September 21, 2009
Dear Abby won’t respond
How do you break up with a long time friend?
Background:
I’m female, 33 and never had to do this before.
I’m really busy (aren’t we all) and don’t want to go through a back-and-forth of he-said she-said who-was-wronged-more scenario.
I just want a clean break.
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“Go away I’ll call the police.”
Sorry; I really can imagine your difficulty. Maybe humor, though, would be a good approach. I have seen people fired by friends they worked for. The boss would say, with a big smile–”Wellllll, damn. I think we can see this is not going so well. You know how it goes. Why don’t you go get your stuff cleared out and we’ll go get a beer and then get on with the getting on.” Okay so it didn’t always work so well. But like you say, it’s good to try to do an end around the he-said she-said thing….
My wife recently broke up with a longtime friend, who was constantly trying to one-up her on everything. She decided to ignore her, which really worked well, even though she lives 3km away. Put her facebook feed on ignore, ignore emails and calls. Maybe in a few months you’ll re-evaluate, but until then, you’ll have some peace of mind.
these things usually aren’t clean.
to aim for as clean as possible maybe a simple note, without blame, explaining your feelings and stating a desire for her / him not to respond and explaining that regardless you won’t be responding.
those are my thoughts.
All I can say is good luck. I’ve had this happen a number of times in the past where I backed out of a friendship like Homer catching Apu in the storage room and it just gets dicey. I don’t think there is a single thing you can do or say that would make a clean break, the best thing to do is stop responding to emails, etc. and go out of your way not to see the person for a while. Build the case with mutual friends you trust (or are more likely to be on your side, whatever sides mean) as to why you don’t want to keep that relationship intact. Stand strong, don’t do things with folks that you don’t want to do for fear of losing face with them. Life is too short to pander to folks that you don’t like.
Or, you could go over to the persons house and ring the doorbell. When they come to the door, leave, but you know what’s left on the porch? A jack-o-lantern with a knife stuck in the side of it’s head with a note that says “You.” After that you’ll usually feel a lot better, and no harm done.
/jack handy
(http://philip.greenspun.com/humor/deep-thoughts)
I like Deron’s simple note combined with range’s wife’s method of ignoring.
life lessons.
This is something I have witnessed at close hand time and again, though I am glad to say I have never experienced it directly.
Off the top of my head, here is something not to do: Do not give in to temptation and blurt out, “This has been building up for a long time.”
Both you and the other person will feel either angry or ashamed or both.
Thanks folks. These all help immensely.
I’d hug each and every one of you, if I could.
My last experience with that (and maybe first? I don’t remember…) worked itself out with a combination of ignoring and negating. I stopped sharing or hanging out with them and if she called or invited me somewhere I just said no thanx. It took quite a while but eventually she lost interest and stopped contacting me. No drama. We still say our hellos and goodbyes if we’re on the same place.