Friendship Breakups, Rage & The Audacity of Clarity

Welcome to Bite Hard - The podcast for the girls who feel everything deeply.

Episode 3: Friendship Breakups, Rage & the Audacity of Clarity. 

Friendship breakups don’t come with closure ceremonies.

They just quietly break your heart.

In this episode, I talk about the anger phase, the disgust, the “I would never do that to you” spiral — and how time eventually gave me clarity I wasn’t ready for at the beginning.

We’re talking:

• Rage as protection

• Attachment vs logic

• Why hurt people hurt people

• The ego check that comes later

• And how empathy eventually sets you free

If you’ve ever lost a friend and felt more broken than you expected — this one’s for you.

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Because life can bite hard sometimes... but you don't have to go through it alone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shut up tequilo before I say this. Oh you want this? Do you need it? I need to talk about something that doesn't get talked about enough. Friendship breakups. Not the we drifted apart ones. I mean the nasty ones. The ones where you replay conversations in the shower or the bath. The ones where you type paragraphs in your notes app that you never send. The ones where you go from I love this person to I actually feel sick when I think about them. Yeah. Those ones. Because I've had one. And for a long time, I had not evolved. I was not empathetic. I was not healed. I was furious. When it first happened, I was so mad I could barely see straight. Mad, disgusted, confused. I could not wrap my head around how someone who called themselves my best friend would treat me the way that they did. Because in my brain, friendship is sacred. I'm a ride or die girl. If you're in my life, I'm loyal to a fault. I'll defend you in rooms you're not even in. So when I feel betrayed, it doesn't just hurt, it offends me. I kept thinking, I would never do that to you. And that thought, it haunted me. Because when someone treats you in a way you know you would never treat them, it shakes your whole belief system. It makes you question your judgment, your boundaries, your worth. And for months, honestly, over a year, I lived in that anger. And this wasn't just some casual friendship. This was a 15-year friendship. And no one prepares you for what it feels like to lose someone you've known for 15 years. Friendship breakups don't come with closure ceremonies. This 15-year-old friendship started in 2013. Welcome to Biteheart. Gosh, that makes me sound old. Let's call her Stacy and lock in because you're about to hear the whole timeline and how we got to where we are now. No longer friends. Stacy and I were neighbors in this little cul-de-sac where a bunch of other kids would all play in the street, which also sounds very old school. Or maybe I just feel old today. And I moved into the end of the street of this cul-de-sac. Stacy lived at the start of the entry of the street, and one day I took my dog for a walk. Coincidentally, where all the kids were playing on the street. If you didn't pick up on the tone of my voice just now, it wasn't a coincidence at all. I knew they were all playing on the street and I wanted to walk past. So they kind of knew I had just moved in. This was such a long time ago. But I'm pretty sure I walked past, they all looked, someone said hey to me, and I said hey back. It took a couple more coincidental walks past before I was like invited to start hanging out with them. But let's not get too technical about the story. It's about Stacey and I. As a lot of friendships started, we didn't like each other. She was on the street one day and I was walking up the middle of the street outside of one of the kids' houses where we would normally hang out. Me being a little girl, jealous of not having boobs, still am jealous of anyone that has boobs because I want boobs so bad. I seriously think one of the first times I ever met her, I was like, why are you wearing a bra when you don't have boobs? It obviously made everyone laugh. Calling out a little girl like that. I didn't mean it like to be super mean, although it was. I think after this hangout, the next time we became friends. As kids do, right? It's a lot easier to make friends when you're that young. Oh, right. I didn't actually say how old I was unless you did the math. So I'm 28 now and it's 2026. So in 2013, I was 15. Stacy was 13, so we are a two-year age gap. Not a problem back then, but I think it was part of the reason why, as we got older, why we aren't friends anymore. If you forgot, after I tell you all the details of the friendship from then to now, I'll tell you the actual reason and the fight of why we broke up. Our friendship was not just a friendship. It was like having a sister, which is funny to say because I have a sister and we're not that close at all. So Stacy and I's friendship was like a sister relationship where you actually, where you're actually close. Stacy was someone who knew everything about me, vice versa. Our lives were so intertwined, we were together basically every day after school on the weekends, or even after school. We were very dependent on one another. Her family was my second family. I was always super close with her parents and can honestly say they raised me as well, as second parents of mine. That's how I always felt. And it was mutual. They would also say to their family and friends that I was their other daughter. Stacy's family and I was so intertwined that I would spend half my Christmas day with them. Start at my own family's house by blood, then end up at theirs to celebrate. I spent some of my birthday with them. I would celebrate all their birthdays with them, like invited to her parents' birthday dinners as well. I was family. Not only did I lose Stacy, but I lost my second mom, my dad, and little sister. And I