Breaking up is hard to view

Richie McCaw and Hayley Holt. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

The trigger for a nuclear explosion essentially involves one particle splitting. A negative-charged electron separates from an unstable core, strikes into others, and precipitates a chain reaction that releases tremendous destructive energy. While nuclear physics and intimate relationships may seem far removed from each other, the results can be similar.

When the two people in a couple go nuclear and break up, friends can be caught in the fallout with the resulting social contamination lasting for years.

Comedian Mike King has seen interpersonal mushroom clouds and has lived through social nuclear winter. Gatherings where two estranged parties are present can cause no end of anguish for mutual friends.

"Parties and weddings can be especially awkward. You don't want to chat with one when the other's around, because they might take it the wrong way," he says.

"It's worse when one side has a glam new replacement, while the other is left alone and gathering dust in the garage."

Some couples even try to divvy up and allocate their friends, along with the house and car and DVD collection and childcare.

So, as a friend, do you try to stay close to both — sit on the fence — or do you take sides? Do you invite one, or both, to coffee dates and dinners, or do you alternate invitations from one week to the next? Do you welcome their new partners to the fold? Or do you cross everyone off the Christmas card list and be done with it?

King has seen his good friend and OneNews anchor Simon Dallow recently split from fellow broadcaster Alison Mau.

"We were professional colleagues, but now me and Si hang. He's a really cool guy who gave me advice when I was in a bad place."

The comedian and celebrity poker-player has decided to throw his chips behind his now-single friend.

"I know Simon's going to be fine. He's strong and his main concern is for a smooth transition for the kids."

Going further, King draws gender-defined battle lines in the post-relationship wasteland. It's important for men to stick together, he says.

"Over time, when a man is in a relationship, a wife axes all his friends — one by one by one by one — until he wakes up one day and all his friends are his wife's friends' husbands."

King may be half-joking but deciding whether to remain neutral or to go to war on behalf of one party is a dilemma that generates considerable popular chatter.