Month: March 2017

  • The Grown Up Friendship Breakup: How To Break Up With a Friend, Like an Adult

    A friendship breakup is tough on everyone, often just as hard as a romantic breakup. How do you break up with a friend, with as little drama and hurt as possible?

    break up with a friend

    First, realize that not all friendships last forever. Friend breakups are common. The fact that you want to end a friendship — or a friend “broke up” with you — is not a reflection of your worth as a person.

    (We published a whole book —My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends — of stories by women about their experiences with ending friendships and breaking up with friends. Through our friendship breakup survey, we’ve also heard from hundreds of women who’ve gone through breakups.)

    Some of our relationships might be situational — you go to the same church or gym or your children are friends — and once it is no longer as convenient to meet up, the friendship becomes less close.

    Next, make sure this is really something that you want to do. Are you getting less out of the relationship than you’re putting in? Have your previous attempts at mending the problems in the friendship failed? (Click here for 7 signs that your friendship is over.)

    It’s also possible that, instead of a breakup, maybe what your friendship needs are new boundaries. (Our friendship advice columnist Nina Badzin answers letters frequently about this topic!) You can try to make the friendship more “casual” and less intense.

    Most importantly, always try to end a relationship — whether it is a romantic or platonic one — with kindness and respect. This was once someone that you cared about deeply — and maybe still do — and they deserve that much.

    Once you’ve made the decision — you want to end it and you do not want to keep the door open for future reconciliations — you have two basic options: fade away or initiate a formal end.

    Fast or Slow: Which Is Better?

    There are probably some who think that a friend always deserves a clear explanation for why the relationship has ended. In my view, that’s not always the case.

    Sometimes you can sense the decision to end the friendship is mutual. You’re both growing apart. The intervals between phone calls become longer. In other situations, once you begin to decline invitations to meet up or start taking longer to respect to texts or phone calls, the message is received and the friendship is mutually phased out.

    In these cases, the friend is usually not a very close — or best — friend.

    What if you want to break up with a friend who is far more than a casual friend, one who you’ve been close to for a long time? Or what about a friend who doesn’t get the message when you attempt to “fade away”?

    There are also times when a friend has betrayed you, and you want to be direct about why you’re ending the friendship. You want to be clear that you can’t be friends with someone when you’ve lost trust in them.

    Be Honest and Direct

    With these friends, you need to pick a time to tell them in a direct and truthful way about you want out. Think in advance about the time and place and prepare what you’re going to say. Would it make more sense to talk on the phone? Or get together in person? (In my humble opinion, you need to do more than just text.) Make it clear that you’re not asking for permission to end the friendship.

    In your explanation, begin by telling them what has been positive about the friendship. What have you learned? What have you gained? What do you like about your friend?

    Then — gently, kindly, but firmly — explain why this relationship is not working for you. Take responsibility for the breakup. For example, talk about why your needs or your schedule make this friendship impossible. Do not focus on blaming either of you for why things didn’t work out.

    How To Break Up With a Friend: The Bottom Line

    All friendships take work. But if your friendship isn’t nourishing you and making your life better, it’s okay to break up with a friend. Just do it respectfully.

    Everyone deserves to be around people who want to spend time with them.

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  • How To Tell When a Friendship Is Over

    When should you end a deteriorating friendship? How do you know when a friendship is over?

    When a friendship is over

    In a romantic relationship, the signs are clearer: you stop going on dates, you move out, you stop hanging out. There’s a clear “cultural script” for how a romantic breakup goes. In friendship, the signs can be much more ambiguous, especially since it’s perfectly normal for friends to fade in and out of our lives at different points, particularly during major life transitions.

    Friendships come to a close for a variety of reasons. You grow apart. You change priorities. You move. You have kids. You get or lose a job. A loss of some sort — a divorce, death — rocks you to your core, and your friend either gets it or doesn’t. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell just what the reason is.

    How can you tell when a friendship is over, or should end?

    There’s no one definitive sign, but here are some clues:

    1. The relationship is unbalanced.

    You realize that your relationship is one-sided. You — or your friend — is always the one to initiate contact or make plans. If you don’t take the initiative, then you just won’t hear from her. You feel like she’s making excuses to get out of spending time together.

    This is one of the most common dilemmas that Nina Badzin, our friendship advice columnist, hears about. In previous columns, for example, she’s advised a reader who feels like her friend only gets in touch with her when the friend’s “real” friends are busy; a reader (“Needy Nancy”) whose friend suddenly seems cold and is pulling away; and a reader whose friend consistently cancels plans at the last minute.

    Many of us are also bad at telling who are friends actually are. While we assume that our friendships are reciprocal, research shows that in actuality half of friendships are one-sided.

    2. Conversation feels too hard.

    It feels stressful to keep talking, beyond the usual updates of each other’s lives. It doesn’t feel natural anymore. There’s no chemistry. You might end up sniping at each other or there may be lots of awkward silence.

    3. You don’t have fun together.

    You don’t seem to have much in common anymore. It’s okay for friends to have different interests, but it could also be a sign that spending time together is too much work for both of you.

    4. After spending time together, you find yourself annoyed and drained.

    After being together, you feel emotionally depleted, instead of supported and recharged.

    5. It’s only through social media that you often find out what’s going on in her life.

    You no longer share the “big” or small daily life happenings anymore. She leaves out important information about what’s going on in her life even when you do talk. Or, alternatively, your friend never interacts with your posts on social media.

    6. You don’t act like yourself when you’re together.

    After being together, you reflect and realize that you don’t like the version of yourself that emerges when you hang out. She brings out the worst version of you.