know I could give them all names, but I feel like that's not the story that we're talking about today. And I don't want to get all too confusing. Our friendship felt truly unbreakable. Both Stacy's parents and my parents understood how close of a friendship this was. That even when we were naughty as kids and would each end up getting grounded, a normal grounding being, you know, you can't see other kids, can't leave the house, can't see anyone, or have your phone, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of that did apply for us with other friends. But for us, we were allowed to still see each other and go to each other's houses. Which honestly, it still makes me laugh. Like if you think about it, it's like, what? That's not even like being grounded. But then if you truly think about it, what? Are you not gonna let you see your own family, your sister? Look at it the second way. How my parents would have been thinking. Because that's truly how close this friendship was. Don't get me wrong, all friendships had ups and downs, as did we. We would fight like sisters, run out of each other's houses, back to our own, crying, then make up that day or the next. We grew up together. I took Stacy to her first party. She was the first person I took for a drive when I got my license. We told each other, the first person to know, and we had lost our virginities to our boyfriends. School graduations, family holidays, boyfriend breakups, through our toxic relationships with our second boyfriends, we did stop being friends, both being young and dumb, believing both our boyfriends that, you know, those boys were better for us than we were for each other. And if you watched my first episode, I'm talking about dickhead number two, the guy with a gym membership. Both boys used this isolation tactic to keep us dating them. Stacey ended up reaching out. Both of us were no longer with these toxic boys and we rekindled back together. Like no time had even passed, set up all night when we did meet up to rekindle things until the sun literally came up, relashing everything each other had missed in those two years. To went back into a closer time to current, I met Jack. And when I got home from our ski holiday, I told Stacy at dinner over a couple of wines that I was gonna marry him. I had my daughter Penelope. Stacy moved overseas. We saw each other a handful of times in this period. I then found out I was pregnant again with Paxton in 2025. This was the last time I saw her. This is where our friendship ended. Who's ready to find out the proper story of how our 15-year-old friendship ended? I'm gonna tell you the whole situation because that's what this podcast is, and because I would genuinely love to know what you think and your opinion. I had just found out I was pregnant with Paxton. Only nine weeks-ish pregnant. I currently live and lived at that time in Wollongong, New South Wales. So I was on the Gold Coast visiting. Stacy's dad was having his 60th birthday. And like I said earlier, he was like my dad. So obviously I'd be attending his 60th birthday, which was so, so important. Stacy was also visiting from overseas. I was staying at their house with their whole family, told her I was pregnant the first day I arrived. And I didn't really get a great reaction because we were and are at totally different places in life. You know, I'm a mom, I have a kid, another on the way, and Stacy was living overseas. Totally different wavelengths. Well, that's how I justify it. And her not really being happy because I was pregnant again. Basically, at the 60th party begins, Stacy's dad's whole family is there. And if you remember me saying earlier, I spent every Christmas with them. And naturally, that would also include their extended family. So naturally, the extended family also saw me as part of the family. I said to Stacy, should we do our rounds together? implying that, you know, we were both going to obviously go say hi and catch up with everyone. So we should do it together. Stacy had been living overseas and I'd moved to New South Wales from Queensland. Stacy was like, no, I want to do it by myself. And I was like, okay. But in my head, I was like, oh, okay, weird, because yes, we can do it separately. But like I hadn't seen a lot of her family in over a year or even longer. So I thought it would have been nice to do it together. Honestly, I'm just trying to make myself laugh before I really go into it because if you don't laugh, you'll cry, right? That's literally my life motto. A lot more context to add in. Stacy's parents and family don't know I'm pregnant with baby number two. And I've just said that I don't want to drink. Stacy had two other friends there. All three of them were drinking. These two girls were girls from the Gold Coast. I knew them, and Stacy had previously lived with them overseas. Both girls that were close with Stacy, but very much knew like I was Stacy's best friend and closest friend. To me, it seemed like both were always jealous of our friendship. Sounds weird to say out loud, but it's context for the fight to make sense. So the fight. Night's going, the party is happening, and though Stacy and I both separately talking to family members, in the spare moments I would try and hang out with her. And when she had spent time, she kept hanging out with the other two friends. They were all just drinking, doing shots, and it didn't really seem like they wanted me to hang out with them. In their defense, I wasn't drinking, but it just felt like I was being excluded, which is weird because Stacy never really excluded me before. That might sound like childish, but this is how I was feeling. And it's important to set the tone of how I was feeling. Something felt off. So I went to the bathroom. I was upset. I felt sad that I wasn't really getting to spend time with Stacy, who I hadn't seen in like a year. I was sad. We were at her dad's birthday party and we weren't celebrating that together. Like I had imagined. And I guess I had expected a certain way the night would go. I was in the bathroom with Stacy's little sister and asked her if maybe I had done something wrong because Stacy just didn't seem to want to hang out with me and she would prefer to hang out with her other two friends. And it just didn't seem like she wanted me there. As we were leaving the toilet stall, Stacy was in the bathroom with her two other friends. With a strong attitude, Stacy says something along the lines of it's wrong. