Ending Friendships

Fuck something of theirs.

I did some ass-backwards, petty bullshit to people who fully trusted me and did a lot for me and then hid away when they tried to show me the error of my ways and/or discuss it like adults! I am a great person!*

* I wasn't really in the best frame of mind at the point when all this went down and in hindsight I wish I had grown the fuck up and dealt with it like an adult rather than a dumb child, but I kinda worry that it's too late to make amends.

I recently ended a friendship that lasted for about 14 years.

You can always find new friends

You're not discussing MOVIES.

You could just ignore them? like we do Martin. :-)

Amongst my group of friends we recently had to have an intervention with a friend who was mixing his depression meds with alcohol. After two stints in rehab, we explained that not one of us would sit by while he destroyed his body and his mind (he was starting to achieve a level of racist paranoia only achieved by the Bush administration). He told us we betrayed him and our friendship and wanted nothing to do with us.

We have cut off all contact with him. His wife moved out and left town. Now he's alone in an isolated community with a nice collection of rifles. Best case, he gets the help he needs. Worst case, we all get the same phone call.

It's the hardest fucking thing I've ever had to do. Until recently he was a great guy, a hard worker and about the kindest person I've ever met.

I ended a friendship that lasted 27 years. He was the best man at my wedding. We practically grew up together. I didn't exactly end it, I guess, but actions by him caused me not to talk to him anymore. I can't really get into detail about it as it got litigious and I'd like to keep it from getting litigious again. Just remember the scene in LAST CRUSADE and the knight saying over and over again, "He chose... poorly."

What's really sad to me is that he took some of our mutual friends with him. But I'm closer to the ones that stuck with me more than ever.

My friends and I are kind of having the same problem with a friend of ours who's a complete and total alcoholic. He already has a DWI, wont listen to anyone of us and believes that he's not an alcoholic... It's getting bad and we are all worried to be getting that same phone call as well.

I'm not one who easily is disturbed but the ambiguity "something" opens up in that statement just about gives me the willies.

I just hope they don't own animals..

Which could imply fucking lawn furniture...

Recent college graduate here, so a lot of my friendships are coming to an end simply because we're all heading off in different directions. There was one particular friend I'm pretty sure I lost (and this is extremely stupid) because of phone tag.

He'd call me, but I'd be at work, I'd tell myself to call him later, I'd forget to, time would pass, he'd call again, I would be busy, etc., etc., etc....a pretty shitty thing for me to do, but then again he was one of those friends who's better to talk to in person than over the phone, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, he left me this very angry voice mail, and then it became "well, now I HAVE to avoid his phone calls for a while", and then he'd pull the old "I'll use my friends phone and call you and go AH HA when you pick up", and it was just a situation where, if I did talk to him, it would be about why I wasn't talking to him, he was already angry at me, so I just let it...hang like that...

I talked to him, tried to clear it all up, but he hasn't called me in a while, and I've wanted to call him, but I'm pretty sure he'll just have this attitude when I do call him, and I don't want that. But at the same time, he was extremely helpful to me, he drove me around when I didn't have a car, he was the producer on my movie, and I don't know, its just one of those situations where I don't know what happened, but I just want the two of us to be friends again.

It took us almost six months of discussion to go ahead and have the intervention. We finally went ahead with it because we realized that if we don't say something he's going to die. Someone made the very disturbing point that if this ends the friendship and he hits rock bottom (and doesn't bounce) at least all he'll do is kill himself rather than kill someone else in a DUI.

Send them a fax.

I'd send him THIS very post in an email and see what he says. It's a pretty nice and honest olive branch, in my opinion.

I ended a friendship with a school friend who said some nasty things about my (then) gf. Another one of my friends doesn't speak to him ether because he said some pretty nasty things to her. I've kind of drifted apart from a lot of my old school friends because even though they acknowledge what a twat he is they are still mates with him.

However, in the last three years I have met some of the coolest people I know through my wife and have made some solid friendships out of it.

I think as you get older you realize a lot of the people you thought were friends were actually just dicks.

