.
We call ourselves ‘The Commune’
We talked about opening a wine bar and buying a shared cottage and lamented how things would be easier if we had a huge compound. We called ourselves “The Commune”.
During this time, the couple was not yet married Engaged And then marriage. We were all there celebrating our family which wasn’t exactly a family.
Still, just over a year later, I got a text saying, “Brian and I are breaking up.”
I was in my office when the text came, and my stomach dropped. My immediate response was to attend to my friend’s needs, making sure she was okay and offering emotional support. In fact, my hands began to shake, and tears dripped from the corners of my eyes. I was sick to my stomach.
When I got home from work, and for the next few days, I let myself cry, sometimes uncontrollably. I understood and supported the reasons for the separation – people deserve to be happy. But at the same time, I knew that things would never be the same again for the rest of us.
His breakup was also ours.
A clean separation was impossible
In general, the lines are clearer within a group of friends, allowing for clearer, less painful breakups, where the friends you bring into a relationship are the ones you leave with. In this situation, we were so deeply entrenched in each other’s lives that a clean separation was impossible.
A great deal of emotional labor is placed on the parties not involved to navigate social events. We strive to make sure no one sheds a tear on a birthday, and to make sure everyone feels included and supported. This becomes thorny as our friends venture into dating, and we need to adjust to the feelings of other new parties.
In the year since the divorce, the dust has begun to settle, and the dynamics of the relationship are calculating, thanks, in large part, to self-selection. As with any breakup, things get easier with time; I never expected to feel the same feelings about someone else’s relationship.
The last time we all broke up was a weekday in September—the week before the breakup—enjoying the last few days just warm enough to sit by the pool, dangling our feet in the cool water. We drank wine and talked about summer, about the things we had coming up in the next few weeks. We joked like a family. Things were normal. A couple with a child were going on vacation and were to see them when we returned. But that never happened.
How little we value mundane interactions with those we love.
We mourn the end of romantic relationships and, increasingly, the end of friendships. But how do you grieve the end of a relationship you were never in in the first place?
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