"Breaking up" with friends is pretty lame

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by another thread, IMHO, formally “breaking up” with someone who you consider a friend in the same way you might break up with an annoying girlfriend is pretty lame.

Here’s why:
First of all, what do you say when you break up with someone? “Let’s still be friends.” So what do you say now? “Let’s be acquaintances?”

Second, you need a reason to not be friends with someone anymore and it has to be something universally recognized as ending the friendship. He slept with your girlfriend. You wrecked his car and didn’t pay for it. You burned his house down smoking crack. Whatever. If you “break up” with a friend because they annoy you or some similary innane and superficial reason, you just look like a petty asshole.

Third. Do you really have so many friends that you can just cut the annoying ones out?

Fourth. You probably aren’t that great of a prize yourself.

Fifth. That’s something women do, not men. Men fight about whatever is ruining the friendship and then go back to being friends. Women indulge in social bullying. ie “if you do not fall in line with my rule as Queen Bee, I will ostracize you from the circle of friendship.”

Sixth. Part of being someone’s friend is having to put up with their bullshit. That’s the difference between friends and everyone else who you put on your “work face” for.

And finally, how much effort is it really to be nice and listen to some jerk’s problems for a few hours a month? If you don’t want to make yourself available for someone, then just don’t. If they ask why, simply tell them you don’t mind helping them out, but you are busy and have your own shit to deal with. Eventually they will figure you aren’t the person who they need to listen to their crap all the time and will move on or they will tone it down to a level you can both agree on.

Thoughts?

2

Not always. The woman who used to be our housekeeper was also a family friend, then she stole money and prescription drugs from us. She’s been given the heave-ho in all possible senses from our life, except for the legal proceedings.

3

“Fourth. You probably aren’t that great of a prize yourself.”

Yes. How dare you change your mind about a person!

:rolleyes:

4

I have had some friendships just sort of fade away, but I’ve never dropped a friend cold turkey, such as in “yesterday we were friends but today we’re not.” So I can’t give you a real example of how this might happen but I don’t find the OP’s case compelling in the other direction.

*First of all, what do you say when you break up with someone? “Let’s still be friends.” So what do you say now? “Let’s be acquaintances?” *

Of course not. You say, “I can’t be in this friendship anymore,” or you just cease all contact.

Second, you need a reason to not be friends with someone anymore and it has to be something universally recognized as ending the friendship…If you “break up” with a friend because they annoy you or some similary innane and superficial reason, you just look like a petty asshole.

To whom? You have to have a reason that makes sense to you, not the world. What’s the effort vs. reward tradeoff of having a friend that annoys you? If the annoyance outweighs the joy then what kind of friendship is that?

*Third. Do you really have so many friends that you can just cut the annoying ones out? *

Do you really have so few friends that you need to keep ones that annoy you?

Fourth. You probably aren’t that great of a prize yourself.

Speak for yourself. :slight_smile:

Fifth. That’s something women do, not men. Men fight about whatever is ruining the friendship and then go back to being friends. Women indulge in social bullying. ie “if you do not fall in line with my rule as Queen Bee, I will ostracize you from the circle of friendship.”

Stereotyping the sexes doesn’t seem to have anything to do with your original point. :dubious:

Sixth. Part of being someone’s friend is having to put up with their bullshit. That’s the difference between friends and everyone else who you put on your “work face” for.

Absolutely. No relationship is all sunshine and roses. But we come back to…how much bullshit do you have to put up with before it’s not worth it anymore?

And finally, how much effort is it really to be nice and listen to some jerk’s problems for a few hours a month?

You refer to your friends as “some jerk”?

5

The thread in question didn’t really talk about “breaking up” with a former friend.

The OP just tried to drop her, without any scene. No invitations, no calls, etc. The alternative was pointing out just how much the bitch had insulted him & his family. (This was not the first offense; the “friendship” was already on thin ice.)

He was trying to be civilized. She didn’t get the hint.

6

I think that’s covered under his second point, that you need a “universally recognized” reason to break it off.

7

I actually had a friend of ten years ‘break up’ with me because I was pregnant. She sent a big long email to me and everything. It was kinda surreal and really did feel like a traditional break up, “It’s not you, it’s me” sort of thing.