Well when it comes to drugs, alcohol and addiction, you might have to put up with a lot, but I don't recommend ending it completely. Just like any relationship, breaks are good for you to clear your head when emotions get a little crazy. Ignoring the person completely though may make things worse on their end and I don't think you would want to deal with certain consequences because you might blame yourself for something that could of been avoided.

Interventions are pretty good. If you're having issues alone dealing with someone, bring a couple of other people into the foil.

A little joke I say to people in relationships, "Every man should have the power pf EX-ray vision. Nah I don't think you got me. I can't see people naked, but I can see the qualities of an ex in a new girl and I know to avoid." (yeah it works when its said not read)

I had one friendship end after 10 years. We got in a fight over some stupid nonsense, but the underlying issue was that we were college friends and had different priorities in life and things just built up. We lived on opposite sides of the country so we hardly saw each other anyway and didn't talk often due to time zone issues. We had some lengthy emails back and forth and realized that we were leading separate lives. That was it. It's weird this thread found me as we briefly chatted via IM last week.

Another friendship that ended after 10+ years was because he got married to a giant cunt who made him cut everyone he cared about out of his life. It's sad. My friends and I actually start stories with "Back when we were friends with F...". And its made even worse because I see him regularly at various events we both attend. He won't even look me in the eye, let alone say hello. It's so bizarre.

I've definitely lost touch with other people over the years, but I've never had to cut someone out of my life that used to be a huge part of it.

Eh, you have to accept the inevitability of the loss of friends. It's impossible to stay close to everyone (simply from a logistical standpoint). Your whole life will be choosing the friends that are important enough to make time for or that your friendship can be maintained over sporadic contact.

I don't know why you'd worry at all about stopping being friends with someone if they turned into an asshole you didn't like anymore though.

I've been on the other side of this situation and had to come to terms with the fact that when you aren't situated in someone's life (via school or work) the relationship will change. It doesn't mean that the person doesn't like you, but life happens. So I have friends that I know I would never hear from again if I didn't reach out to them, but when we talk everything is cool.

And oddly, I'm that person to another college friend. When he calls me I'm super psyched to catch up and we talk for hours. But on a day-to-day level, I hardly ever think about him. That's just how life happens.

I've never told any friend of mine that I wish to "end" that friendship. There have been drifting aparts and falling outs, but never showdown talks.

Kind of agree with Bobby.

I ended a childhood friendship a few years back by just ceasing to talk to the person. Ignoring calls, texts etc. There was no big falling out, just a case of the two of us growing apart, me moving away for university work etc. and each meeting being more and more fraught with frustration. Its too much to go into and, frankly, that person isn't worth it, but it came to a head when that person refused to listen to some friendly, loving advice I was trying to give them because of a judgment (incorrect) that I was judging them based on my situation.

It dawned on me that "history" of friendship is not a good enough reason to pursue ongoing friendship - that pouring more energy into a relationship that had already swallowed so much wasted energy was futile.

Its been 4 1/2 years since we last talked and I never once regretted the decision. Sometimes, when you're done, you're done.

Recently, the former friend in question got back in touch as if nothing had ever happened claiming it would be easier for us to be civil when, in reality, we have absolutely no contact, real world or otherwise. I continued to ignore. Don't even think about them at all.

Just my own little recollection. But, my two cents is that its best to leave pettiness and animosity aside. There's always more people than you might think that are willing to call you an asshole. Don't give them the ammunition. Disengage knowing that you did so for the right reasons and no-one can ever question that.

Similar to Bobby - most of the friends I've made over the years that I no longer hear from/speak to usually drift out of my life over time, so I'm down to the people I'm extremely tight with.

I'm currently Switzerland in a pretty big brouhaha between two of my best friends. They happen to live right next door to each other, and both have very valid arguments. Coming right out and choosing one over the other would absolutely kill a friendship, so I immediately took the initiative and spoke to both separately. saved a lot of hurt feelings later on.

I've been running into problems with just about all of my friends lately.

