Have you ever had to break up with a friend, toxic or otherwise?
My lamest friend breakup ever: one time, I had a friend who would call me every evening to tell me about her day. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t care *that much* about her day, but she kept doing it for months on end. So I finally cancelled my phone and told her that I had forgotten to pay my bill.
The New York Times had a great run down of ways to break up with a friend:
The Bad Boyfriend Approach
She decided it was time to let her friend go. So Ms. Brunner took the “bad-boyfriend approach” and just stopped calling. After the friend made a few spurned overtures — and after some awkward conversations about why Ms. Brunner was always too busy to get together — the friend got the hint. Years later, however, the breakup still feels unresolved.
“I wish I would have handled it differently,” Ms. Brunner said. “I think you owe it to that person, rather than keeping them guessing.”
The Passive Approach
The passive approach can work, sort of. Marni Zarr, 46, a substitute teacher in Mesa, Ariz., employed it when she decided that a friend she had picked up in parents’ circles was starting to drag her down with her neediness and constant competitiveness. Ms. Zarr gave less of herself in conversations, stopped talking about her feelings, became vaguer about future aspirations.
I took the route of distancing myself: not immediately answering texts,” she recalled. “I answered the important things, but not the ‘Hey, how are you doing, what’s up tonight?’ ones.”
The Direct Approach
By the time she was in her mid-30s, Carolyn Miller, an office manager in Norwalk, Conn., found herself unwilling to put up with an old friend’s domineering ways, so eventually she sent her an e-mail listing her grievances and asking for space. The friend called her and begged her to reconsider. Ms. Miller stood her ground.
The Direct Approach is definitely the most mature, but the Passive Approach can be useful too if you aren’t super close to your friend. The problem with the Passive Approach is that it puts a real burden on any mutual friends: your former friend is almost certain to ask them what’s going on.
Have you ever had to break up with a friend? How did you do it?
ranunculus / 3457 posts
I do either the first or last method. I’m horrible because I don’t care enough about having lots of friends to stand people who are toxic. There was a point in my life where I had no friends, because I realized all of them were toxic.
orchid / 194 posts
I tried to “break up with” a friend for, oh, about 18 years. I’ve since given up. I never did the direct approach, but I tried the passive and the bad boyfriend approach. I ended up looking – and feeling – like the bad guy. I did manage to put some distance between us. She no longer refers to me as her best friend ever, so that’s good. I think she’s more like a sister now, especially after an 18 year friendship. Like a sister that you’re not terribly close to and annoyed by.
guest
Yeah, I’m at that point with one of my “best friend”. She no longer asks how I’m doing or what-not. Never asks how I’m feeling when I check up on her. I’m a very passive aggressive person, so approach #2 works for me. Thinking about approach #3 so she really gets the hint.
guest
The passive approach doesn’t seem very effective as that person would still be bothering you since you’re still responding. I’ve taken the bad-boyfriend approach and the direct approach because some people just don’t get it unless you completely ignore them or tell them to GTFA. In high school, I had a super clingy friend that needed me to use both approaches. She was psycho.
guest
I’m more for the passive and direct approach. I prefer the direct approach but there are times where going passive is just a lot easier and a lot less stressful for everyone. Honesty and communication is important. There are some relationships I have been in where those things just never managed to work out. It makes it hard to be so direct. Especially if the person is defensive or refuses to cooperate and communicate in a civil manner. I also spent too much time worrying about making a person “mad” or “upset” so would wither down to the passive approach. Or with people who made me feel like I had to walk on egg shells or edit myself. Those are people that can often be difficult being direct to. But if there is a way to do it, without totally emotionally straining myself, I think being direct is the best way to go.
guest
I *always* use the passive approach.
tulip / 20 posts
Does no one read this and feel a sense of compassion? I don’t ditch my friends because they call me too much, or they talk too much, too needy, blah blah. Usually that means they don’t have anyone else to talk to, and I use that opportunity to be a lifeline for them. The only reason I would consider a friend “toxic” and severe ties is if she or he were a bad influence on me or viciously mean (which would never be considered a friend in my book in the first place). Nothing less than that would make me break my commitment to a friend. Where’s the loyalty?
tulip / 20 posts
@feelslikejuly@xanga - Don’t let that stop you initiating the contact. Too many people take the word “friend” too lightly. If you are really a friend, you would keep on loving the other person. Being a friend is about being selfless and worrying about what you can do for the other person.
