Several years ago, I became friends with the mother of one of my kid’s friends. At first I really liked her and we hung out a lot. But over time, I realized that there were some aspects of her personality that I couldn’t tolerate (racism, classism that weren’t obvious at first). So I started distancing myself from her telling her how busy I was, but it’s been over a year of her calling/texting asking me to go to lunch or have our family come over for dinner, they have extra tickets to a concert, etc etc. I say no every time, claiming we already have plans. But it does not appear that she is getting the hint.
We have parties a lot and I do invite them to those since in a crowd, she is ok. But she is always wanting to do stuff with either just me or with our husbands. How can I make her go away without being confrontational (not my style)?
You can’t, especially since you do still invite her to do things. Stop inviting her to do anything and keep saying no to her invitations. Eventually she’ll stop asking. It takes some people longer than others.
I agree you need to break off all ties with person , that include texting etc.
Or just tell them that you would like to go your separate in an email that your friendship has reached the end of road …
She just texted me asking if I could have coffee tomorrow. I said no I’m booked and she replied “how about Thursday or Friday? I haven’t seen you in forever!”. She also gave me a Christmas gift & sent me flowers on my birthday (I did not reciprocate, but I did thank her).
It’s weird and I feel like she’s trying to force herself into my life. And I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I actually feel guilty every time I blow her off.
Maybe it’s not generally the way to go, but I feel like the reasons need to be part of this somehow. “I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with your views on [whoever]; they make me feel uncomfortable.”
And if she really is clueless, then she’s most likely not “forcing herself back into your life,” since to her, you like her perfectly fine; it’s just that you’ve been busy. It’s natural to feel guilty too, especially since you don’t seem to want to be confrontational, and it seems implied that her racism/classism isn’t overtly obnoxious or hateful.
What happens if you take the blunt route? Tell of your feelings tell her a good bye.
It is by far the toughest at first but it will end the connection. Try do do it in a civil way.
And don’t just blow them off. “I’m not free on Wednesday.” Blow them to hell and gone.
“Look, we used to be friends, but it isn’t working any more. You’ve hurt me too badly for me to take any further pleasure in your company.”
You might be diplomatic, or soften it. “I know I’ve hurt your feelings too, and I apologize for this. But I do not want to engage personally with you any longer.”
I’ve had to do this three times in my life. Never fun, but sometimes just plain necessary. It’s like taking the dying Ol’ Yeller into the field and shooting him. It’s an act of mercy, and it needs doing.
Saying you’re busy but then inviting her to a party makes it really seem that you are busy, not that you’re avoiding her. You need to be more consistent in your message.
Do you have any friends in common? I was trying to shake off a friend last year and I told our mutual friends to talk shit about me to her. Give her the ol’ “It’s not you, it’s Zipper, she’s weird” thing.
That worked but she also got married and had someone else to pay attention to that wasn’t me, which helped a lot more.
I agree with you , this is just leading her on and making her keep calling the OP back . I know it’s hard to be honest sometime about why you want to break up with a friend . To the OP I had a friend that I knew all my life and things started to go sour with our friendship . I didn’t trust her anymore and I told her this and made a clean break , it’ll 3 years this May that I stopped talking to my ex friend and my life has been a lot better.
Things played out this way several times with my mom-- she was the friend in this situation. She’d make friends with the parents of my friends, they’d hang out for a number of years, but whenever they had an opportunity to quietly drop off the map, they’d take it. “Oh, the girls will be going to different schools now.” “We have a new activity that takes up a lot of our time.” Or, they’d just move and never tell us or give us their contact information.
I always wondered what it was about her that made these people want to distance themselves from her. It doesn’t offend me that they weren’t interested in being friends any more, but my family was pretty insular and it would have helped me see her with different eyes.
Sounds like this is your fault. As when she exhibited these racist opinions, you apparently let them slip by without having a conversation about them. Maybe there’s an explanation for her comments, not all things are black and white (;)). Sounds like she likes you, why not try and be an influence on her, instead of being passive aggressive?