I have a large group of friends that I've hung out with my whole life that are currently turning into boring adults. They're all becoming republicans, working forty hour a week jobs, and getting a smaller worldview by the day. I'm in my last semester of college and I'm trying to stay as far away from that world as possible. It's made for some conflict at times, because I don't want to sever ties as I feel that they are all good people, just that we happen to be drifting into different lives. They still get pissed if I don't hang out with them every weekend. It's annoying.

Another friend of mine was/is my best friend since freshman year of high school. But she's a girl, and I'm a boy and complications have arose that have made that situation pretty difficult to manage.

I'm hoping to salvage and keep all of these relationships if possible, but life takes everyone in different directions and down different paths. I'm hoping to avoid any nasty endings - I don't want tensions to build up for years and then explode one day which is what it sounds like happened to quite a few people on here.

That reminds me of something that happened to me recently, Ben. I became good friends with a girl a few years older than me, during my first year of 'A' Levels. Amongst other things, we bonded over our mutual predilection for time alone, oddly enough. Everything was grand, until the summer after my first year of uni. She felt I didn't see her enough - I was very busy with a summer job, most of the time - and chewed me out for this.

Things came to a head the following summer when I couldn't make it back home to her wedding. University wouldn't finish until after and I just couldn't swing it with the huge workload I had... and at such short notice. I wasn't happy about it, but there was nothing I could do.

Until a few weeks ago, I hadn't spoken to or seen her since. Then, boom, I happen to pass the same corner as her while on lunch one day. We had a great little chat and it pretty quickly felt like it used to. When I mentioned how much I hated the way we drifted apart, she basically brushed off the whole thing. I found this amazing, considering the less than amicable terms of our last talk and the length of the intervening silence.

I made no attempt to repair the divide. I was hurt and felt she'd made it clear that she didn't want to know anyway. Plus, I get when someone just needs let be. The unexpected run-in was great, but I wish it hadn't taken so long. I missed her, and could really have done with her friendship at a lot of times during the interim.

I had a similar experience with a good friend that started out as a love interest. The entire time we were seeing each other, people repeatedly warned me that she seemed "off" and mean-spirited. But, you know, you're young and in love, so you decide to ignore these things.

After about a year and a half and meeting our respective families, she started telling me that the end of school was making her depressed to a suicidal degree. I had been working with my own issues of my brother's loss and had come to know that the Student Health Services office offered excellent counseling services. So, I asked her to demonstrate that what she told me about caring for and loving me was true by getting some help to take care of herself.

She refused to go and started drinking heavily. Then she started to pull Gaslight-type shit where she'd claim that I had been imagining things to think she had a deep level of affection or love for me. She also started telling me that she didn't trust me and stopped spending the night at my place. Then she started sleeping around. This sort of hit my breaking point, so I ended the romantic relationship. However, I was still a guy in his early twenties and in love, so I kept the friendship viable. Huge mistake.

During our first post-college jobs, she'd call me and share news about her day and her state of mind, confide in me, tell me that I was the only person who "really [understood her]" and the like. I still would suggest that she should get some help. Then, after Election Day 2008, we found ourselves in close geographical proximity again, which is when the toxic aspect of our "friendship" resumed.

She went through boyfriends about every two weeks--these people had a lower threshold for her shit, I assume--and would call me up or come over crying and telling me I was the only person she ever felt anything like love for. Then, about a month into this, I made the mistake of trying ot help her back on her feet by offering her a job.

Her response was to accuse me of telling all of our mutual friends about how she had treated me and thus poisoning the well with them--I hadn't and had actually defended her to them when they actually did sort of the reverse thing--and then recounted all the ways she had hurt me and started laughing like it was some sort of sick joke to her. That's when I broke off the friendship with the woman i used to call "my dearest friend" and my closest confidante. It was a hard thing to do. I get this stupid smile going whenever I think even about the bad times with her, but I think I made the right decision. This was six months ago.

Treasure the good memories and be secure in the knowledge that while some doors close others will eventually open. Cliche but utterly true.

