I guess my question still is how do these psycho’s end up as someone’s “friends” to the point where they need to figure out ways of extracting them from their life?
Did you specifically tell them “we aren’t friends anymore” or did you just stop contacting them?
Bridget Burke - I didn’t want to hijack the original OP, which seemed specific to his particular problem.
Would you really rather live your life dodging phone calls and deleting emails? If it’s common courtesy to officially break up with someone you are dating, why not for friends? Suck it up, answer the phone, and let them politely know that you are no longer interested in spending time with/on them.
Sometimes people change. Sometimes a trait bothers you more then you thought it would. Sometimes you learn things you didn’t know before.
A friend is still a relationship, someone who was incredibly close to you at one time may deserve a response if you decide to ignore them for the rest of your life.
I recently “broke up” with a friend. My SO’s brother met her in nursing school and they became study-buddies. She became a sort of fixture, falling fast in love with said brother. Brother doesn’t want a girlfriend and has been very clear about that…but still keeps her around… That is a whole other thread…
Anyway. When I first met her, she seemed nice, if somewhat awkward. I just thought maybe it was because she was young. She was 19 at the time, SO, brother and myself are 33, 34, and 24 respectively. (Yeah five years isn’t a big gap on paper, but I have been on my own since 17 and married once. She still lives with her parents, still a virgin until said brother, and very sheltered).
Well, she stared calling me, and coming over. I thought what the hell? I don’t have many friends down here, and she is nice. Well turns out, under that nice outside she is bitter and jealous. She would follow me around, never letting me alone with my SO if she was here. She would say one minute, “Oh Bob* is so sweet and such a good guy, I have dibs when you guys break up!” Wtf? Then in the next breath telling me, in front of him, that I should slap him for doing this or that… Just stupid crap. It was getting old quickly, and all she talked about was said brother. She was underhandedly mean to his kids and ours. Very immature. So New Year’s eve, she offered to baby sit while my SO and I went to a doctor’s appointment early that morning, and I figured that she would just not leave… but I was prepared for that. (My SO had gotten to where he didn’t want her over much because she caused tension). Well her roommate invited her to a party out of town and I nicely convinced her to go. You know, you’re young and single! Go! Have fun!
She went, and I haven’t called her or answered the phone since. Said brother told her she was rude and caused tension between people, not specifying that those people were my SO and I. So I feel that I don’t have much else to say to her, and am using said brother’s statement as a way out.
Yes, it’s a chicken way out but I really don’t want to hurt her feelings. To everyone that has been broken up with by the “disappearing act” I am sorry. But I felt like she was more trouble than the friendship was worth. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and get out.
Sure there’s call ID, and I frequently go months without responding to her in any way, especially during the times I need all my emotional resources for myself and my family. She keeps calling, sometimes 5 or 6 times in a night if she has some horrible support-requiring tragedy like going to someone’s house and their roommate smoking a joint. One of my real friends who got sucked into the vortex with me flat-out told her a dozen times not to call on Thursday nights–that night is reserved as family hang-out time and the phone will NOT get answered. Guess what night she always called and left increasingly forlorn-sounding voicemails about catching up? Go on, guess.
After 2.5 years or so of not getting her calls answered or returned, she started nagging me about whether my friend was mad at her. Every fucking time she called, we had to retread this same territory over and over, despite me telling her the same thing–Thursday is family night at Casa de Blonde, and she ain’t picking up the phone unless there’s been a death in your family or your house is on fire. After about six months, she finally decided that her feelings were hurt enough that she wasn’t going to call Blonde any more.
As with most of these people, it was never something I considered a particularly close friendship anyway. She and I were in the cafeteria every morning at the same time our first semester of college, and rather than sit there by myself I decided to force myself out of my shell and ask if she minded if I sat with her. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Being all shy and withdrawn and shit, making myself walk up to a complete stranger and start a conversation sounded like a great stride forward.
