Recently, I’ve (22M) come to the gradual realisation that I want to cut ties with one of my best friends (23F), whom I’ve known for about 7 years. She’s not a bad person or anything, but every time we hang out I just feel drained and look forward to going home, I think in large part due to her tendency to ramble on and on about her life while showing little interest in mine.
What makes this difficult is that we have one of those ongoing text conversations, so it’s not as simple as turning down her requests to meet. After a lot of thinking, I’ve come up with three main options:
**1. Ghost her.**
This sucks, I know, but it’s an easy way out for me and we don’t have to have any difficult conversations. But I think I owe her more than this after investing so much time in our friendship.
**2. Send her a “friendship breakup” text.**
This is definitely the most difficult one for me, but I at least give her an explanation and some closure. At the same time, it would be crushing for her to receive a text like this, and I feel weird doing something so formal for a friendship.
**3. Do a “slow fade”.**
I could still reply to her texts, but take longer and longer each time, and also come up with an excuse every time she requests to meet up. I guess this is simulating what a natural end to a friendship would be like, and isn’t as crushing for her.
Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated, I’ve been mulling over this for ages and have no idea what to decide on. Thanks in advance!
**TL;DR: I (22M) want to cut ties with my close friend of 7 years (23F) because I find it exhausting to hang out with her. How should I go about this?**
12 comments
If you’ve been close for 7 years, is cutting ties the only option? I think it could be beneficial to talk about the issues you’re having. If you’re certain on cutting ties, option 3 works imo. It’s not a permanent disconnection. People drift apart and flow in and out of each other’s lives all the time. This could be as simple as that. I think you’re reading into it a bit much.
Ghosting someone – especially someone you’ve been friends with for that long – is an awful thing to do, and you’re right, a friendship breakup text would hurt.
Slow fade for sure, a cutting ties text is unnecessary and ghosting her is just kinda mean
In this exact situation right now (22f). I basically told her I’m going to need to be off the radar for a bit so I could focus on my life and get my career together. She didn’t really get the hint so I just slowly started responding less and less, and blocked her from watching my IG story. I know it sounds fucked up, but this girl is NOT a good person so I don’t feel super remorseful.
I know that there are going to be people who will tell you that the mature thing to do is break up text or be formal. But some people don’t deserve that, and others cannot handle the confrontation. Sometimes we have to peace out gracefully and be selfish. In my case, I didn’t really care about hurting her feelings because she seriously tried to fuck over my career prospects amongst other things. But the takeaway here is to not feel obligated to grant someone a clear, and concise confrontation; because who is it really helping if it is that emotionally taxing? I think this advice definitely depends on who the person is and your relationship with them. Because what are you going to say to her? “I don’t think I can be your friend anymore because every time we hangout I want to go home.”
You need to talk to her about how you feel.
It’s something that doesn’t resonate very well when you have to cut ties with someone you call your best friend. If she really is your best friend, I’m sure you should be able to tell her as it is, that you feel that this friendship currently is a one way street. Stop being a coward and have a conversation with her.
But if you phrased it a bit off and meant that you don’t feel that you are still best friends or that you don’t want to be friends anymore it’s a whole other point.
All the options are quite cowardly to be honest. I mean, she must have something to offer since you’ve been friends for seven years? Or has this been the dynamic the whole time in your relationship?
If you ever considered her to be your best friend for real, you should at least man up and tell her how you feel. And if she doesn’t accept, you don’t know if you can be friends anymore. Then you’ll take it from there
I’ve been here. Best thing to do is fade away. A lot of times if you just stop inviting her to hang out she just kinda goes away on her own. Friends that are girls rarely put effort into maintaining friendships with guys. I feel your pain and hear you. I had to let most of my female friends go. They rarely seem to care about anything I have to say but I have to listen and give the same advice on guys over and over. Gets old.
Literally had the exact experience as you, 7 years of friendship. Slow fade for sure. That’s what I did, there’s nothing weird between us, she sends a msg every now and then but it’s never a full convo anymore.
I think I know the kind of person she is. Some people are like social vampires who feed off the people around them. I think the fade away option is now known as zombie-ing and I like that idea.
Depends on the friendship. You can ghost her and she will don’t care about you either. Not a text, nothing
Slow fade. I have some friends like this and it’s fine. Sometimes I just ignore them and later on I do want to talk to them again, but they definitely aren’t people I’d classify as a best friend.
I also think it’s worth taking a minute and clarifying how you feel about friendship. A lot of relationships these days are transactional and we are always sold on this idea that a relationship has to serve us. (For example literally just today I was asking advice about if a guy seemed into me or just wanted to be friends. Some woman sent me a rant about how he’s obviously just being nice to me with a goal to potentially years down the line try to hook up with me…. As if that was a bad thing. Literally my whole point was that this guy is very nice to me and I enjoy our interactions, so I’d like to know him more, and that I’d be happy with both friendship or actually dating, because he is a nice person, I can learn from him, I feel good being around him etc) so basically, what are you hoping to get out of your friendships? Do you frequently feel like your friends are using you or not listening? What could she do to improve this situation?
For my annoying friend, I found she was just someone who I enjoy visiting restaurants and partying with but I don’t enjoy chatting with. Surprisingly she has helped me a ton during financial troubles and when I was going through a severe depression. Now I live abroad and she is someone I enjoy chatting with when homesick. I changed my standards for what I consider a good friendship because she is loyal,even if she’s a bit self absorbed, and she does help me when she can. If she didn’t, I would of course block her and move on without issues. I don’t think there is any reason to confront her beyond maybe saying very overtly “hey! Do you want to know what’s happening with meeeee?” And then just don’t engage until and unless you want to.
Let Chatgpt write your friendship breakup text 🙂 easy way out
There are also other ways:
Low key let her know her rambling on and on is annoying…
Give short open-ended, noncommittal answers:
“Hmmm…”
“That’s interesting…”
“I’m gonna think about that…”
“Ok I see what you’re saying.”