“My best friend of 12 years chose my ex in the breakup and the rest of the group followed. I went from having 8 people I could call anytime to having literally no one. It's been 6 months and I still reach for my phone to text a group chat that doesn't exist anymore.”
Losing a friend group isn't like losing one friend. It's losing your entire world at once—the people who knew your stories, your shorthand, your history. And nobody treats it like a real loss. There's no sympathy card for 'my entire social life collapsed.' ILTY can't rebuild what you lost, but it's someone to talk to while you grieve something nobody seems to think you're allowed to grieve.
Society doesn't have a framework for the grief of losing a friend group. There's no breakup playlist for this. No one brings you casseroles. People say 'you'll make new friends' like you lost a pair of shoes and not the people who knew every version of you. The casualness with which others treat this loss makes it lonelier.
And the logistics are brutal. Suddenly your weekends are empty. The group chat is dead or worse—still active without you. The places you used to go together are now minefields. Your Instagram is full of memories with people who are gone. You lost your social infrastructure, your emotional support system, and your Friday night plans all at once.
Whether it happened through a falling out, a breakup that split the group, or just the slow drift of people moving away—the result is the same. You went from having a life full of people to having an empty contacts list and a lot of evenings alone. That's devastating, and you're allowed to feel devastated.
•Adult friend groups are often held together by a single person, relationship, or context—when that keystone element changes, the whole structure collapses
•Breakups that split mutual friend groups force people to 'choose sides,' and you don't always win that math
•Group dynamics can turn toxic gradually, and leaving or being pushed out often means losing access to everyone, not just the problem person
•Moving, changing jobs, or major life transitions can sever you from context-dependent friendships that felt permanent but weren't
ILTY won't say 'just make new friends.' You can talk about missing people who hurt you, missing a group that was toxic, missing what you had even if it wasn't perfect.
Anger, betrayal, self-blame, relief, loneliness—sometimes all at once. ILTY helps you untangle the mess without judging which feelings are 'right.'
Friday night used to mean something. Now it's just another night alone. ILTY is there when the silence where your friends used to be gets loudest.
Do you want to rebuild? Are you afraid of being hurt again? Do you even know what healthy friendship looks like? ILTY can help you think through these questions honestly.
We want to be honest about our limitations:
There's no timeline. Some people adjust in months, others grieve for years. It depends on how central those friendships were to your identity, how the loss happened, and whether you've been able to build new connections. If you're still deeply struggling after a year, therapy can help—this is grief, and grief sometimes needs professional support.
That depends entirely on why you lost them and whether the relationship was healthy. ILTY can help you think through this, but be honest with yourself: are you trying to get back something good, or are you trying to escape the loneliness? Those lead to very different decisions.
It's genuinely hard and anyone who says otherwise is lying. It requires showing up consistently to the same places, being vulnerable before it feels safe, and accepting that new friendships will feel shallow for a while before they deepen. There's no shortcut. ILTY can help you process the anxiety and fear of rejection that makes putting yourself out there so hard.
ILTY is free during beta. It's not therapy. It's not a cure. It's a place to talk through what you're going through—honestly, without judgment, whenever you need it.