So, as I’m in the process of finishing up my next book, there is a good amount of content on what I used to think a friend was vs. how I define friendship now. As I was walking down memory lane of some, “What the hell was that?!” relational dynamics, I thought about how a few folks have told me, over the past year or so, that some of the friendships they thought they would be old and gray with are either nonexistent or not anywhere close to what it used to be.
Geeze. Ain’t it wild how some of the folks who you thought would be in your world for the rest of your life end up not even functioning in the same universe as you? And when you stop and look back on it, although there were probably a few things that you kept overlooking for the sake of keeping them around, there is probably one main thing that had you be like, “You know what? Enough is enough at this point.”
Why Do Friendships End?
Today, 12 women are going to share what their own final straw is. My motive for even bringing this up is because life is all about choices (did you know that we typically make between33,000-35,000 decisions every single day?!), and one of the most potentially life-altering ones that you will ever make is who you choose to share your life with and influence your world by.
That said, you’ve got someone very close to you who you’re unsure about; maybe one (or more) of these experiences will provide you with the clarity that you seek — because time is precious…with relationships, we must use it very wisely.
*Middle names are always used in this type of content so that people can speak freely.*
12 Women Reflect On Why Their Friendships Ended
1. Reneé. 31. Friendship Ended After 10 Years.
Giphy“You ever had a friend who is just a lot of work? They’re fun, they’re funny and you have a good time with them. But you’re always their emergency contact — and it has nothing to do with their physical health. I just got tired of her always being in a crisis and never wanting advice about how to get out of her BS.
"She thinks that being a real friend means that you cosign on whatever she does and then that you bail her out whenever she does it. When you’re in college, it’s funny. Get past that age, and it’s draining.”
2. Angeleeya. 36. Friendship Ended After 20 Years.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the quote, ‘no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence or denies your right to grow’ by Alice Walker. My friend hates accountability, so she demands my silence. She’s always making poor decisions, which keeps me in a headspace that I don’t like to be in, which is denying my right to grow. I look back and think about how much time I wasted thinking that I was helping her when it was more like I was enabling her life.
"Now that she’s gone, I have more time to pour into me and my own needs. I miss her but not enough to give up what I got because I let her go — myself.”
3. Waverly. 28. Friendship Ended After Three Years.
Giphy“When I was single, my friend and I were fine. I can’t think of one fight that we ever had. When I got with my [now] husband, it was a little awkward; I thought we just needed to adjust things a bit. When that girl paid for her bridesmaid dress at the last minute, was a no-show at the rehearsal dinner, and came late to the wedding, and then was passive-aggressive the entire day — she didn’t wish me well, and I knew it. I waited until a few months to see if things would get better, but she barely called and had an attitude when she did.
"My husband said, ‘We can’t have people around who aren’t happy for us’ and I agreed. I tried to talk to her about it, and she kept saying we could talk later. Later turned into never. My number has changed, and I am fine with that.”
4. Mycah. 40. Friendship Ended After 9 Years.
“Have you ever had a friendwho refuses to apologize but they want you to do it all of the time? They can do big s-it, and you should overlook it, but if you accidentally hang up on them while they’re in mid-sentence, they’re going to hold a grudge until you acknowledge it? That’s what my former best friend was like. Your best friend shouldn’t be so emotionally high-maintenance that you feel like you have to walk on eggshells just to keep the peace.
"Pretty much all of my other friendships are way easier and, at 40, if it’s going to be more difficult than it needs to be, I don’t want it — especially when it comes to dealing with other people.”
5. Chell. 26. Friendship Ended After Five Years.
Giphy“Don’t date a friend unless you both are on the same page about it. I lost my best guy friend because I developed feelings for him, and he was physically attracted to me. We decided to see if we could date, but I was emotionally ‘ahead’ of him. So when things turned sexual, I started to want something more, and he just wanted us to remain friends who had sex.
"I began to resent him, and that made him pull back. About six months in, our friendship became a weight. We’re still cordial — even a step up from that. We’ll never be what we were. It wasn’t worth it.”
6. Brayleigh. 43. Friendship Ended After 10 Years.
“I once had a very close girlfriend who just doesn’t take initiative. As long as I’m doing the calling, the planning of hanging out or taking girlfriend trips, she’s all about it — but if I am quiet and still, she can easily go weeks without us speaking. I know some people say that they can do friendship that way, but it annoys me; not just to do most of the work but that you think we should be each other’s closest reliable source and you’ll only connect with me if I put in the effort to connect with you.
"When I brought it up to her, what ‘took it there’ was her telling me that I was ‘a lot’ and ‘insecure.’ I think another thing that your closest friend should be is a place where you can be your most vulnerable. If I have to chase you down and get attacked when I share my feelings or something that you don’t want to hear about yourself, why are we even friends? She couldn’t answer that question. That was my sign.”