Things just kind of went from there. We had the sort of friendship you have with lots of people who live in your dorm or the next one over–you watch tv in each other’s rooms, study together if you have the same courses, maybe tag along if one of you is going off-campus for dinner or to the mall or whatever. She had some issues, but at the time they seemed like the same sorts of issues I was in the process of working on, so they didn’t raise any warning bells. There were some warning signs that she had boundary issues fairly early on, but I was young enough and naive enough that I didn’t see them for what they were. By the time she was becoming a drag, she was already in my life, and by god she wasn’t leaving. (Seriously, if she came to my room while I was gone, she would actually push past my roommate and look around the room, including the closet, to see if I was there and trying to avoid her.)
I did and still do feel bad for her, because I know she’s lonely, and she hasn’t got a malicious bone in her body. But at the same time, she’s the sort of person who you tell her that one of your grandfathers is about 6 months through his year-to-live diagnosis, and the other one is in and out of the hospital with the same sorts of symptoms the first one started out with, and she says “Well, at least they’re old.” True story. Bless her heart, in every way that phrase can be interpreted.
One of the traits of a psychic vampire is they don’t appear to be what they are initially. Also, in an earlier phase of my life I was into helping/fixing people, so I was happy to have people like that as friends. Now I’m older and a bit wiser I recognise that for the unhealthy behaviour it is, and I can spot a psychic vampire a mile off.
I’ve done both. In some cases I’ve stopped trying with people because they’re clearly not bothered with me, in which case me stopping contact with them sealed that particular friendship because they weren’t ever in touch with me.
One guy I just stopped talking to because after going on holiday with him (and being stuck on a cruise ship with him for 10 days) I realised that under the surface he’s a psychologist’s wet dream of neuroses and insecurity, and he had pissed me of to the point where I didn’t care enough about him to put up with it any more. I was clear that any attempt to justify my decision would turn into a pity-fest because that’s what his entire life was. I’ve run into him on the internet a few times but I’ve never responded to any messages he sends me.
One guy I used to know became, over time, more and more self centred and obsessed about his relationships. When he called and proceeded to talk at me down the phone for about half an hour without ever uttering the phrase “how are you” I realised he wasn’t worth knowing as I was an unpaid therapist (it particularly hurt at that moment because he called me the day I’d just been suddenly fired from my job and I would have liked someone to ask how I was).
One friend I wrote to setting out how unhappy I was without our friendship, how she was unsupportive (to the point of being hostile) of the therapy I was in the process of going through and that I felt this said a lot more about her than she realised, given issues I believed she had. We didn’t speak for over a year and a half but she later got in touch with me again through a mutual contact and we’re friends again as we’ve both changed and we work well together again. She’s a good reminder to me that sometimes you or other people can change for the betterment of your friendship too. 
Yeah, but—when the friend in question has been pulling the same bullshit for 20 years, and you’ve been calling them on it for a decade, there comes a time to pull the plug. I tolerated an old friend’s self-absorbed, rude behavior for many years–until the inertia of our original friendship finally just died. Personality traits that I overlooked twenty years ago had become crystallized to the point where I simply didn’t like the person anymore.
Sometimes BS reaches a critical mass that friendship can’t overcome.
That is true, but I still don’t see how it addresses your premise of “breaking up with friends is pretty lame.” And the person in the thread you referenced was a man, although his friend was a woman.
I mostly concur that breaking up with a friend is lame.
Regarding your points:
Pretty cute. I’ll steal it for my repertoire.
You don’t need any reason. ‘Just do it!’
Yes. I have very, very few friends, and I find that I can always stand to lose one more, esp. an irritating one.
ASAMOF, I’m quite a prize: that’s why it’s hard to scrape them off.
Sort of. Guys may fight, but that doesn’t mean the friendship shall continue. A really, really good butt-kicking means that the friendship is over; or it could be a way of ending it quickly. Very manly, and without the dorky fare-thee-well ‘closure’ that Oprah people want us to have.
This point is correct, but it applies to those to whom i want to remain friends. If I want to lose them, the point is incorrect.
