We never discuss this, but the thing is, you also divorce the friends

Ted Bauer
5 min readJul 21, 2020

Let’s start with a caveat: in no way I am still distraught over being divorced in March 2017, or really anything even close to that. My life is in a totally different place. It feels good. I still have a ton of shit to work on (phrased another way, I am a human being), but I’m good. Don’t worry about me in that sense.

But I do feel like I have some small platform here because I’ve been consistently blogging for about five years as of two weeks from now. I feel like I have a tiny audience and maybe they came to me because they struggle with stuff around work and relationships. Maybe I’m totally misguided on this. I am not positive.

Back around that February-March 2017 period, I read a lot of stuff about divorce online. We’re talking like legitimate research papers all the way to shitty Men’s Health articles about how to get back out and start swinging that dick around. (I’m just being honest.) I probably read more divorce-related stuff in that 30–day or so span than most people have ever consumed, up to and including divorce lawyers. I was loving me Esther Perel.

Here’s the one big thing missing from that literature set writ large: people don’t discuss what happens with the friends. You have friends. Your ex has friends. Over time, those friends meld. Maybe XYZ Person came…

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.