Anyone who’s had a friend in love has become painfully familiar with two competing realities: being happy for your friend and missing them. And by “missing,” I mean quite literally experiencing their disappearance off the face of the earth.

In the question of, “To fade or not to fade?” I am always the kind of person to preach the latter — never cancel on your friends for the sake of your Vogue-shamed boyfriend. 

But recently, I’ve adopted a new attitude for my Cupid-struck friends —“Let them.”

My qualifications for saying this come from the fact that I’ve always loved love — sometimes a little too earnestly. I was the kind of 14-year-old who wrote 18-page love letters (Rachel Green style) and booked spontaneous flights to surprise someone I missed. I’m also the kind of adult who has been privileged enough to have fallen in love — deeply in love — four times.

This is not to say that I endorse my best friend ignoring my phone calls as I’m waiting for her at a dinner reservation. That would be, rightfully so, fight-worthy. However, I do support showing a little bit of grace when that friend has to make a decision. Make it easier on them by, yes, letting them fade you. 

Allow me to explain.

For as long as I can remember, my oldest and closest friend and I have had an unspoken rule, “Go. I’m always here. We’ll catch up later.” 

When my best friend felt compelled to go find the alleged (albeit short-lived) man of her dreams in a different country, when she needed to stay after school to spend more time with her next potential boyfriend, when she asked that we ride a few extra bus stops so she could gaze at a mediocre high school jock’s curls — whenever love called, we knew we had to answer.

Realistically, these are all cases where there was a real opportunity cost: not spending time with just each other for the sake of answering to love. But I didn’t mind it. 

In every case and every universe, I believed in my friendship. I knew that my best friend would do the same for me — which she did, many times. She’d grab my hand and give me her blessing to go live out my Taylor Swift-wind-in-hair thrill.

Of course, she was always right there as soon as I’d return — which I did. As the old saying goes, real love is shown when you let someone go.

I’m not here to encourage bad etiquette or poor interpersonal relationship prioritization. I’m simply saying, maybe we all need to relax — just a bit. So, your friend is missing for a few days because they’re out riding into the sunset with their new partner. Good for them.

It’s a gift to feel so deeply. It’s a joy to love so much. 

I want to acknowledge that for us women, this is perhaps a harder pill to swallow. The idea of, “Go to him!” doesn’t tie up in a neat feminist bow as we’d like. But I would posit the following: There’s something even more powerful in women trusting the unbreakable bond of their friendships so incredibly much that it doesn’t feel diminished when a man enters the orbit.

Maybe this is not a rule to always follow. Maybe this is an “only sometimes” approach. Yet, even for those “some” times, I say this:

Let your friends free from your grasp. Let them go — on that date, to that party, on that trip. And if they value you as much as you both vowed to in your friendship, they’ll always gravitate back to you.

Let your friends live a little. Besides, nobody likes a buzzkill.

Alexia Sextou is a Medill sophomore and author of “Margin Notes.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.