How do you directly end a friendship with another female? In this case the “drifting apart” method doesn’t seem to be working.
I think you do this the same way you break up with a romantic partner — meaning that there’s no really good way, only terrible ones and merely unpleasant ones. Feelings are always hurt, recriminations are recriminated, people go saying bad things about each other behind their backs. I think maybe we just expect that there’s a better way because we’re women and there’s supposed to be a nurturing sisterhood where we wear flower crowns and solve problems with hugs. This is not the case.
I’d say that — as in regular breakups — you can minimize the damage with some version of “It’s not you, it’s me.” An extreme version of this is something like, “I find that I am so jealous of your success that I just can’t be a good friend to you,” or “I am recovering from my [serious life problem/disorder] and I find that I just can’t handle a lot of my social relationships right now or probably in the future. I’m sorry, but I have to disengage from our friendship.”
Of course, that’s assuming you want to falsely take the blame when you’re really not doing anything wrong.
The straightforward method would be, “Hey, I’m really not cool with how X has been happening in our friendship. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to hang out anymore. I wish you well, but I need to move on.”
Note my use of the passive voice, there? “X has been happening,” not “You have been doing X.”
I think that’s the best I’ve got.
Originally on DailyBull, Get Bullish’s official Tumblr.