The older I'm getting, the easier I'm finding it to end friendships. I've been screwed over and back-stabbed by people that I considered to be friends more times than I can count on all of my fingers. I used to give people the benefit of the doubt, make excuses for their behavior, and even blamed myself because I couldn't fathom why they were acting the way they were. Was it something I had said? Was I being too tough on them and expecting the impossible from their end? I eventually realized it wasn't me that was the problem, but them. It wasn't until after I graduated from college that I had the courage to end these hurtful and wasteful ties. There was just no point in continuing the toxic effects of what ultimately made me feel so disheartened, sad, and mentally abused. Now, as soon as someone shows an inkling of jealousy or animosity, I just cut them off from the get-go. No more chances. No more excuses. It's really easier that way, because eventually I'll just get to the same point anyway. Mine as well move on and learn from the situation immediately.

The last swollen friendship that really tested my emotional being was with a woman who I had met at my previous workplace more than 5 years ago. We became REALLY close, and with her being around 10 years older than me, I valued her life experiences and advice. I told her things about my personal life that I rarely tell anyone, even people in my own family. I trusted her. I valued her friendship dearly. She left the workplace we were at at around the 2-year mark of knowing each other, and she became the manager of another employer. She told me to come on board with her, and promised me wonderful hours and a practical, welcoming work environment. I told myself that me coming with her and being under her authority could potentially ruin our friendship forever, but I came on board anyway. Her being my boss wasn't the issue. It's the way she treated me when I came along for the ride that really shocked and disappointed me. It's as if I saw an entirely new side of her that was only hinted at before. The Bitch From Hell was officially unleashed, and she made my tenure at that particular job easily one of the worst periods of my life. The way she talked down to me, talked behind my back about me with the other employees, lied to me about the hours I was working and the on-call duties I would have to bother with...I couldn't for the life of me understand what the fuck I did to deserve such immature, hateful actions. She was very clingy. It's as if she didn't want me to be friends with anyone else. If I even went to lunch with another co-worker without her, she'd make a scene in front of the entire workplace and try to make me feel guilty for not going with her instead. I noticed this kind of jealous behavior many times before, but I ignored it and shrugged it off as me reading too much into stuff. I realized, when it was far too late, that she sabotaged a particular friendship of mine by telling repeated lies to this other friend. I lost a good friend because of her jealous, unstable actions.

This is a woman who had asked me at one point to be the best man at her wedding. That's how close we were, or thought we were. I left after 9 months, the shortest amount of time I've ever spent at one job. Not only did I leave the job, but I left any connection to her life forever. I happened to run into her at a pharmacist convention 6 months later, but I walked straight past her, never looking back. No regrets. Not one.

I had a huge falling out with someone who is now one of my best friends. We patched it up years later & are good friends again, but didn't speak for a long time in between.

We met freshman year in HS, and were pretty tight through HS & college (despite going to different schools). He had a nasty habit of better dealing you, though. He was enormously popular, and if he got a better offer at any time, he'd abandon whatever plans he made with you. His motto was never to make plans in advance, because that gave God a chance to file a Fuck Up form & send it thru the Heavenly Bureacracy to your guardian angel & mess up your carefully laid plans. It was a frequent occurrence for him to make plans to go out and do something w/ you at 7 PM, and call you back at 7:30 and tell you he suddenly couldn't make it because something came up. He once told a couple of us he was down to hang, and we left my house, stopped & bought him beer as he had requested, and by the time we got to his house about 45 minutes after the initial phone call, he had bailed. His mother had no idea where he'd gone, or that he'd initially made plans w/ us. Anyway, that was kind of a douche move, and we ended up having a nasty argument over it. We stopped speaking for something like 5 years, after 10 years of friendship.

What got us back together was a call from him out of the blue one night. he told me had gotten engaged, and he & his fiancee were making out the guest list. And he realized how short his was, because a lot of his old frineds had told him to go to hell in a manner similar to how I did. Herealized he had in fact been a dick, apologized, and expressed interest in mending fences. We've been fast friends (again) ever since.

