Tbh, something that’s hit me harder than I expected is how many friendships I’ve either outgrown… or had to walk away from. Some were decades long and some were built on routines that no longer fit my life. And some just quietly faded out when I stopped being the one to always reach out. Sometimes it was just realizing that we didn’t share values anymore or that being around them left me feeling drained, not better. It’s tough, because these were people I once considered essential people who helped shape who I was. But I’ve also realized that growth requires letting go of what no longer fits. Have you gone through this too?
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I knew it was time to let go when I realized I was always the one in initiating plans and they still showed up late or cancel last minute. I am too old to chase people who don’t even want to be caught :/
When we’re hanging out, started to feel like chore instead of recharge. If I need a recovery day after seeing you, we’re either drinking too much, or the friendship expired quietly like an older yogurt haha
When I stopped drinking they stopped coming around.
Absolutely. Some friendships are born if circumstance like working together or living close by. Others are long term and constant even through long distances and times when we don’t talk or see each other at all. My college friend group has started seeing each other quarterly for the past 2 1/2 years after almost 20 years of living quite far away from each other. It’s been fantastic. Some friendships just aren’t good for me in the long run and they got let go over the years.
If you’re the one constantly messaging or calling then go ahead and let em go
I have had many friendships that have ended over the years.
I had a rather tough upbringing and moved away from home during my first year of high school. A guy I knew was also in a tight spot, so I arranged for housing and a job for him one summer. I considered him my best friend. As I mentioned, he had no money, so I lent him about 500 dollars over the summer for food and a bit of shopping. That was a lot of money back then. When the summer was over and we got paid, he didn’t bother to pay me back. That’s how much that friendship was worth.
In my second year of high school, I had a moment of stark realization while my classmates were drawing dicks on the whiteboard. There I was, working just to afford food for the day, and they were mentally on a completely different planet.
After school, I moved to another city. I would call home every day and every week to hear if anything fun had happened. The bus ride home alone after a 10-hour shift (working 7 days on/off) took 9 hours. After a while, I stopped going home as often, and eventually, I stopped calling altogether. It has now been 15 years, and they never called back.
In more recent years, I started to party quite a bit and went to many raves. Many people there were so open, welcoming, and nice. But then I noticed that outside of the parties, many of them didn’t have their lives in order. It was one excuse after another for why their lives had turned out the way they had, why they specifically couldn’t afford rent or other things. If there wasn’t a party, nobody wanted to hang out. I realized there was nothing more to be gained there unless I just wanted to party, and that is not the kind of friendship I value.
Reciprocation is key.
Reciprocate the effort.
Reciprocate the financial costs involved.
Reciprocate the level and frequency of communication.
Reciprocate the emotional investment.
When these things fail, I take a step back, if you step up, the friendship continues, otherwise you fade away to nothing but a memory. I don’t have the space for shit friends.
I’venl made friends in the last year or so that start out reciprocating but then either use me or neglect their part of the social contract.
I cannot stand being the one to always maintain the communication or making plans.
But I’m forgiving. If you don’t respond to a text for 2 weeks, own that shit and move forward.
I’m a useful person and have often been taken advantage of/used. My wife thankfully keeps that shit in check now but I guess I just got used to being discarded when no longer needed. People pleaser mentality and all. But now that my priorities have shifted (having kids and big responsibilities) I don’t put up with it. I’ve got to portray healthy relationships for my kids. Full stop.
I don’t drop friends but for some, relationships fizzle out when we loose common things to connect on. I am focusing on maintaining good health/ fitness and growing financially. One childhood friend and I geek out talking about investment opportunities among casual topics. Others still live too young for their age. I don’t judge but I can’t fake sharing in their interest
Yes and it can be really hard. People fade in and out of your life, that’s normal. What’s hard is if to have to have a friend-breakup. I was friends with someone for over 25 years, since we were teens, and someone pointed out how problematic this person was for a number of reasons and I realized i didn’t want to be around this person anymore and had to sit down and have a real difficult talk. It sucks but sometimes you have to put on your big boy pants and deal with it.
