It Happened To Us: We Got Friend Divorced
And no one threw us a party.
Hello friends and former friends!
My friend Kat and her friend Jennifer made a movie about friendship breakups that may be right up your alley. All the links you need to watch it are below, along with a q and a they did to explain why they wanted to make this movie in the first place. As you might have guessed, it’s personal.
Enjoy and I will see you in the comments to talk about our friend divorces and anything related. I am having a weird moment on that subject right now with a former friend, Natasha Lyonne, who has been trashing me for a couple of decades over a story I published (and understand in retrospect that I shouldn’t have and have publicly apologized for every time it comes up). Anyway, let’s get into all of our stories below, yes? And let’s talk about what you think of the movie!
I adore you all.
Jane
By Jennifer Zahlit and Kat Belinfante
Friend breakups are brutal; no one wants to have a single girls’ night out when your platonic best friend dumps you. So we made a movie (an 82 minute indie dramedy that we co-wrote, Jennifer directed, and Kat starred in) inspired by the heartbreak of our own friend break ups. While making it, we experienced two other friend breakups, but somehow our friendship emerged stronger.
Kat Belinfante: I think my worst breakup was with Chelsea. We always had so much fun together. My other friend Anne and I ordered her a cake with a print out of all the guys she had made out with for her birthday; we would prank strangers at a bar telling them to shake their butts and pretending we had already met before. The tension began when Anne started dating Chelsea’s roommate, and I chose to remain friends with Anne. Chelsea told Anne to date this man but was secretly (not so secretly) in love with him. Weirdly, she was not a Scorpio, but my lack of loyalty was enough for her to cancel the birthday trip she was planning for me that year and just stop talking to me completely. What was yours?
Jennifer Zahlit: Mine was two years ago. After spending many weeks with her and her family over the holidays, I came home to sense that she was avoiding me. When we finally talked, she said that we had been codependent (we lived in two different states and talked maybe once a week), was feeling self-conscious about a career change (what actor doesn’t think about changing careers every month), and felt like a passenger in her own life (this just made me feel sad). It soon became clear that she couldn’t communicate what was happening with her and didn’t want me to be a part of her life anymore. That was obviously devastating, but it was all of the reminders after that got me: the bit we had about that one friend’s Instagram stories, the French restaurant we would always go to together, the street of her old apartment where I always peek into her old place.
There’s not really any space or time given to a friend breakup like there is for a romantic breakup (not that I would know).
Kat: Yeah, honestly my breakup with my ex-boyfriend was much easier, no offense to him – my mom just told me she saw on Facebook he got married, so he’s fine, but you know that’s the risk when you enter a romantic relationship…it might end. I don’t think anyone enters a friendship thinking those are the stakes.
JZ: There’s not really any space or time given to a friend breakup like there is for a romantic breakup (not that I would know…unless ex situationships count?) But there’s something so deeply personal about a friend breakup. The old adage “it’s not you, it’s me” doesn’t apply because it really is about “you.” How do you move forward from that?
KB: Yeah, where’s the Taylor Swift album about replaying every interaction with your former friend wondering if that was the moment things went past repair?
JZ: Well, there is “Bad Blood.”
KB: So true; I love that song. I have such a vivid memory of forcing my old roommate/ our sound guy to listen to it on repeat driving to set for Friend Divorce.
JZ: Ok segue queen! But wow too real, we really went through it! Looking back on the entire experience of making Friend Divorce, would you have done it if you knew what it would entail?
KB: Absolutely not. I both am so grateful we made it, and also think we’ll still be processing the effects of it for years, not unlike our most painful friend breakups.
JZ: Same. Lol. But I don’t regret it at all. I feel like it changed us as people, friends, and artists.
