Friendship Rituals as Revolutionary Practice: Moving Beyond Relationship Hierarchy to Build Liberatory Communities

Here’s a question for you: Why do we fight harder for romantic relationships than we do for friendships? In my work, counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody with SDQTBIPOC+ clients, I keep witnessing the same heartbreak – friendships that have been lifelines through systemic harm, connections that matter deeply, yet when conflict arises, we gaslight ourselves in saying we’re “too dramatic”, feeling the pressure to conform, to shrug and say ‘friendships just fade sometimes.’ Meanwhile, we’ll move heaven and earth to save a romantic relationship, go to relationship counselling for it and have difficult conversations about needs and boundaries.

This disparity shows up constantly in individual counselling sessions – clients will spend months processing a romantic breakup but feel guilty for grieving a friendship loss that’s equally devastating. In 2SLGBTQ+ therapy and BIPOC therapy contexts, this becomes even more complex because chosen family often provides the primary support network that biological families may not offer, yet we sometimes still treat these connections as secondary.

Why will we address every issue in a romantic partnership but let a decade-long friendship die over a misunderstanding we’re too uncomfortable to name? Why do we have elaborate rituals for romantic milestones but can’t even acknowledge the anniversary of when we met our chosen family? For communities that need robust networks of care to survive systems of oppression, this hierarchy isn’t just limiting; it’s actively harmful to our collective liberation.

The Problem with Relationship Hierarchy

Through our anti-oppressive therapy approach in Vancouver and Port Moody, we recognize how relationship hierarchy serves systems of domination – keeping us isolated and dependent on individual solutions rather than building the robust community networks that can challenge existing power structures.

Relationship hierarchy places romantic partnerships and perhaps biological family at the top of a pyramid, with friendships, chosen family, and community connections relegated to lower tiers. Have we ever thought to critique where this dynamic comes from and how it’s impacting us? It’s a system that serves capitalism and individualism by concentrating our emotional investments in nuclear units rather than distributed community networks.

Because the consequences show up everywhere:

We have elaborate rituals for romantic milestones but rarely celebrate friendship anniversaries, leaving us without frameworks to recognize when friendships deepen or change. This not only makes it harder to navigate transitions and maintain long-term platonic connections, but the absence of commitment-affirming rituals also means we approach friendship conflict from a place of uncertainty rather than shared investment in working things through. And because our relational conflict skills are only worked on within the context of romantic partnerships, we miss opportunities to develop and maintain what Dean Spade would call ‘promiscuous support networks’ – the varied and multifaceted webs of care that can actually keep us alive and supported through crisis, oppression, and the daily grind of this increasingly fucked up world.

For SDQTBIPOC+ communities, this hierarchy is particularly harmful. When systems of oppression target our communities, we need robust networks of care and community that extend far beyond romantic partnerships. Yet relationship hierarchy undermines our ability to build and maintain these networks.

The Unacknowledged Grief of Friendship Loss

Research from psychologist Dr. Irene Levine reveals that friendship breakups activate the same neural pathways as romantic ones – the pain is neurologically identical. Yet we have no cultural scripts for this grief. No rituals of healing. No permission to fall apart. We’re expected to “get over it” faster, grieve quieter, need less support.

This dismissal isn’t accidental. It serves the same systems that benefit from relationship hierarchy – keeping us isolated, dependent on individual solutions rather than community networks, concentrating our emotional investments in nuclear units that won’t challenge existing power structures.

It creates additional layers of trauma that trauma therapy rarely addresses – the compounded harm of having your grief invalidated while you’re already processing loss. The body holds the memory of these friendship losses, which is why somatic therapy in Vancouver and Port Moody can be so helpful in processing disenfranchised grief. Just as EMDR therapy in Vancouver and Port Moody helps process romantic relationship trauma, we need similar intentionality for friendship wounds.

When we refuse to minimize friendship loss, when we create rituals that honor these connections as life-shaping and world-building, we’re not just validating our own experience, we’re dismantling the hierarchy that keeps us from building the communities we need for liberation.

Learning from Relationship Anarchy

Relationship anarchy offers a framework for dismantling these hierarchies. Rather than defaulting to societal scripts about which relationships “matter most,” relationship anarchy invites us to define each connection based on what the people involved actually want and need.

This doesn’t mean all relationships are identical—it means we get to choose how to prioritize and structure our connections based on our values rather than external expectations.