    7. You feel like you’re “suffocating” in the relationship.

    You feel like you’ve given so much of yourself, but it’s never enough. Or she may be controlling or needy or possessive. You feel like she needs you for everything, including validation. Or all of the above.

    In one of Nina’s previous columns, she advised a reader with a needy and lonely friend. The friend wrote: “Since she has no one else to talk to, she uses me to vent. I mostly feel awful after these talks. Yet I realize she is alone in a new city and has no other support…She knocks on my door or phones almost every day. I feel harassed and have spoken to her about my need for better boundaries, but she does not get it. I find myself turning off all my lights so she will not know I am home and I don’t answer my phone or go to the door.” This friend knew she wanted out of the relationship, but wasn’t sure how to do it.

    8. In your gut, you feel that the friendship is a “toxic” relationship in your life.

    The lines between healthy friendships and “toxic friendships” are sometimes fuzzy. A toxic friend doesn’t have to be someone who is always mean and terrible; she doesn’t have to be a “bad” person.

    According to Dr. Irene Levine, author of Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup With Your Best Friend, a toxic friendship is “one that is consistently, or more often than not, unequal, non-reciprocal, demanding, clingy, stress-inducing, demeaning, and/or unsupportive.”

    As Nina Badzin points out, sometimes the question of when to end a question boils down to this:

    “When there’s more frustration than joy. Life is too short.”

    About your friendship, ask yourself, Nina advises, “Do the pluses outweigh the minuses?”

    It is hard to let go. It’s hard to admit what you perceive to be a failure. You try to ignore the ways that this friendship no longer works or feels right to you. You make excuses for your friend’s (or your own) behavior.

    The bottom line: When a friendship is more of a drain than an asset, it’s a good time to step back and reflect about whether your life would be better without this person. No friendship is perfect, but it might be time to cut the cord if you think a friendship can’t be fixed.

    What have been the signs for you that a friendship is over?

    Read more about how friendships end — from both sides — in our essay collection, My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends. 

     

     

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  • HerTake: Friends Who Cancel Too Often

    UPDATE (2019): FIND NINA AND HER COLUMN AT HER NEW FRIENDSHIP ADVICE SITE

    In this month’s HerTake question, Nina answers a letter from a woman who says her inconsiderate friends often cancel plans or change the plans last minute. Is this an expected part of being an understanding friend or does this letter writer have especially inconsiderate friends in her life? Help our letter writer decide what to do!

    Do you have a question for Nina? Use our anonymous form. You can read Nina’s answers to past questions here.

    Dear Nina,

    I’ve come across a problem recently in my social life that I’m stumped as how to solve. There have been a number of times when friends have either canceled plans that we’ve made or declared that they could actually only hang out for much shorter than originally planned because other plans came up. The problem I have is that I don’t know how to nicely explain to them that this is rude and makes me feel bad. Every time I have tried to go about this, I feel like I am coming off as the rude one for being upset, even though they’re the ones skipping out on our plans.

    What is your advice?

    Thanks!

    Tired of the Cancellations

    Dear Tired of the Cancellations,

    I don’t blame you for being irritated! Now, whether you should take it personally is another issue, and what to do about it is a separate answer, too. I will get to it all.

    Are these inconsiderate friends in other areas of their lives? Do they frequently cancel on others? Are they chronically late? (I mean more than a few minutes.) I’m asking because if they are unreliable in general, then it’s not something you should take personally. Not taking it personally, however, doesn’t mean you want to count on them as your closest friends. Because, yes, their unreliability sounds excessive and canceling because something better came along is as rude as it gets.

    How Much Canceling Can You Tolerate?

    Each person has to decide how much canceling of plans she can tolerate in a friendship, and there’s no right answer. I can tolerate more than average because I have to cancel sometimes. I have four kids, and if I make a lunch date or any kind of meeting with a person during the school day, I will have to cancel if one of my kids has to stay home from school.

    In the past two weeks, for example, my kids took turns passing around a five-day virus. I had to cancel on the same friend twice. Each time I rescheduled on the spot to signal how much I want to see her. She knew not to take it personally, and I was grateful for her flexibility. Similarly, I have a handful of friends with whom I make dinner plans so far in advance that we have a mutual understanding making it easy and unemotional if one of us has to cancel because family came in town or a birthday or bar mitzvah invitation arrived that would be strange to skip for a dinner out with friends we can see another time. But if we cancelled on each other for “better” plans? No, that wouldn’t be cool.

    Balance Between Flexibility and Reliability

    Even with all that in mind about times I may have to cancel or my close friends have to cancel, we all try very hard to keep our plans because as you’ve experienced, too much canceling sends the message that you don’t want to spend time with the person on the other end of that conversation. There’s a balance friends have to strike between flexibility (understanding that life serves up unexpected illnesses and other problems) and reliability (knowing you can count on your friends the majority of the time). I think a solid friendship exists in that sweet spot in the middle.

    It sounds like your friends are asking for too much flexibility. That doesn’t mean a big confrontation is required or that the friendships need to end completely, but if you’re unable to communicate your legitimate frustration without them turning it around on you, then it may be time for a demotion for these ladies. Don’t make plans with them for a while and focus more on current acquaintances who could become better friends after spending more time together. Yes, you can talk to your chronically canceling friends about how their behavior makes you feel, but you cannot force them to change.

    Last point: a friend of mine who said this keeps happening to her teenage daughter encouraged her daughter to use the experience to shape the type of friend she wants to be to others. That’s great advice! I hope that helps, and perhaps other readers will have different ideas.

    Nina

    You can follow Nina on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

    We’re always looking for new reader questions for Nina! If you have a difficult friendship situation that you’d like advice on, fill out our anonymous contact form.

     

     

     

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