8

You can change your mind of course. But sometimes, it seems like people are overly judgemental when their “friends” fall out of some narrow band of acceptable morality.

Taken as a whole, men and women tend to communicate differently and tend to behave differently from each other in their social groups. It’s not universal, but I think it’s worth considering in the context of how they treat friends they don’t like anymore.

Isn’t that the test of true friendship? Being able to tell each other how much of an jerk you are being.:smiley: Really what I meant is that this person who you think is being an annoying jerk clearly thinks enough of you as a friend to call up and confide in. And really we all exhibit jerky or annoying behavior at times.

9

But maybe it isn’t true friendship any more. Why should you hang out with someone who insults you & your family?

Sometimes it’s best to cut your losses.

10

Well, if you have a true, reciprocal friendship with someone and the issue between you is something that can be resolved, sure.

But with people like the one in the thread in question, neither of those conditions apply. These people add fuck-all to your life, except a lot of hassle and strain. They stand in need of astonishing amounts of support and advice and general emotional resources, but when you need a shoulder to cry on or an arm to lean on, it’s “Oh, that sucks, but enough about you–let’s talk about me and my problems some more!”

That’s not breaking up with a friend, that’s prying the vampire off your neck while you still have some blood left.

Secondly, you can maybe have a big fight and clear the air about something somebody did or said and resolve the issue. But how do you do that when the problem isn’t what they say or do, but who they are? What, do you throw a few punches and then take them to mall to buy a new personality?

Third, I may not have a ton of friends, but quality is way better than quantity. All of my friends are annoying sometimes, because all people are annoying sometimes. Hell, I’m frequently the annoying friend myself. But we’re actual friends, not swirling vortexes of need where emotional resources disappear never to be seen again.

Fourth, people like that don’t stop calling or tone things down, because they’re not normal human beings. No matter how many times you explain it, it just doesn’t sink in. They’re just…oblivious to everything that isn’t about them. It’s not malicious, it’s just a rest-of-the-world-sized blind spot, bless their hearts. You feel bad cutting them out because they honestly don’t mean any harm, but at the same time they’re like those big doofy dogs who keep shoving a slimy cold spit-covered ball into your hand and watching every tiny movement you make, like “Are you gonna throw the ball now? How bout now? Now? Now? Now??? What about now??? Now?” on and on and on no matter how much you tell them to get down or shove them away.

11

You can be forced into “breaking up” with a friend if they have different expectations of the friendship than you do. I was friends with a guy for a while who wanted us to spend lots and lots of time together and generally wanted to be BFFs. :rolleyes:

Now, admittedly, I allowed it to get to that point when I should have nipped it in the bud and said from the start that I didn’t have time or the inclination for that type of very involved friendship. But I didn’t and it got out of control. I tried to just back off, saying “I’m busy” or “I’m more of a loner” but he didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to know what was wrong, if he’d upset me, why I didn’t want to talk to him any more. For the record, that’s not the way to save a dying friendship. Most people are going to run screaming from someone who acts like that, and that’s what I did. I finally just had to say, “Look, I don’t want to be friends any more. Period.”

12

Well if a “breakup” is required, it means the friendship got an F on its test. It’s better than putting up with someone you don’t want to put up with indefinitely and certainly better than doing a passive “let’s ignore each other until we both go away” bit. If you come off as a jerk, so what?

13

QFT.

The OP is just plain bizarre. Talk about a black hole of bad self-esteem if you can’t break up bad friendships because you don’t think you’re all that great a prize yourself.

I’ve broken friendships because the other person became toxic, at least to my life and self-esteem. No, I don’t have to tolerate an endless vortex of pettiness and nastiness because they’re allegedly my friend. That ain’t friendship.

I’ve broken friendships because like CCL says, they turned out to be one big mass of neuroses and emotional trauma. Because they were argumentative, because they refused to stop doing things that seriously pissed me off. Because the fact that I didn’t like the arguments and the negative actions never seemed to sink in no matter how many times I very directly stated that it/they were causing a problem.

Hell, I’ve had any number of friendships quietly fade away because they had come about while we had something in common, and once that commonality was removed, there was no longer any reason to be in contact. That’s just the way life is. Am I responsible for that, or is that something I can blame on them? :dubious:

14

Offensive stereotyping aside, are you addressing your treatise to men only? Might want to ask a mod to put that in the thread title so us silly, petty women don’t accidentally intrude on the menfolk talkin’.