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was set in the way of like Stacy was annoyed I was upset. I tell her I was obviously upset she didn't want to talk to her family together in the spare moments she had. She would just go hang out with her other two friends. I expressed that it made me feel excluded. I wanted to celebrate her dad's birthday with her. I was upset about all of that. I didn't play any games, I didn't say any of it rudely. I was just honest about how I was upset. Then shit hit the fan. Basically, Stacy got super defensive, started getting progressively louder and louder, which for context, I really don't like or deal with being yelled at. Stacy said I was being immature, explained she did just want to talk to her family alone so she could really catch up with them, which is valid, and said she was just trying to spend time with her other friends, all of which was okay. But it hurt me that she didn't really understand or care about how I was feeling. For some reason, it still doesn't make sense to me. Her two friends start arcing up. What's your problem? I feel like you have a problem with me. Obviously, my memory isn't super detailed, but to summarize, the back of me was pushing up against the bathroom sink while Stacy and her two friends all yelled at me from different angles about different things surrounding me. Like I felt trapped. I couldn't get out of this tiny bathroom and this situation. It was wild. And I started crying. I was so overwhelmed, so upset. And I literally started to have an anxiety attack. You know, big deep breaths. In between when I spoke, I was just expressing my feelings to my best friend who I thought would understand and care. Take in mind as well, I'm nine weeks pregnant. Stacy knows this. The most shocking part of this still was like common knowledge. It is not good or safe for someone who is so early pregnant to be put under stress, picking miscarriage, under extreme stress. After shutting down and being yelled at, I said, I can't do this. Walked out. As I walked out, Stacy said, Yeah, just fucking go home. Which in my head was like, whoa, the fuck? Who says that? I would never say that to her. My best, best, best, best, best, best, best friend. I walked out, left the venue, and found myself this lookout overlooking the beach where I called Jack, having this anxiety attack, explaining what had happened. And as I'm explaining the situation to Jack, he was furious. He also couldn't believe Stacy would treat me this way, let alone let her friends treat me this way. An important note to add, I also thought this exact thing, right? How could Stacy let her friends treat me like this? If any of my friends spoke to her like that, let alone yell at me like they did, I would have protected her, telling them to stop. It just would have freaking happened. I would never let that happen. Also, Stacy, knowing I was pregnant, that when the conversation began, that they didn't even need to all be there. It wasn't anything to do with them. So I'm crying to Jack on the phone. One of Stacy's friends finds me and approaches me and begins to yell at me. Again. Let's call her Karen. Karen starts arcing up. What's your problem with me? I feel like you have a problem with me. I'm like in tears. Can't breathe. Just trying to talk to Jack so I can regroup myself before I freaking pass out because I can't freaking breathe. I'm like literally like this. Please leave me alone. I'm trying to calm myself down. Like I literally couldn't breathe. Karen just kept yelling at me. I'm like, please leave me alone. Karen keeps going. I tell her I can't do this. I get up from the floor and I walk away. What the fuck? Right? Like I've I'm having a full anxiety attack. Can't breathe. You can obviously see I can't breathe. Karen's drunk, won't leave me alone. I go back into the venue, the party is upstairs, and I stay downstairs. I go play the pokies. Time passes, I see some of her family walk past. I go say bye. So I go back upstairs and wait for the party to end. Everyone starts leaving. I go down with Stacy's parents and we go to the bus to go home. Stacy and her friends walk near past me, and Stacy asks me if I want to go to another bar with them. I said no. Hop in the bus, go back to her family's place, pack my bags, start crying more. Tell her parents I'm leaving. They're so confused. So I tell them I'm pregnant. They try to get me to stay, but I explained I didn't want Stacy and then her friends to come back and just yell at me again. But to make sense of how this night ends, I obviously leave. Stacy was supposed to come on a flight with me the next day to Wollongong to see Penelope. Stacy was Penelope's godmother. And I told Stacy's parents I no longer want her to come to Wollongong. Which I will also add, I paid for Stacy's flights to come visit me in Wollongong. I want to know that so it's clear. I wasn't wasting anyone's money, I was wasting my own money. Longer story short, Stacy at the end of the night texts me, tell me if you want me to come to Wollongong or not. I said, don't come. And I don't know if that sounds dramatic, but I'm one of those people that need time to process things. This would often be a fight in our friendship. If we ever had a fight, I would like not reply to her because