I’m about the least confrontational person there is, so I can sympathize with your situation. The thing is, something that I’ve had a hard time learning is that setting personal boundaries is important to taking care of myself (or yourself) and even though I hate letting people down and hurting their feelings, other people, especially people that aren’t friends and family or may even be harmful to my well being, aren’t OWED anything by me. If a friendship isn’t serving me, in that I’m putting more into it than I’m getting out of it, I need to end it. And I don’t mean that in a selfish way either. Some friendships end up being one-sided in some way, but it’s made up for in another way. If a friendship just always leaves you feeling draining or anxious or angry or whatever… end it. And, really, you’re not just doing yourself a disservice, you’re doing that person a disservice by maintaining a friendship that is one-sided in their favor, encouraging them to continue that behavior with you and likely with others.
She’s not getting the hint, because you’re doing a bad job of communicating it. It’s like when in dating threads, people complain that someone won’t leave them alone, and unless that person is a stalker, it often ends up that they’re sending conflicting messages. You don’t have to be all “I don’t want to be friends with you”, but you DO need to be firm in your denials for hanging out with her. And if you’re inviting her to your parties, she has reason to believe you want to spend time with her. If you invite her sometimes but decline with reasons, you really can’t blame her for taking your reasons at face value
And this is a perfect example of what I mean. If she invites you to have coffee, don’t say you’re booked, just say no thanks. I get that people don’t like declining people’s offers of friendship, but what you’re doing is inadvertently leading her on and it’s just going to make when she finally DOES get the message, whether through constant declines and no invites or you straight up tell her, it’s going to make it that much harsher. So you either live a lie of a friendship forever to avoid letting her down, which serves neither of you, or you can be straight forward.
Or, really the best approach in my opinion, is to actually think about WHY you liked her at first but don’t now. I have plenty of friends that I have little in common with, but we can connect just fine in the ways we do. If someone has a wildly different political or religious or philosophical view and we can’t talk about it reasonably, we just don’t; we’ll enjoy talking about movies or music or a common hobby, and sometimes it might drift into another area, and if it’s cool, we explore it, and if not, we go back. If someone wants to get closer and you don’t want them to, remember that it’s not BFFs or nothing. You can potentially foster a type of relationship with someone where, perhaps you can talk about and enjoy the things you have in common and leave the rest on the side. Hell, some of my closest friendships are ones that began like that, overtime we learned to appreciate each other’s perspectives, and we can even strongly disagree on certain things, but in many ways we’ve exposed each other to things we wouldn’t have been otherwise and we’re both better for it. And for people where things can’t be separated, perhaps where those sorts of things that don’t work for me are seemingly present in everything, I let them go. Hell, often, some of those people are even AMAZING people, but we just can’t connect. That’s fine.
I don’t really understand the people jabbing at OP for being non-confrontational about this. This may just be me, and I may just have been exposed to some really shitty people, but generally when you confront racist, bigoted assholes with the fact that their opinions are, in fact, racist and bigoted, they tend to take this pretty personally. A good number of them are perfectly content to yell.
Being yelled at sucks. Being yelled at by bigoted assholes sucks even more.
That said, to echo what a few other posters have said - if you want this person out of your life, why on God’s good Earth are you inviting her to parties? This is possibly the most nonsensical behaviour I can think of considering what your desired end is.
I was once on the receiving end of an acquaintanceship-ending announcement. When I called this person one morning to see if she was ready to go out for our daily run, she said curtly “We can’t be friends anymore. You’re Catholic.” Then she hung up on me.
I don’t know what that had to do with going running in the morning and antique hunting on the occasional weekend, but apparently my religious affiliation made those things impossible. I don’t know what her affiliation was, I never felt the need to inquire.
My point here is, that maybe just telling her exactly what it is you find objectionable may have to be the way you proceed. It certainly worked in my case. I never attempted to speak to that woman again.
It sounds to me like she’s trying really hard to maintain a relationship with you; which may mean that she’s desperate for friends; which may be because you’re not the only one she’s alienated with the things about her that you find objectionable; which may mean you’d be doing her a kindness by gently pointing out to her what those things are and why they make it hard for you to be around her.