One of my best friends from high school and throughout my twenties is quite the social butterfly type, and he always had tons of friends, of which I was one. We were roommates twice, in both '02 and '06. The latter time we had a massive loft, and he decided to throw a rave on my move-in day. He'd moved in a month earlier and was already on the verge of eviction after throwing a noisy, messy party in there weeks earlier. I'd agreed to move in as long as he kept his illegal parties at warehouses and not in the loft. So move-in day comes around, he loses his venue, and while I'm hauling boxes and furniture inside, wondering why the hell he isn't helping me and I can't reach him, he shows up with giant speakers, amps, and lighting rigs. I got angry. We'd been friends for nine years. I swallowed my anger, moved in, and hoped for the best. I'd already left my previous residence, so I was stuck. I was left apologizing to the landlord and neighbors while he was locked in his room counting the money.

This was the first of a long string of actions that essentially showcased his spoiled selfish nature. He tried to apologize for the rave by buying me a sandwich. (He didn't apologize verbally, just said, "this is to make up for the party" and handed me the sandwich.) I never looked at him the same way again. More parties were thrown. I stopped speaking to him. When time to move out came, I helped him move four truckloads with the understanding that we'd move my possessions in our smallish rented truck once his were done. We finished his stuff, and he told me he was too tired to move mine, that he had to work early, and that I'd have to find another truck on my own. I should've seen that one coming.

After months of silence, we started speaking again. More accurately, I started speaking with him. It was tough to ignore with so many mutual friends, especially with me being the visibly angry one. Eventually I just gave in decided to be civil for the sake of social politeness, and after time, we actually became buddies again. I just never trusted him to be anything more than a nasty shit.

I didn't mention that he's a womanizer. Yeah.

One night in 2008 he and I went to a friend's birthday party at a bar. I was dancing with this girl Michelle, who'd I'd had a chance with years before, but I'd totally blown it. I saw him eying her. I asked him to pick any girl in the bar but her. I had already set up a date with her the following Wednesday. I was gonna get it right this time. He agreed. I left, needing rest for the work the following day.

The next day, on myspace, I saw a bunch of post-coitus cutesy messages between their profiles.

I didn't care about Michelle so much as the stunning nonchalant display of disrespect for me. It was the final straw.

His massive network of friends overlapped with mine. I was called out for being petty, angry, childish, and holding a grudge.

I don't hold a grudge, and I'm not angry. Like the bit I quoted above, that would do me no good. But I am smart enough to realize friends don't treat one another with disregard, disrespect, or outright contempt. I lost of bunch of acquaintances over it. I don't mind.

What's the old line? Forgive but don't forget.

I've had my share of friendships end unpleasantly, usually ostensibly over some petty issues that no doubt masked deeper issues they had.

One ex-friend would get angry at me for not wanting to go out and party hard and go carousing like we used to when we were still 18 or 19. I tried to tell him that times had changed and I couldn't drop everything to party down like we used to and he began to act chilly towards me.

Another friendship that turned poisonous was with a guy who I'd been friends with since early high school. Then he got engaged well before any of our other friends were in serious, engagement-worthy relationships and he just went off his rocker and became the world's biggest jerk ever. Apparently he decided that his whole identity was to consist of being "the guy who had his shit together and got into a serious relationship well before you aimless, very-early-twentysomething losers ::smug look::". That was one -ship gone bad that I broke off and frankly his company wasn't missed. He eventually alienated almost all of our other mutal friends too.

Then there were other friendships gone horribly, painfully wrong. I can't go into them, even now because it's just a little too harrowing. Discovering that people you thought you knew were capable of things you didn't think they had in them, to be incredibly petty or mean-spirited or cruel or selfish...it's not a good feeling, for sure.

I ended a ton of friendships between junior and senior year of high school, and it was for the best. I knew I was heading in a totally different direction, and did everything I could to get away from negative influences. Years later I had two good friends left, and one disappeared (for a woman) and we have been chatting after almost eight years and hope to start hanging out from time to time again.

