Meet the ex-friends who are going to therapy to get their relationship back together

AND“You should go to therapy,” my sister told me, as I paused for breath after regurgitating a story about how I felt sadly out of alignment with an old friend.

I reminded him that he was already in therapy, but I would make sure to bring up this specific topic during our next session. “No,” he shook his head. “You should go to therapy.” with She… like couples therapy, but friendship.”

During the silence that followed, he added: “It is a stuff now.”

I was intrigued by the concept; it seemed strange and, at the same time, totally reasonable. We all have friendships that have failed, either because we grew apart, because we built up resentment around an unresolved disagreement, or because we found it too difficult to adjust to each other’s life changes. In fact, I’ve lost several valuable friendships over the years—friendships that I still look back on and mourn to this day. But what if a bump in the road didn’t have to mean the end of the journey? What if, just like with our romantic relationships, we started taking our friends to therapy? Could we save those cherished platonic relationships?

In my quest to understand more and possibly salvage a friendship in crisis, I began reaching out to therapists, a good percentage of whom said they had begun treating couples or even groups of friends together. “Since our friends are often a long-term, integral relationship in our lives, it makes sense that if for some reason there is a rift in that relationship, therapy can be a positive way to step in and repair it,” explains Tami Sobell, therapist and founder of TS Therapy. “It offers a safe space for friends to express their concerns, resentments, and feelings, and facilitates more meaningful conversations that strengthen bonds.”

And this was certainly the case for Debs, who found that going to therapy with a friend helped them to truly listen to each other for the first time in a long time and gave them a clear path forward to repair things. “I’m no stranger to therapy, I’ve been in and out of it my whole life,” she says. “So it felt like the most logical thing to do when I was having a hard time maintaining a very dear friendship.”

She says her friend's reaction to the suggestion of therapy was immediately positive. “I explained that it was a sign of how much I valued our friendship and that I wanted to actively work on making us feel better.”

The friends were at different points in their lives—one was married with a baby, the other recently single and living alone—so the gap in their understanding of each other’s lives had been widening for some time. “We couldn’t fully understand the nuances of how each of us felt about our lives. I felt like she didn’t understand the pressures on me as a mother, and that I wasn’t empathetic to the struggles of her being single in her thirties,” Debs continues. “Our issues, our schedules, our responsibilities were so different, and I think we both felt exhausted and increasingly resentful trying to figure each other out.”

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In total, the friends attended four sessions together and found that having a safe space to really vent, through guided questions, made the gap feel decidedly smaller almost immediately. “It was nice to have someone else comment on what was going on and make things easier for us,” Debs explains.[Our therapist] “It also made everything seem more normal and helped us see that it wasn’t either of our faults, but that we could both take steps to change it. It was a relief to be given some practical solutions, rather than each of us trying to figure things out on our own.”

And Debs isn’t alone. “As a therapist, I’ve been getting more requests from friends, and even colleagues, who want to use therapy space to work on their relationships,” says Tasha Bailey, author and psychotherapist. “We’re also seeing more friends and siblings going to couples therapy together, especially on reality TV, and these examples teach us that sometimes we need a safe space and an unbiased professional to help a friendship move forward.” Crucially, they also teach us that this is normal. “The older we get,” Bailey adds, “the more complicated and often contentious our friendships become, and having a therapist to help us navigate a particular bond can be really helpful.”

Buoyed by the idea that a complicated friendship is normal, but doesn't necessarily have to be accepted as such, I ask Bailey what to expect from the sessions. “It's going to be very different from going to individual therapy,” she explains. “In individual therapy, your therapist is there just for you, and while they will hold you accountable, they are almost always on your side. In friendship therapy, you are not your therapist's primary client, but rather the relationship “Your therapist won’t be there to take sides between you and your friend. Instead, they’ll be there to help you understand the needs of your relationship and how to nurture it in the future.”

She also points out that therapy isn’t just for times of crisis – “you don’t need to wait until a friendship is in crisis before therapy becomes an option” – in fact, trying therapy together at the start of a conflict will equip both parties with the skills and reflection needed to prevent tension from escalating further.

How do you approach the topic with a friend? While I’m a big fan of friendship therapy, I know I’d have a complex mix of feelings if a friend came to me with that suggestion. “Start by telling them how much you value the friendship,” Bailey advises. “Explain that you’re willing to strengthen the relationship by working through some of the challenges that have been emerging and how therapy could make a difference. Remember, this is a big decision. Time, finances, and feelings are all important factors to consider when thinking about going to therapy, so give your friend time to process your suggestion.”

She adds: “If they are open to it, suggest that they find a therapist together and think about the qualities that you both find important in this third person – this could even be a bonding experience in itself.”

Now that I think about it, it seems totally strange to me that it hasn't always been the norm to go to therapy with our friends. In the past, I've spent a lot of my personal therapy sessions talking about my friendships (they have enormous emotional importance in my life and influence the way I see the world), but until the ripe old age of 34, I'd never considered that working on these precious bonds together might be so much more effective than trying to do it alone, with only one side of the story to work through.

And as I explored further, I discovered that the purpose of friendship therapy is not only to revive a friendship that is in crisis, but that it can also be used to end a friendship in the least painful way possible (if there is such a thing). “Just like couples therapy, sometimes the result of friends’ sessions together is that the friendship no longer benefits either party or both of them, and causes more harm than good,” Sobell says. “The sad reality is that not all friendships are built to last a lifetime, but giving these friendships due diligence, love, and care, even at their end, can be incredibly healing for both parties.”

Such was the case for Jenny*, who, faced with the end of a once-valuable friendship due to her decision not to have children, wanted to respect the bond and ensure the tie was cut cleanly and respectfully.[My friend’s] “Life became all about the kids, whereas I had made a conscious decision to focus on the opposite,” Jenny says. “It took us down different paths, with little in common, and I think we both wanted to make room for different friendships in our lives – friendships that could meet us in our current moment, rather than being based on past similarities.”

The couple acknowledged that they loved each other and decided to attend several friendship therapy sessions to part ways on the best terms possible, “without leaving anything on the table” that could cause pain, frustration or regret in the future. “It forced us to reflect and grieve in a way that felt healthy, rather than burdensome. In a way it was ironic because by ending things this way we learned to be better friends with each other.”

And it's never too late to learn to be a better friend, to strengthen the bond with those to whom we are bound not by blood or law, but by love. And as with all forms of love, friendships take work, and therapy can often seem like a lot of work, if you take it seriously. But as Jane Austen writes in Northanger Abbey“There is nothing I wouldn't do for those who are truly my friends.”