15

Oh I’m not saying don’t get rid of them. But I guess how do you do it? I mean there is such a thing as caller ID. You can let their calls go to voicemail. You can ignore their emails or just offer a brief reply.

How do these people become your friends anyway? I mean do they just suddenly become annoying and clingy or were they always like that?

16

In the thread that caused this one, it appears that the former friend had, indeed, changed. And she was demanding an explanation, rather than figuring out what those unanswered calls meant.

–And why didn’t you put all this in the original thread?

17

That we have entirely different views on what constitutes friendship. Friends who are going through a difficult time and need support aren’t the same thing as psychic vampires. I have all the time in the world for the former, I don’t have a second to spare for the latter.

I have NO idea what you’re talking about in points three and four of your OP. Even if I had no friends I still wouldn’t want a puddle of toxic emotional waste for a friend, and yes I think I deserve better than that.

For the record I’m a man and I’ve dropped several friendships because they had become either work or hugely one sided, and I have also had people drop me too. Such is life.

18

I dropped my best friend because our friendship had become increasingly one-sided over time. She became more and more self-involved and excused herself from any problems related to this by reminding people that she was a narcissist. (She’s a psychologist and had come to this conclusion after some self-analysis.) Um, narcissism is a problem, not an excuse for shitty behavior! I could give a lot of examples, but it was clear after awhile that she was only using me as a sounding board for whatever shallow thing she was obsessing over at the moment. She was entirely disinterested in any problems I might have and didn’t even do a good job of pretending to listen. (ie, after telling her a story about a car accident I’d been in, she asked me a question that revealed she hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention, all of the details were totally wrong.)

She lives in the area we both grew up in, but I don’t, so it was easy to drop her. This is going to sound very junior high, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when she accused me of being racist for making an anti-Asian remark (she’s Chinese-American) in my LiveJournal to another friend who’s also Asian-American. It was a silly inside joke! I was offended and annoyed; if I’m racist, why had I been best friends with her for ten years? Very stupid. Anyway, I defriended her and I figured she got the message when she didn’t respond. We went two years without communicating.

She called me just before I went to Bulgaria. I was shocked to hear her voice and really shocked at how angry I felt towards her. I pretty much hung up on her. She was just a lousy friend and I would have been happier to just let her fade away and not resort to drama, but she kind of wrecked that plan by calling me up and acting like we were still best friends when in fact we hadn’t spoken in two years.

19

I have a rule - it is traditionally about dating, but it can be extended.

It is better to be alone than to wish you were.

My life is finite and I don’t want to spend it with people who make it unpleasant.

20

I don’t think it’s lame at all to break off a friendship - if someone just won’t take no for an answer, sometimes you need to officially dump them for them to get that you really don’t want to spend time with them.

I also don’t think it’s something only women do and to say so is silly - regardless of your gender, if you don’t like someone, you shouldn’t be forced to hang out with them. Some people - be they male or female - don’t get hints. You have to spell it out.

Plus, I’ve got precious little free time as it is. Why would I want to spend it with someone I don’t like?

A few years ago, I had to do that with someone I had been friends with for almost 30 years. She and I lost contact for a while and by the time we got back together again, she was a different person. She had always been self-serving, but not terribly so, so I ignored it. By the time we caught up again, she didn’t care about anyone but herself. She was also abusive toward her husband, calling him fat and ugly and pinching him when he displeased her. She was also incredibly rude to me when she visited for a weekend. But her behavior toward her husband was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.

After she left, I stopped responding to her IMs, e-mails and calls until one day I wasn’t thinking and picked up the phone when it rang (we didn’t have caller ID, so I used to just let the answering machine get it). It was her and she demanded to know why I hadn’t responded to her. I replied calmly, “When you visited last, you were a totally different person from what you were when we were younger. When I speak to you, I don’t feel like you’re truly listening, and I can’t stand by and watch you treat your husband like that. I think you two may need marital counseling, and I wish you both the very, very best. Please don’t call me again.”

Of course, she has called me a few times over the past few years, but if she happens to catch me, I make polite chit-chat and get off the phone. I don’t respond to her e-mails.