Breaking up With Your Friends
W. Somerset Maugham once said, "It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it"
While this quote is not always true, I am a firm believer that people should have the ability to choose who we have close to us (with the exception of our families who we are inherently stuck to like super glue whether we want to be or not) and that we all should be able to put a little distance away from people who aren’t exactly empowering as friends.
Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.
For many of us, it’s easy to break up with a boyfriend, but not so easy to end a friendship.
In my younger days, I didn’t always handle this particular situation all that well. If a friend wasn’t living up to my expectations, which were truthfully not all that high, I would rapidly distance myself from the friend without much of an explanation. I never wrote a “Dear Jane” letter with heart-felt explanations for why the friendship was toxic and detrimental to my mental health; nor did I send a short text message or e-mail breaking things off. There was no closure- I pretty much just broke up with my friends.
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, though. The friendships that I broke off were few and far between and I never ended a close friendship in the way that I just described.
What is the right way to end a friendship? I’m not exactly sure myself. I did some research into the matter to see what the web experts would have to say and most sites offered information on why to end a relationship (if it is co-dependent for example), but didn’t exactly detail how to end the relationship.
Of course, now Facebook makes it easy to delete friendships with the click of the mouse because Facebook doesn’t announce it when you de-friend someone to the rest of your friends, family, and acquaintances. That doesn’t necessarily mean that that is the right way to do so.
This psychologist gives advice about ending a friendship through an e-mail, while also admitting that ending a friendship through the World Wide Web may not be the greatest way.
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Comments
I just broke up with a friend
I just broke up with a friend I've had since high school, we're in our 30s now. It was so difficult, but it had become toxic, for both of us. We've been growing apart for many years now, yet we were hindering our personal growth with the friendship. A lot of resentment had been brewing until finally it all blew up in our faces. It is sad, and though it has only been a couple of days since I sent her a "Dear Jane" letter, I feel like a boulder has been lifted off my chest. I don't hate her, but I realize that trying to have a friendship with her is impossible as we are no longer good for eachother.
Thanks for this article Becksta! Breaking up with a friends is definitely difficult, but if the friendship is no longer satisfying, it should be ended. One other thing I learned from this experience: Boundaries are key to good, healthy relationships, whether romantic or platonic. I know for myself and my friend, that was one of the biggest problems. We had no boundaries and that created a lot of situations that led to feelings of resentment. I guess this is life, and being grown up is hard, but I have to say I feel like I have grown up in this experience. I wish her the best, I have no hard feelings, but I definitely don't want to be friends anymore.
Thanks for sharing your
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think ending friendships can be an extremely painful, but sometimes healing experience- it's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. It sounds like you handled your situation the right way.
-becksta