“Do whatever you want, Kristi, I’m done here,” I angrily texted after being removed as my friend’s maid of honor for speaking up over what I felt were unreasonable demands. But friends fight, and I was sure we’d laugh about this in a couple weeks over penis flutes.

That was the last time Kristi and I would speak for five years. The wedding came and went, and I never even received an invite. I reached out, attempting to mend fences a couple months after our initial argument, but I received radio silence. The experience was so painful and disorienting that I flew home to my dad’s house in Florida and cried for a week into my cat’s fur.

I’d heard about best-friend breakups , but I never envisioned it happening to us.

I first met Kristi freshman year at Northwestern University after we’d each bombed a mainstage audition and decided to get drunk together.…