My mom used to tell me that as I got older, I would be able to count my real friends on one hand, and as a grown-ass woman, I know that this sage advice was big facts.
While I have a few associates that I catch up with via DM and homegirls that I link up with whenever I touchdown in their city, the large friend group that I once had has now dwindled down to an intimate inner circle and it has reminded me that navigating adult friendships can be complex AF. Friend breakups can be just as, if not more devastating, as romantic ones and in a recent interview with Elaine Welteroth for Bustle, Issa Rae revealed that she could totally relate. Issa explained that her relationship rift with Molly on the last season of Insecure was more than just a storyline, it was based on reality.
"It's something that I've been through, too, where you can't control where your life goes. I remember one of my most devastating ones was because I didn't know how to handle a divorce that she was going through. I had never experienced a marriage, and I didn't know what she needed from me. To her, I might've felt flippant about it because I didn't know how to handle that."
Issa said that although she and her former friend, who was pursuing a much different life path than she was at the time, never actually fell out, they realized quickly that they were growing apart:
"And, for me, I was launching my career, and I felt like she wasn't there for certain milestones and didn't understand or respect what I was doing. And that's not her fault. She was a doctor and she knew a very specific path that wasn't as forgiving or as thoughtful about the milestones that I felt like I accomplished… So it was neither one of our faults, but it accumulated, and we've never been the same since."
Anyone who's ever loved and lost a homegirl knows that it cuts deep and according to Issa, it was important for her to highlight situations like these on Insecure because she knows that pain all too well.
"We don't really get these stories that are rich and treated with the same sincerity and hurt and anguish that romances are. Friendships are relationships. They are romances; you love your friends."
"And nobody respects friendship breakups in the same way as you respect a romantic breakup, but they affect your life, and you take them for granted, and there was something so beautiful about examining the little paper cuts, which almost hurt more. That was something that we broke down from the beginning, examining what happens when it's nobody's fault."
To read Issa's full interview, click here!
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