Hey Olivia, how do I make peace with people not being who I thought they were?

Did a lifelong friendship not hold up the way you expected during your divorce? In this Hey Olivia listener letter episode of Divorce Happens, Olivia Howell talks with anyone trying to make peace with people not being who they thought they were.

A listener wrote in: “I always assumed my college best friends, the four of us who swore we'd be there for each other no matter what, would be in my corner no matter what happened in my marriage. When it actually fell apart, I found out that wasn't true.”

Key takeaways

This is a heavier kind of disillusionment than an ordinary friendship fading over time.

"No matter what" is often a promise made in theory that's never actually tested until real crisis arrives.

Having new information now doesn't mean you got someone wrong for twenty years.

Someone's capacity in a specific moment is different from who they fundamentally are as a person.

A truer middle ground between "they were fake friends" and "I'm overreacting": real friends who didn't have what this specific moment required.

Making peace doesn't mean rewriting twenty years of real memories, just updating expectations going forward.

The friend who did show up deserves to be the center of this story, not a footnote.

“Untested loyalty and proven loyalty are not the same thing, even when they're spoken with total sincerity at the time they're made.”

Resources

Need support navigating divorce? Fresh Starts Registry offers free consults, a vetted network of divorce professionals, and free guides. For more stories and conversations, join The Divorce Happens Community on Substack or read Divorce Guide Magazine.

Listen and subscribe

Listen to the full episode above, or find Divorce Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Follow along on Divorce Happens on Instagram and Fresh Starts Registry on Instagram.

If this episode helped, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone whose oldest friendships surprised them. Your memories still count, even as your expectations change.