Yes, I can relate to your experience with friends. For me its over or severely changed…
When all they talk about is how much they hate their ex.
When you listen to all their shit empathetically and if you bring up anything about your life and you can hear the strain in their voice from listening.
When all they talk about is all their former sex partners when you never asked about it or care to know.
When they don’t believe you when you mention you have a certain disease
When they blame you for something you had nothing to do with.
When they never want to do join you in anything you’re interested in doing. But if another if their friends want to do that exact thing the are totally in to it.
When they inform you never to email them, they don’t do email, and if you want to call them schedule it through a text.
When you’ve suffered some problem and they respond to you angrily like it’s your fault.
When your a male and they constantly talk about how much they hate all men.
When you go out to dinner, you happily pay for all or your meal, and half of theirs, (20$) and the next day you get an angry text that they cant afford to eat out anymore with you cause they can’t afford it.
When they give you an std.
When they tell you they love you but the next sentence is they tell you how much they don’t ”like” you at all.
When they tell you your bald. Like somehow I,m not aware of it.
when they’re constantly bitching about their life when they’re take 6 vacations a year and live in a 4 bedroom condo w 3 bathrooms.
When they called you, the one day of the year that they do call you, (birthday), you couldn’t answer the phone that moment, call them back a half hour later, and reprimand you for calling so late. And then you call them on their bday, leave a nice message and they don’t pick up or ever return call. And these yearly calls only lasts 3 minutes cause they have to be somewhere after 3 minutes and you can hear that they’re at the gym working out when they called.
when I stayed at their vacation house for an weekend , the trip got cut short, I stripped the bed and put the sheets in the washing machine, they charged me 20$ for cleaning fee.
these were all decades long relationships, Some I’ve cut off completely realizing they are a narcissist, which is the only way to end a relationship with a narcissist, others I don’t initiate any relationship with but will see them in some group function. And have made peace with the fact that they will never be a real friend.
I’m never ever gonna beg someone to hang out with me or reach out to me.
Relationships are a two-way street … and this applies to friends, family, coworkers.
Had a best friend for nearly 20yrs … but came to realize just how much of a chore it was to hang out or do stuff.
I’ve got a brother that I haven’t talked to in 13+ years. After a brief reconnect (after our mom died) he opted to spend his time on FB memes, church/condescension, and racism and hatefulness. I lost nothing by going non contact.
On the flip side, I’ve got a several friends ive known 20+ years and we keep up regular comms and even occasional hangouts despite living in dif parts or the state or country.
Yes. I had to deal with this, recently. I realized that maybe we didn’t have the same values. I tried to talk to them. However they said I was making it up. They were so defensive. In the end, I realized they have never once said sorry. And that’s what I ended on by asking how many times they’ve apologized in our friendship.
Hey OP. 48 year old married father of two in the UK here.
I had to distance myself from a university friend due to alcoholism and other addictive behaviours. We met in our late teens, but he never seemed to progress beyond that emotionally – and he was constantly drunk. Every time my phone showed his number calling me, I braced myself for drunken ramblings: “Remember when…” / “Let’s get together and get drunk!” / “My wife’s left me and I’m marrying my work PA!”
My last sensible conversation with him was in the late 90s – and that was only sensible because we both had early-20s mindsets and were drinking too much. I’ve matured since then (in my own silly way) and he didn’t.
I miss him because he was very kind, generous and honest. He’s chosen to prioritise booze over everything else and I know (having had my own struggles with booze) that there’s nothing I can do unless he wanted to quit. Which he doesn’t and it’s going to kill him. Sure as shit, it’ll kill him.
I miss you James.
When he cheated on another friend of mine, broke up with said friend, and then lied to me and her about why he left the relationship.
And then didn’t apologize for any of it.
