When You Have To End A Friendship
When you break up with a lover, it is heart breaking but clear. The relationship as you knew it is over. Perhaps you’ll continue as friends, and perhaps you won’t, but we all know what it means to break up with a lover. In fact you immediately have a title for that person. They are your ex. You might talk fondly about your ex or with disgust, or somewhere in between. Either way, they remain your ex forever.
When you end a close friendship, it’s less clear.
There’s no title for a person who used to be a close friend. Close friendships often end, but we might feel like they shouldn’t. We might feel like any friendship should be able to continue forever.
But just like relationships with lovers, some close friendships need to end.
When one person betrays the other, people might feel it is OK to end a friendship. What about when 2 people who shared values and interests find that they no longer do? We call this “growing apart.”
Sometimes people pull themselves along, dragging a friendship with them that no longer feels good, out of guilt or fear of hurting the other person. You might have a friendship that doesn’t feel good. You’ve tried to communicate, make adjustments, anything to make it work, but sometimes you have to break up.
How can you break up with a friend?
The most common method is to avoid them or give less and less until they stop talking to you. Some call that the “fade-away.”
Then there’s the method of letting things build up until you have a big fight and then ending the friendship in anger. We can call that the "blow up method".
Most people have used one of these two methods. It's understandable, and I'm not here to judge.
I’d like to advocate for a much more difficult method here. The gentle but honest method. How about honoring the friendship with a real breakup? This means telling your friend that things have been hard for you for a while, that you’re still fond of them, but that you need to take a big step back.
How much should you tell your friend about why you’re ending things?
This really depends on a couple of things. If you feel like this friendship has a strong chance of starting up again in the future, and you think they are emotionally mature enough to hear it, share more. Tell them your story about what went wrong and how you felt about it. On the other hand if your friend is fragile, tell them only an honest but less in depth reason why you’re stepping away.
Unlike with a lover, it isn’t cruel to say “maybe someday…” Many friendships do begin again. Ending them with some brave communication makes that more likely. This brave method allows your friend to move on and stop wondering what’s going on with you. It allows you both to grieve the friendship.