Applied to friendship, this might look like:

• Creating “friendship DTRs” (define the relationship conversations) – Are we chosen family? Casual friends? Somewhere in between? What does that mean for how we prioritize each other during busy seasons or when other relationships demand attention?
• Having explicit conversations about boundaries, expectations, and needs – What does emotional availability actually mean to each of you? How do you want to handle it when life gets overwhelming and you need to pull back? What are your different communication styles and how can you work with them rather than against them?
• Negotiating relationship agreements the way we might discuss moving in together – What does showing up for each other actually mean? How do we want to handle it when one of us is struggling with mental health? What are our expectations around response times, emotional labor, and crisis support?
• Practicing financial intimacy – Talking openly about money, class differences, and how economic inequality affects our ability to participate in friendship activities. Creating agreements about who pays for what and when.
• Seeking therapeutic support for friendship dynamics – These conversations might feel unfamiliar since many of us learned relational skills only in romantic contexts. Individual counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody can help explore attachment patterns, while relationship counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody can be useful for supporting the rebuilding of friendship dynamics
• Establishing conflict protocols before we need them – How do we want to handle it when we hurt each other? What does accountability look like in our friendship? How long is too long to sit with tension before we address it directly?
• Creating rituals that honour the significance of platonic connections – Friendship anniversary dinners where you reflect on how you’ve both grown. Monthly or seasonal check-ins that aren’t just catching up but actually tending to the relationship itself. Creating rituals to mark when friendships shift from casual to chosen family.
• Investing time and energy in friendships proportional to their importance in our lives – Scheduling friend dates with the same intentionality you’d bring to romantic dates. Prioritizing a friend’s birthday with the same energy you’d give to partners’. Making space in your calendar for friendship maintenance, not just crisis response.
• Addressing conflict with the same care we’d bring to romantic relationships – Refusing to let resentment build because “it’s not that serious.” Having repair conversations within days, not months. Approaching disagreements with curiosity about your friend’s perspective rather than defensiveness about being right.
• Building in relationship maintenance – Regular check-ins about how the friendship is serving both people, seasonal friendship reviews, or creating space to renegotiate the relationship as we both grow and change.

Friendship Rituals as Revolutionary Praxis: Practical Steps for Implementation

Start Small:

• Choose one friendship where you’d like to experiment with more intentionality
• Have a conversation about what you both want from the friendship
• Create one simple ritual (monthly check-ins, seasonal celebrations, conflict resolution agreements)

Build Gradually:

• As comfort grows, introduce more elaborate rituals or expand to other friendships
• Invite friends to co-create rituals rather than imposing your vision
• Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t, adjusting as needed

Think Systemically:

• Consider how your friendship rituals can model different ways of relating for your broader community
• Share what you’re learning with others
• Connect friendship ritual-building to broader justice work in your life

Getting Support for Friendship Work

If this resonates but feels overwhelming, you’re not alone. In queer therapy spaces, we often discuss chosen family, but we need frameworks for maintaining these connections through conflict. Whether through individual counselling to explore your attachment patterns, trauma therapy to process friendship wounds, or somatic therapy to understand how your body holds relational patterns, anti-oppressive counselling in Vancouver and Port Moody can provide support for building healthier friendship dynamics.

For those in Vancouver seeking this kind of support, anti-oppressive therapy approaches that center SDQTBIPOC+ experiences can help you develop the skills for creating the friendship rituals and community networks you’re craving.

The Ripple Effects

When we invest in our friendships with the same intentionality we bring to romantic relationships, we don’t just strengthen individual connections—we build the foundation for communities that can sustain us through struggle and celebration alike.

These communities become sites of resistance against systems that profit from our isolation. They become laboratories for practicing the kinds of relationships we want to see in a liberated world. They become the networks of care that make collective action possible.

In a world that tells us romantic love is the highest form of connection, choosing to honor and ritualize our friendships is a radical act. It’s a declaration that all forms of love matter, that community care is revolutionary practice, and that the relationships we need for liberation deserve our most intentional attention.

Whether you’re processing friendship grief, learning to navigate conflict, or wanting to build more intentional platonic connections through a relationship anarchy framework, remember that support is available. The same therapeutic tools we use for romantic relationships – individual counselling, relationship counselling, EMDR therapy, somatic therapy – can all be applied to friendship dynamics.

What friendship ritual will you create first?

If you’re looking for counselling in Vancouver or counselling in Port Moody and want support exploring these dynamics, Venturous Counselling offers anti-oppressive therapy that honours all forms of love and connection. You can take our 3-minute matching form to find the right counsellor fit or book a free consultation to explore how therapy can support your friendship journey.