After my best friend moved back home to live with his mom. This was in our mid 20s. He had basically given up on life. He’s been home and unemployed since then. This year we hit 50yo.
Our lives have gone very differently. I got married, worked my ass off with my wife to build a business that allowed us to retire early in the 1%. My buddy just went home and did basically nothing more or less. I mean he helps his elderly mom and his sister with her kids as she works but he hasn’t earned a paycheck since the early 2000’s.
We still are in a group chat with another buddy and I actually just flew him, his mom, and his sister’s family out to SE Asia for two weeks. They paid for the hotel and food but I got award flights for him and his mom in business class and paid for most of his sister’s family’s seats in premium economy. They basically are hanging on by a thread financially. I pretty much make more in a couple of weeks nowadays than their entire family makes in a full year.
I wanted to do something nice for my buddy and his mom but then they decide to invite sis and fam and it became a giant mess.
In spending time with them for a couple of weeks I felt deeply saddened that their lives were so sheltered and filled with nothing really – no travel, no investment, no growth, etc. They all just barely lived off his mom’s pension. The sister is a very poorly paid teacher and the husband is basically sub 100 IQ and can’t make any good decisions with money. His sister and brother in law declared bankruptcy for the second time last year. It was sad to see his brother in law’s debit card getting declined everywhere. I asked my buddy about it and said they can’t have credit cards from the bankruptcy so their debit card was all they had.
It was kind of excruciating to hang out with them – they marveled at the Starbucks and McDonald’s they saw here in Asia. It’s all they know. Yes we literally ate at McDonalds a couple of times. I had to pull my hair out trying to explain how to eat Thai food and what not. Their kids were dumb as bricks too – having been raised with basically zero life skills taught by their parents.
At any rate I was soooo glad when I put them on the plane to go home so I could go back to my life filled with the inspiring friends, lots of travel and different cultures, etc. I kinda knew that there was no hope for this childhood friend ship. I mean we’re still friends and more like brothers at this point but we have literally nothing in common except a shared past.
I’m right on the brink of axing a friendship of 35 years because of a guy I know who makes plans to talk to me and then just blows me off and later doesn’t even remotely apologize. And then when we do manage to talk, he blathers on about himself and his woes and bragging points and barely pays attention about what’s going on in my life. And we don’t talk about anything else interesting.
I’m just not interested in being a target of disrespect anymore.
When you can’t hang like you used to and things feel forced.
When I realized my “conversations” with many of my “friends” were mostly them talking about themselves, and that I could only tolerate it drunk.
In one instance I realized during conversation a woman I had known for over 15 years didn’t quite know what I had been doing for work over the last 10 years. I know every detail of her professional and private life.
I’m not the audience of your personnal tv show, go away.
This passed weekend. Had one of my oldest friends visiting. He got sober 3 years ago after almost 20 on the needle. I was so proud of him. Hadnt seen him in awhile and hadn’t spoke. To him much over the last few years. I let him stay with me for 4 nights so we could attend an event he wanted to go to that I was interested as well. When he left I was so relieved. I was annoyed most of the time he was here. He knew full well the world I would be bringing him into and he left out that he only had a few teeth and his arms were scarred from tracks front and back and his hands. Just left that out. I made him wear sleeves but showed him the best time I could. I realized when he left that we just have nothing in common and I need to be more stingy with access to the life I’ve created. If I do decide to give so much people need to do their part but fundamentally time as friends means much less than actual current quality of the friendship. Him and I only have memories and many of them aren’t pretty. Time to live on from him and the rest that fall into that bucket.
I knew it was time to let go when after 15+ years of friendship the subjects were always the same:
games
girls (most of them are married btw)
weed/alcohol
always telling the same stories from high school
also I realized that for some of them, we could ONLY hang out in places where they could drink and smoke weed. sober hang out = non existant
-Don’t break bread with someone who wouldn’t starve with you;
-The worst enemy of a woman is another woman;
Life got much much better after I interiorised these two