I ended a friendship. I don’t regret it.

alissa
alissa
Nov 3 · 4 min read

I ended a friendship earlier this year.

It was difficult & icky & I doubted myself & felt sure.
I couldn’t participate anymore in a friendship that was sucking the life out of me. Throughout our whole friendship, I saw the red flags show up and I would excuse them away, deny what my body was telling me. And when I ended it, I knew it was the right thing.

She had had multiple other female friendships over the years that had mysteriously ended quite abruptly. (She had also met them on tumblr, just like me.) I always thought that was a little odd. They had freaked out or demanded something of her or done something unacceptable. I never really understood the whole story. But, she had a way with words that was impossible to argue with so I trusted her side of the story.

The last few years of the friendship, I felt the constant pull to engage with her nearly daily. Not texting me on any given day was the exception. I felt so often that I couldn’t keep up. (But, damn did I try.) As she reminded me, she knew that she was not my go-to-person but that I was hers. So, I felt a lot of pressure to engage at a level that I wasn’t comfortable with. When she asked me to be her Maid of Honor, I was completely taken aback. Sure, I had figured she would probably ask me to be a bridesmaid, but Maid of Honor? We had been online/texting friends for about five years, had met once in person, and had Facetimed no more than twice. All at once, I felt excitement & honor (because she was such a special person!) as well as the feeling that now I was really stuck in this. But, I shushed that voice because, this was a really good friendship, on paper. I felt loved & appreciated by her, she cheered me on & encouraged me when I was down, she was always there for me. So the gnawing feeling in my gut seemed to be lying to me.

The week of her wedding changed everything.
It was beautiful, picture perfect, and left me depleted & feeling used. She praised me endlessly for everything I was doing to make the day happen and verbally shredded me before the reception because I had left a joke-gift she was not pleased with in her honeymoon bungalow. (I dragged her into the bathroom before the toasts began so that we could make up and I could give my speech knowing she wasn’t still irate at me.) The days surrounding the wedding, I saw interpersonal dynamics I had never been privy to (because we had never spent much of any real time together beyond the screen). I saw the stunning photos that ended up on Instagram with the perfect captions and remembered the moments leading up to those photos that were wrought with pain.

Several months after the wedding, after I had probably subconsciously and maybe a little consciously been distancing myself from her, she confronted me via text. (Text was her favorite medium.) I had not been providing her with the amount of communication she wanted/that I had in the past, I was not reacting with enough excitement about her move to a place three hours from me, I wasn’t engaging with her enough. When I attempted to bring about mutual understanding, it was met with passive aggression & meanness, things I had seen evident in her other relationships but that were relatively new to our dynamic. When she schooled me on how to not let a relationship die and then shut down our conversation entirely, I was blindsided, wrecked. I sobbed, felt a dull ache in my head that wouldn’t leave. I decided the next day to push back, to say I would not tolerate being treated that way. She then diminished my feelings, telling me she had only been trying to be a better friend to me.
I thought, is my instinct this off? Am I this shitty of a friend? Am I going insane?
My mind was in a black cloud.

I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to end it.

So I did.

My final gesture was a letter, owning the habits I had gotten myself into in the friendship, appreciating the memories we had together, and wishing her all the best moving forward. She read the letter and set it back to me in a bigger envelope. That was the last I heard from her.

I write all of this to let you know that it’s okay to listen to yourself. It’s okay to listen even when the voice is saying things that don’t match up with how everything appears. Even when you think you may be causing someone else pain with your choice. Listen to those moments when your gut & your heart say, this isn’t for me. Respect those moments. Hear them out. Sit with them.

You are enough.

alissa

Written by

alissa

California

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