KB: The fact that we each had a friend breakup while making the film, had the big personnel shakeups we did, went into debt, not to mention but obviously to mention, the death of my dad, and stayed friends is nothing short of a miracle. I think in a lot of ways making this film broke us - not in just a shattering way, which did happen, but it also broke us open. It was one of the hardest things I think we’ll ever do, and there was so much heartache along the way (with friends, with grief, with rejection after rejection from the festivals), but I’m really proud of us for never giving up on it.
JZ: The rejection…sigh. Yes, lots of heartache for sure, but also a lot of highs. I’ll never forget getting an email from one of our creative heros, encouraging us to keep going or the wrap party where we all jumped in the ocean, giddy with celebration and disbelief at making it through. But ultimately, I think we made it through because of our communication. We had a lot of #hardconversations but I feel like we always genuinely wanted to know how the other was feeling and what we could do to support. Even under the weight of debt, of figuring out every new stage, of doing this all on our own, we kept talking.
KB: Yeah, I remember one hard conversation we had on set, where you basically told me to step up as “number one on the call sheet.”
JZ: Gently checked in…
KB: I mean you were right…I was just so nervous to be starring in the film and having flashbacks of a webseries I co-created a few years earlier (a comedian’s rite of passage) where I felt like I was wearing too many different hats, and I felt like it took away from my acting. I really thought about what you said and showed up in a completely different way the next day, which was my character’s big blowout scene with her best friend on set. That day showed me that I could step up in a leadership capacity while still having fun with my friends on set. That and my “fake wedding” were definitely my favorite days because we got to have so many of our friends on set and create all of these micro moments that helped bring the story to life. Plus, I loved seeing myself in a wedding dress (it was a $69 white dress from Lulus but I’ll take it!).
Friend breakups are brutal - and nearly universal.
JZ: I’ve been thinking a lot about how scrappy we were in making the film. We called in all of our favors (think getting a location from a friend of a friend of Kat’s fellow yoga teachers, casting two gals that I used to babysit since they were three, etc) to make this happen. We willed it into existence somehow. All of our friends chipped in, whether it was through contributing to our Seed & Spark, getting us free Covid tests from the library, lending us their homes, listening to our five minute voice memo meltdowns…the list goes on. In that way, the film became a manifestation of all of the love and care we have poured into our community that came back to us tenfold. We emailed everyone in the industry we could find an email address for during pre-production, casting, post-production – I’m kind of in awe of how brave we were. But I think it came back to the core of the film; we really believed in the story and could see that it always sparked a conversation with people when we brought it up.
KB: Friend breakups are so brutal. But through this process, we’ve realized it’s a nearly universal experience, and it’s reinforced why we still place such a high value on our friendships in our lives. Even if we decided that neither of us would get “friend married,” friendships will always be a top priority for us.
JZ: Ditto. Love you girlina.
XO
Watch Here!!!!!!
Or Start With The Trailer!
Taylor Swift has a friend breakup song called RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT ME, it’s a bonus track from the deluxe version of Evermore
“Friends break up, friends get married…but I’m right where you left me” 🫶🏻
I had a friend fully ghost me for reasons I still don’t know. The last time we saw each other was when we went to see Lizzo in 2023 & she just stopped replying to my texts. About six months ago I saw on her Facebook that she had gotten engaged, so I texted her to congratulate her and she responded with a thank you. But then I followed it up with “Did I do something to make you mad? I haven’t seen you in forever and I miss you!”
And she never responded. It’s such a bummer when people can’t bring themselves to tell you the truth
I had a breakup earlier this year and I still have no idea why. A mutual friend had died suddenly and my close friend was the one to tell me. She said she didn’t want to talk about it so I didn’t ask her to.
But, she just fully withdrew and became terse with me. When I asked if there was something I did wrong that I needed to make right, she blew up and told me to stop. That was the last communication we had. I even showed the texts to two other friends and they couldn’t understand it either.
It was nothing short of debilitating. I second guessed myself for weeks.
The hardest part is if my friend comes back and wants to reestablish our friendship I’m not sure I’d do it. I’d always be on edge, wondering if the next thing that happens will end the friendship. I can’t live like that.