dahlia / 2382 posts
It’s better to just be direct. Bullshitting makes you just as bad if you ask me. Plus not facing it head on is adding fuel to the fire. I had this issue before & skipping around didnt help (I just didnt answer the phone much but it worked back then because we went to different high schools. This was YEARS before social networking too. LOL) but one day I just came on AIM & told her flat out I wasnt going to be friends with her anymore because I was sick of her bullshit. We made up but years later it happened again but the irony is she was mad at me because I left with a mutual friend while she was fighting with her boyfriend. She saw that as me ditching her when I was giving her boyfriend time to fix her issue. I wasnt hurt but I did delete her from myself (at that point, that site was the shit) & we didnt talk for 6 months. Then she tried to refriend me & wrote me an apology. She’s mellowed out now but she even acknowledged I was the only real friend she had & she was sorry for things.
Not every friendship will make up but things got better for me once she realized she couldnt push me around & all the fake people she surrounded herself with did the same thing to her.
guest
I have broken up with a few toxic friends. The first one, I was horrible and felt terrible for how I did it. We semi-reconciled and don’t *exactly* hate each other now but we don’t even talk.
The other one, I let her end things with me. I let her rip me apart from top to bottom for being a bad friend. It felt good to be the “bad guy” in her eyes instead of actually being a horrible person about it. That one was well deserved. She nearly sabotaged my education and my sanity. She attempted to kill herself several times, failing (thankfully) each time. The final time, she told me it was completely my fault. It hurt, but that’s just how she was.
guest
@MoonFaeEyryan@xanga - Reading your comment makes me feel a little better because I feel like that is the time of my life that I am in currently. And the hardest part is recognizing that its not your fault, it just happens, and there are toxic people out there.
guest
@scrittore@xanga - Sometimes you must be a little selfish for your own well-being. Life is too short to put up with crappy people.
dahlia / 2747 posts
that direct approach is still a passive approach. what i usually do is tell them in person that they suck as a friend, here’s why, and i don’t want to be friends with someone like that.
rose / 791 posts
@scrittore@xanga - because life’s too short to spend it with people who upset you, annoy you or who clearly use you.
magnolia / 1054 posts
I’ve done all three
guest
I cant bring my self to do it. I have a few annoying friends and I know a few people with toxic friends.
We call them Wilfreds based off of the t.v. show, and we all have a love hate relationship with our Wilfreds but the main reason of why we don’t get rid of them is because we are worried about what would happen to them after we broke free from them. Most of the time we are all they really have and we do not want to send them in to bad emotional state. I have seen a trend with in my non-toxic friends who have Wilfreds, that their Wilfreds have some personality disorders normally. This does not help the person who the Wilfred is attached to feel any better about wanting to be detached from that person. More often then none it can be like adult baby siting.
guest
I don’t do this often, I usually make pretty good friends but the one time it did happen it was complete crap. I told her straight to her face she was annoying me and from that day on she behaved like everyone was inferior to her.
guest
I have a friend that get’s really upset when the rest of the group dont invite her to something, even though every time we invite her she’s with her boyfriend but then still winges if we don’t invite her even though we know shes with her boyfriend.
its really hard to break up with friends, i think its harder than breaking up with partners. i tend to excecute the ‘bad boyfriend’ technique because im terrible at dealing with situations.
guest
I have a friend I think I need to breakup with, and it’s so hard. I’ve known her for years. She has an anger problem and has outbursts and throws temper tantrums like a toddler. It drives me crazy that she can’t grow up and become more emotionally mature. When I do talk to her, she starts calling me all the time and getting upset when I don’t answer (because I’m at work.) I don’t care to hang out with her because she seems emotionally unstable and is also bossy about doing what she wants. Oh, and she can’t take a hint..she’s that friend that stays over forever after the party is over.
I’m afraid to break it off entirely because when I don’t talk to her for a while, she gets depressed and doesn’t take her meds, and I don’t know if she has any other close friends..
guest
mh I am worried now. I am always pretty passive. I do want to keep my friendships, but currently I don’t want anyone really close to who I really am, because I think they aren’t able to handle it; my problems would be too much of a burden, which eventually would destroy the friendship.
I don’t want them to perceieve it as a break up, or them not being important to me.I like to listen to their problems and hang out and all that. Just not all the time, and I don’t want conversations about myself.
guest
I had a coworker friend. I just slowly started to hang with her less and less. She was so negative!