Now I'm about to hit 30, and have one friend that I barely see outside of work. He's married with two kids, and has zero disposable income in order to go out, see a movie, grab a beer, go on a double date with our girls, anything. Plus, he's just become kind of boring. He doesn't even want to go out for my birthday because he doesn't want to leave his house. So, if you feel the need to ditch friends do it, but make sure you make new friends. Having nobody to go hang out with and drink beer or see basketball games with is miserable.

I"m in the process of dis-connecting from a guy I've been friends with for close to 10 years.

We both work in the Tech industry, which by it's nature means we change jobs every 2-3 years.

He has a clear pattern of taking a sales job, telling me that's it he best thing ever and I should quit whatever I'm doing and join him,then six months later saying its a shit job, the managers are idiots etc.

In 2006 he gets a job with a Mortgage Finance company. Yeah, those people. Makes a shit ton of money for 2 years then gets laid off.

Now he jumps from crap job to crappier job, lower salary each time. He tells me I'm an idiot to pay off my debts, I should just walk away. He lives in a $800K home he can't pay the mortage on, but won't walk, get a job to pay the mortgage but will complain to me about how unfair the US is to white people.

Yeah. He now goes there. This guy has traveled to almost every country on earth, has a lovely wife (Asian) and he's now a racist, "This country is going to hell buy Gold!" Asshole.

He's also asking me to be a reference for him when he applies to new positions. To do this I'd have lie, a lot.

I forward job ads that look promising but otherwise don't reach out to him anymore

I've only stayed in touch with a few high school friends and even fewer college, but I still have to this day 15+ year friendships with people that I met at my first job. I honestly would do anything for these folks and they would for me. And these folks are mature enough that even though many are married and have children, and I'm a happily single, party girl, we can maintain our relationship without any drama. I have amazing friends and feel very blessed in that respect.

Weirdly, I just got a phone call from a girl who was my best friend back in high school. We haven't talked in over twenty years after a falling out due to me being a complete douchebag and her dating an idiot.

The first words out of her mouth after she realized it was actually me were "I'm sorry I ever hurt you. I miss you and still think of you as my best friend." After an hour chat (and a half hour on the phone with my wife) we're getting together in a few weeks up in Edmonton.

Hella weird thing. Sometimes friendships come back around.

[QUOTE=SAIRUS;2818316]Well when it comes to drugs, alcohol and addiction, you might have to put up with a lot, but I don't recommend ending it completely. Just like any relationship, breaks are good for you to clear your head when emotions get a little crazy. Ignoring the person completely though may make things worse on their end and I don't think you would want to deal with certain consequences because you might blame yourself for something that could of been avoided.
[QUOTE]

I have to respectfully disagree completely. There are times where you need to cut people off completely for your sake and theirs. By saying, "Oh don't cut them off, or you'll feel guilty", you are giving that person permission to continue to treat you like shit. You teach people how to treat you, and by sticking around, you are teaching them that this behavior will be tolerated by you forever and that they don't need to change. If they can treat you like shit and still keep you, they're gonna do it. Sometimes you have to stop worrying about their end and focus on your end, because worrying 24/7 about the well-being of another person isn't a friendship. It's emotional terrorism.

I had one like this in my life. I'd known this kid since grade school. He was one of my closest pals, and part of the group that I regularly hung with. As we got older, his home life became turbulent and he started to change. His dad was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murder when he was in the sixth grade, and his mom struggled to raise him with help from her family. Believe me, she TRIED everything to keep him from going into a destructive cycle, to no avail. And once we all got into high school and word got around about his dad, he was alienated. To put this into perspective, you have to realize that I didn't go to a normal high school. This was a small school for academically gifted kids, and my senior class had 38 people in it, so if you were alienated, you were ALIENATED. The kids were pretty merciless, and parents weren't too big on having a murderer's kid hanging around their kids, and he slowly transformed from this happy little boy to a kid that could have pulled a Columbine if he'd been pushed. He got into drinking, and my friends and I got really scared. We went to his mom right away when we found out, but she couldn't get through to him. I tried to maintain contact with him because I liked him, I was worried about him, and I felt sorry for him, but he wallowed in his misery, and loved bringing other people down with him. If anyone else was happy, LOOK OUT. He'd go out of his way to manipulate people, make everyone miserable, and then use his addiction and his home life as an excuse. If we tried to talk to him about his behavior, he'd twist it around on us. If I threatened to cut him off, he'd manipulate my emotions, talking about how he would kill himself so that everyone would feel guilty for abandoning him.