7. Isha. 23. Friendship Ended After Four Years.
Giphy“My closest guy friend started dating my closest girlfriend. Neither one of them told me about it until my guy friend found out that my girlfriend cheated on him — then, all of a sudden, he wanted me to do something about it. Long story short, he caught feelings, and she didn’t, and he tried to pull some ‘birds of a feather’ psycho-babble on me and act like her decisions reflect on my character. So, he said that he didn’t trust her or really even me anymore, and that put tension on the entire dynamic.
"He didn’t take accountability for hiding it from me either. We found ourselves not having much to talk about other than her, and that got on my nerves. We’re friends. We’re not best friends anymore, though. I side-eye her a bit for not telling me, too. She’s not off of the hook either.”
8. Daphne. 31. Friendship Ended After Seven Years.
“Back when I told Shellie that I thought she was petty for not liking her friends to be friends, she just said, ‘Keep living.’ I hate that she was right because the reason why my BFF and I are no longer is because she started to become like a clone, [a] parasite, something in my other relationships. Over the last couple of years of our friendship is when my career started to soar, and the folks who I was meeting, she would insert herself into my connections and try and get as much out of them as she could.
"Not only was it selfish and shady but it had those people looking at me crazy, too. When I confronted her about it, she took it as me being jealous and threatened. I thought it was gaslighting, and we had a big fallout over it. Keeping worlds separate isn’t a bad thing. The world is big enough that people don’t have to constantly be on your coattail to get what they want in life.”
Shellie here: The article that she’s referring to is “Why I Prefer My Friends To NOT Be Friends With Each Other.”
9. Evelyn. 30. Friendship Ended After 11 Years.
Giphy“My former friend was a liar. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s like she had four or five different lives going on. She would play holier-than-thou with me and literally be in these streets with other folks. It got to the point that I couldn’t trust her because the other sides of her were so different than who she portrayed herself to be with me. I think what hurt me more than anything was her thinking that I couldn’t handle us having different values. I still think she believes that we’re not friends anymore because of that when really it’s just because she’s not a genuine person.”
10. Deelah. 29. Friendship Ended After Seven Years.
“Shellie used to tell me that if you’ve got to keep tabs on your relationships, that’s your first sign that reciprocity is lacking. I love my [former] friend and there are times when I really do miss her. I just know that if I were to ever reach out to try and fix us, nothing is going to change. I’m going to do most of the calling unless she needs something, she’s always going to find an excuse for why she dropped the ball on my birthday, and I will eventually get sick of trying to get her to listen to my problems without her making them about herself. Even when I told her that I didn’t think we could stay close friends, she played the victim role. Friendships shouldn’t be harder than a relationship. Damn.”
11. Josephine. 33. Friendship Ended After 11 Years.
Giphy“My former BFF was never that great of a communicator. When you’re friends with someone, you try and take the good with the bad. Here’s what we’re not gonna do, though: You’re not gonna be on some ‘hey girl’ when you’re in my face and then taking shots at me on social media and acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about whenever I ask you about it. That’s how she handled all of our issues — not handling them and then putting our business out on front street.
"It started to feel like I couldn’t trust her, then it started to feel like she was out to get me and ruin how people see me but play innocent the whole time. I asked her to stop handling things like that and she was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Since she didn’t want to respect my feelings, I had to get out of the friendship. It feels safer without her.”
12. Myla. 46. Friendship Ended After 39 Years.
“You know how they say that people are breaking up for half of the time before they get a divorce? I think the same thing about friendships. My former best friend has been in my life, most of my life, but I think we’ve been friends in name only since our late 20s. Sometimes, it’s the memories and what used to be that makes you think that you’re still bonded, but your lives don’t really mesh anymore. The final straw for me was looking at how she was as a wife and mom and it being so different from me.
"We found ourselves arguing more than taking each other’s advice or even just listening, and the more that happened, the more I realized that we had nowhere to go. Our kids are friends, and so we don’t get in the way of that, but now, it’s more like we do play dates than friendship bonding. I can’t really say it’s hard for me because I think I let her go a long time ago. The wasted time is what bothers me most because it should’ve happened before it did.”
____
I know, right? All of these stories are confirmation that if anything has layers, levels, and complexities, it’s friendship — and when it comes to close friendships, if anything can impact your life in a way that nothing else can, those would be it.
That’s why I think this type of content (check out “Is It Time To Initiate A 'Friend Divorce'?”) is important because, while ending a friendship can be hard, sometimes it really is necessary…sometimes it’s what you need to do to get to the next better thing for you.
An author by the name of Sylvester McNutt III once said, “Closure happens right after you accept that letting go is more important than projecting a fantasy of how the relationship could have been.” If that resonates with you, maybe it’s time to end a friend chapter and begin a new narrative.
If it is, take it from me and the 12 women I spoke with — that’s okay. Beneficial even…if you both are preventing each other from having better friends and, more importantly, being the best kind of friend to yourself. If it’s time, sis — break free and get free. Ultimately, it’s worth it.
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