I would need time to process things and regather and work out how to move forward. This is so hard for me to like summarize everything because there's so much. The next couple of days we text paragraphs, kept fighting, talking about the fight. You go on a call and talk about the fight again. Stacy literally denies everything. Being too drunk to clearly remember how fucked the situation was for me. She was upset that she didn't get to see Penelope. All conversations were spoken about fine, not like aggressive or anything like that. But Stacy ends up turning around and saying she doesn't want to be friends anymore. Listed a bunch of ledges and reasons of things she'd clearly held on to over these 15 years and why we couldn't be friends. Which was also wild to me because we'd been through so many ups and downs. But when she did something wrong in our friendship, I forgave and moved on. I didn't hold on to it, but Stacy clearly did. I think I ended up reaching out two to three times, wanting to rekindle. I think what happened was fucked and awful. But I didn't want to lose our friendship. But Stacy still said she didn't want to be friends again. And gosh, finally, the story is complete. Over the last year, I've replayed this all over and over and over again. Angry, upset, feeling very empty with losing my best friend of 15 years, my second family. I reached out to her parents, hoping we could all stay in touch with each other and be in each other's lives. They nicely said to me, no, they would be on Stacy's side. And here's the truth. At that time, I needed that anger because anger is protective. Anger says this wasn't okay. But here's the wild thing about time. It humbles you. When you're no longer in the thick of it, no longer triggered, no longer waiting for an apology, no longer hoping to make up, something shifts. You get space, and space gives you clarity. It's like when you finally get over an X and years later you look back and think, oh my God. Why did I allow that? Why did I tolerate being spoken to like that? Why did I excuse behavior that hurt me? Bath is very fucking uncomfortable. And in that moment, you allowed it because you love them. You weren't thinking logically, you weren't leading with your heart. And when your heart is in charge, she's reckless. She's hopeful. She believes in potential. She forgives patterns because they didn't mean it. You were attached. And attachment fogs everything. Now, when I look back at this friendship, this friendship breakup, I still don't agree with how I was treated. Let's be very clear with that. Empathy doesn't mean approval, but I can see something I couldn't see before. You have to be hurting in some way to treat someone like that. You have to be insecure, threatened, projecting, fighting something internally because secure people don't tear other people down, especially the ones that they love. Secure people won't weaponize closeness. And when that clicked for me, it didn't make me sad anymore. It took me over a year, if I'm being quite honest, to mourn this loss. Mourning someone that is still alive is so fucking hard. We did the unfollows and we just didn't keep in contact. So that definitely helped. And I would highly recommend that for any relationship. This clicked. It made me sad for them. And that's a very different place to stand. But I want to be honest, I could not have that mindset when it first happened. If someone had said to me, maybe they're just hurting, I would have said, cool. They can hurt somewhere else. Growth sounds beautiful in hindsight. In real time, it's messy, it's defensive, it's dramatic. And in that dramatic sense, I had speeches prepared. Shower or bath arguments in my head, just running, running, running, running in my notes app, right? Did I ever send those speeches? No. Did I rehearse them 47 times? Yes. But friendship breakups hit different. What people don't tell you is that friendship breakups can hurt more than romantic ones because you don't expect that betrayal from your friends, let alone your best friend. You expect safety. And when that safety cracks, it's destabilizing. Question your judgment, you wonder if you miss signs, you feel embarrassed for loving them as hard as you did. And there's no official grieving process. No one sends you flowers when you lose a friend. You just quietly carry it. But there's also a peace that comes after. And this is the beautiful part. Time separates you from the emotion. And when you're no longer fueled by anger or attachment, you see the full picture. You see where you overgave, you see where you ignored discomfort, you see the parts of you that tolerated less than you deserved. And instead of being mad at them, you start protecting yourself better. You upgrade your standards. You choose friends who feel safe, not competitive. You start romanticizing chaos. And one day you realize you don't even feel angry anymore. You feel neutral. And being neutral, that's fucking freedom. This is what I've learned. You weren't weak for loving them. You weren't naive. You were loving and leading with your heart. And that's not a flaw. Now you don't beg for clarity from people committed to misunderstanding you. And the empathy you eventually feel, that's not about excusing them, it's about releasing yourself. Because holding on to raids keeps you tied to that story. Empathy cuts the cord. If you're in the middle of a friendship breakup right now, if you're angry, confused hurt, stay there for a bit. You don't have to rush to empathy. You don't have to be evolved immediately. Let yourself feel it. But just know one day it won't feel that heavy. One day you'll look back and think, wow, I loved heart. That's not something to be ashamed of. It's something to be proud of. You weren't thinking, you were feeling. And that's so human. Thank you for listening to another episode. I'll put these two. Bye.