Finally, I just said enough. We went to his house after graduation from high school and told him that we were cutting him off. He pulled his usual guilt trip on us, but we just stood up and walked out the door. I haven't spoken to him since. I ran into his mom a few weeks ago and she said that he doesn't even talk to her anymore. He's somewhere in Florida, last she heard.

It was absolutely the most difficult thing that I have ever had to do, but I will never second-guess the fact that I did the right thing.

^yes!

I can't tell you how many people I've lost as friends, some really cool, because they were into drugs and alcohol. For some reason these people seem to be attracted to me, or else there are so many of them where I live that it's statistically impossible to avoid them.

You can advise people to change, but they have to do it. You can't force them.

And there is a basic survival aspect to this. You run the risk of being pulled under, or even hurt

Just tell them that. If they want the same, pure honesty will work. Either way, you'll know you tried.

The friend I most remember losing was my first. He was the first person I met on my first day of school. He was called "Skipper" then, although his name would change twice more over the years. We became close friends and remained that way until he, being a year older, went to Jr High School. At that point, his personality changed and we drifted apart until the next year when I started at the same school and we were friends again. The same cycle occurred with High School, then College.

I didn't realize at the time that he was essentially the kind of person whose personality is totally dictated by peer pressure. When I and my group of friends were his peers, he was a likable, goofy, harmless guy. But after he left college and hooked up with coworkers that were drug-abusing, womanizing losers, well, let's just say that while I may have been the first to cut him off, I wasn't the last.

It's a difficult thing to end a relationship that you've invested a lot of time in, and gotten a lot of good times out of (in this case, I'd known him for around 80% of my life). But at some point I realized that I was only speaking to or seeing him out of a sense of obligation, and that nearly every experience was negative. It was hard to accept that someone I know was a good person had turned into a legitimately bad one, but once you realize that you'd be happier without them around, it gets a lot easier.

With the friendships I've ended, I've kind of taken the same approach, but for different reasons, depending on the situation. Basically, it amounts to just letting the friendship drop and not bothering with it anymore. I'm not sure if that's cowardly, but if the friendship a) isn't worth saving, or b) just isn't working for both parties, I don't see the point in dragging it out with that person.

Here are two different examples, but both with the same outcome. My one friend, Sandi, who I'd been buddies with since I was 10; I was even maid of honor at her second wedding. Fast forward 30 years (to 2003), and she's on her fourth marriage, and has gotten religion in a BIG way. I have no issues with friends who are super religious - in fact, my best friend of 30 years, Bobby, and his wife are very religious, very active in their church. But they also recognize that forcing it on people doesn't work, so they value our friendship for things other than common religious beliefs.

Not so with Sandi - she started getting kind of forced with the born-again religious beliefs, until she finally went too far and said something highly offensive in an email about my brother about two weeks before he died. That was it - end of friendship. I deleted the email without replying, and never spoke to her again. No confrontation, but we're no longer friends.

