Throw away account to keep anonymity.
I (28f) made a friend (32f) through work a few years ago when I first moved to a new city. We got along fine and I helped her through a difficult time in her life when a long-term relationship was ending.
She ended up moving and changing jobs. We kept in touch and went on a few weekend trips. On these trips, she would get super drunk at least one day and go on long rants about her past. They were really uncomfortable and above what I thought our level of friendship was. The rest of the trip would be fine, but it really put off bad vibes and got me thinking about our friendship. She also often makes really off-color jokes that make me uncomfortable. Almost like she is hitting on me… but she’s never gone quite too far. To my knowledge, we are both straight. She had a pretty strange upbringing and I get the feeling a lot of her other relationships are extremely superficial.
I decided to put some distance on the friendship and stopped responding as much, stopped making plans, and tried to just let things slowly die.
I even told her that my life has gotten busy (which is true) and that I don’t really have time to be her friend to the extent she needs.
She is not getting the hint and I am admittedly too nice to be more direct. She has also texted me telling me how much she values our friendship, which of course makes me feel even worse.
I really really would prefer to avoid confrontation or anything that might hurt her/her self esteem. She is a truly good person, I just don’t mesh with her and my boyfriend is extremely uncomfortable with the jokes she has made.
Any tips for how to end the friendship?
TLDR; I made a friend that I don’t vibe with. How do I end the friendship kindly?
2 comments
The worse part is that is incredibly difficult to end a friendship like that without hurting her. If u don’t respond, she’ll end up noticing and figuring out, and probably wanting to know why. If you tell her directly, she’ll get hurt but I think if you manage to build a “secure space” (as I call it, take her for a coffee, somewhere neutral) she might understand why. We all have problems, and we don’t need to load another burden to our shoulders. I hope everything gets figured out soon
Edit: grammar
Are you deadset on ending that friendship or would you be willing to compromise more as a distant friendship that reaches out every once in a blue moon? Either way if you’re looking to avoid confrontation then I think…
>I decided to put some distance on the friendship and stopped responding as much, stopped making plans, and tried to just let things slowly die.
… Is the correct (unfortunate) course of action.
Hey, she moved. It’s not unheard of to include emotional distance into the physical distance. Continue the path and time will kill it. If a considerable amount of time has gone by and she’s still blowing you up then you may need to be more upfront. But let’s not cross that bridge unless we need to