Finally, see #6. A few hours of my life for a friend are not ill spent. For somebody who is on my ‘must lose’ list, it is a few hours thrown into the toilet.
Sometimes also they’re genuinely very nice and likeable people, but with this “emotional vampire” flaw that becomes more and more unbearable with time.
edit: telling a story here that gives out more personal info than I’m comfortable with. Suffice it to say that, given an experience in my brother’s life, I am hugely supportive of breaking up with folks who seem like they might be psychos.
The OP is… on second thought lets leave that for another forum.
Removing toxic people from your life, friends or not, is a good thing. Seeing it otherwise like some kind of Cheers episode is… fantasy land.
Meh.
Starting a thread complaining about the practice is even lamer.
It sounds like some people are kind of passive and have trouble asserting themselves in their relationships with toxic people. So they end up in an unsatisfying relationship for decades before they finally can’t take it anymore.
Maybe the difference also has something to do with the fact that I don’t consider someone a “friend” just because the lived on my dorm floor or we ended up as roomates together or we work together. I mean a lot of the people you folks are talking about aren’t “friends”. They are annoying pains in the ass who happened to glom onto you or you happen to be stuck with because you work together.
There also seems to be some confusion as well. I never said you need to keep toxic people in your lives or continue to maintain unsatisfying friendships. It just seems really weird to me to sit an actual friend down and being like “we shouldn’t be friends anymore”.
So is thread shitting.
No one held a gun to your head to post here If the subject doesn’t interest you then shove off.
Any relationship can be terminated. If a boyfriend can be demoted to a platonic friend, it stands to reason that a platonic friend can be demoted to a “person I used to be friends with but now is not.”
What would you do if a friend betrayed you? Slept with your SO, spread false rumors about you, stole money out of your wallet, or took a pair of scissors to your luscious head of hair out of a jealously. If a boyfriend did any of this, I wouldn’t hesistate to tell them to get out of my life. Why would a friend be any different? The principle carries over for less severe things like generally being a pain in the ass.
This is passive: Don’t answer the phone when they call and quit agreeing to go out with them until they take the hint. This approach is what you supposedly think is less lame and somehow more manly than just being upfront. Really weird.
Can someone post a link to the original thread that inspired this one?
Maybe. But how do they get to that point in the first place where they are calling you every
I think I specifically discussed that in Article 2 of my OP. Those are specific events where you tell someone “you are an asshole” and everyone knows why you aren’t friends anymore (and actually, probably enemies for some of those). I think it’s tougher when basically, they are just annoying and toxic.
I didn’t say “manly”. I just said I don’t know any men who formally declared their friendship over. It sort of implies that they formally declared a beginning to their friendship in the first place. Friendship has always seemed like more of an organic process to me. You have a pool of acquaintances. People you know from work, school,clubs and so on. Over time, you hit it off with some of them and you become friends. Some you don’t hit it off with but they are always around anyway because you’re on the same kickball team or whatever and you just deal.
To me, even using terms like “toxic people” “breaking off a relationship” sort of conjures up images of a lonely middle-aged woman talking to her therapist about all the various people in her life who rub her the wrong way. I’ve just never really known any men who think like that.
If I toss a long-time friend out of my life, do I owe her an explanation?
It is only marginally related to the bizarre case the OP is making here. For example, in Skald’s thread the friendship is mixed-gender, whereas the OP seems fixated upon male and female friendships occurring in under some rigid gender sterotypes.
Well, you implied it with your fifth point in the OP and last paragraph you just wrote.
And those people you initially hit it off with can change (they become obsessive or negative or bitchy). Or your impression of them can change (what used to be cute and quirky has become obnoxious and draining). The relationship can change (they get feelings for you and start wanting more). People can change.
I don’t even have experience with breaking up with friends, but there’s nothing difficult to understand about the rationale.
Oh the horror!!!
Breaking up with friends is hard, but breaking up with a hairdresser is harder.