The second example is my friend Kirsten, who was a work friend. With Kirsten, I kinda-sorta consider us friends in an emotional sense, but not really, you know? She didn't do anything wrong, neither did I. It's just that we have nothing in common anymore. When we started off as friends, we were both single and going out a lot with our work group, going on vacations together, etc. But when one friend follows the normal path of getting married and starting a family, sometimes the single friends with no kids fit in, sometimes they don't. In this case, I don't fit in with her life anymore. It's neither of our faults - after their first baby, they moved out to the 'burbs so they could get a bigger house, and the kids kept coming, totalling four for them now. We went from seeing each other all the time, to maybe, maybe not even seeing each other, but at least talking on the phone for about 10 minutes once a year. Ten minutes a year, if we can, because generally she has a crying baby on her lap and has to go before we can even begin to catch up. I'll always consider her a friend, we never left off on bad terms or anything. But I haven't seen her in about four years, and I just don't see the point in trying to at this point. We have nothing in common anymore - they're never free to get together, we have nothing to talk about, and they live pretty far away now.

But again, I use my friend Bobby as an example - he's married, he started a family. But we're still close, and I see them quite often. In fact, in between typing out this post, I've been sitting here texting with his wife about my heading out for a visit with them. So I don't know - in some cases the "marrieds and singles" friendships manage to survive, and in other cases, they drift apart.

I agree.

I'm an only child with a single parent and very few links to my family. As such I've always tried to foster as strong a friendship as I could with people. Growing up my friends were pretty much my family and I'd still do anything for any of my closest friends. I'm stupidly loyal, pretty much to a fault actually.

But my best friend from school, a guy who I kept in contact with and regularly saw even after school and even after he moved to another city, I had to finally give up on. My friend was a genius with physics, a real savant with the sciences, but he a reputation as a psycho in school and point blank refused to play the education game. Me I was all about getting a good schoolin' and a decent job and despite this we stuck together with me the dim but hard workin' go getter and him the bohemian genius.

Of course something like that was never going to last but we tried to make it work. However it got to the point where he had completely shut himself off from the world. He didn't talk to real people, he just existed online. It got so bad that when he was 19 he had a 15/16 year canadian girlfriend he'd never actually met or even really seen. Of course this became repellant and his increasing levels of resentment and superiority to 'normal' people got to the point where he was almost toxic to be around.

The final straw came when he faked a medical test and convinced the doctor he suffered aspergers by copying certain physical tics and traits I'd had when I was younger (before I'd learnt to control them). When he told me this we literally got into a physical fight and I vowed to never speak to him again and I just cut my ties with him, just like that, someone who'd been as close as a brother to me.

It still rankles me to this day that I was too timid to try and step in earlier to try and push him into higher education or into a job.

All the best with her, Ryan! I'm glad to hear it.

I have a similar thing going on right now with a good mate. He desperately needs to pull himself together academically, and I don't trust him to do the needful. My fears for him have threatened to come out before, but I always seem to end up mollycoddling him or skirting the issue.

I think it gets a helluva lot easier to end friendships as you get older for a number of reasons. For many it's because your friendships are simply not as important to you when you find yourself with a partner you love and someone who feeds you emotionally in the way that a large group of friends may have done when you were younger. For seconds, as a bit of age and wisdom kicks in and you get a better sense of who you are, I think you find yourself simply not putting up with the bullshit from people that you may have in the past and that cuts a lot of people out of your social circle.

I started off with a lot of social circles and a fair group of people that you could call 'close friends' - now I reckon I'd be lucky to count 4 or 5 guys in that category, but they're the kind of people I'd lay down in traffic for, always have a great time with when I see them and hope to hang onto now until I'm old.

I much prefer that these days to a small army of people in a bunch of different social circles like I used to have. I think you just get older and priorities change really.

I'm glad you understood what I was trying to say, I was worried that might sound a little egotistical or something.

I can only recall, off the top of my head, one close or good friendship I deliberately ended, thought it was very mutual. A friend of mine tried to drop a bomb on a relationship I was in at the time, for no other reason except to drive a wedge between my SO and me. That shit does not fly, and I haven't talked to him since. But it was pretty clear he, for reasons too much to go into here, had decided to essentially demolish the friendships with me and my then-SO.

I've had other friendships basically fade away - some were work-based, some from personal life. Most of those faded due to lack of time or energy invested...sometimes from me, sometimes from the other person. Not usually intentionally, just life and other things getting in the way. Getting onto Facebook has revived a few of those, though.