They say it’s harder to break up with friends than a romantic partner since the rules are a lot less cut-and-dry. This often results in people tolerating others’ company they otherwise wouldn’t be around because they can’t bring themselves to cut them loose.
I’ve only ever friend broken up with one other person who was going down a 4chan bigotry rabbit hole back in the day, and he’d constantly bring up problematic talking points that I’d try to dismantle, but he was too dogmatic to have a conversation with so I had to stop being friends with him.
I check up on his online presence every now and again, but he’s only gotten more racist and sexist. Sometimes I wonder if having more pushback from me or someone outside whatever echo chamber he was in would’ve helped, but he just sapped my energy so much I couldn’t take it.
(trivia for older internet peeps; he was the Legorobot Comics author. If you ever saw his work you could probably tell he was gonna grow up to be a bigot)
Anyways, what’s your friend break up story? What was the last straw? What was the first straw? Any regrets?
I’m a big fan of social pruning and I’ve broken up with quite a few friends. Most of the breakups was easy, they were either assholes or we’d grown so far apart that the only viable discussion topic was what happened 10 years ago.
For me, I ask myself how often I keep in touch with them, what our connection is and if it’s a friend I still wish to spend time around. One of the tell-tale signs for me is when I’ve planned something with someone and as the day/hour approaches, I start looking for excuses to do something else.
That’s a good tell tale sign, especially if it’s only happening with one friend specifically (ie I might look for reasons to not do other hang outs just ‘cause my social battery was depleted, but if it’s one friend specifically, it’s probably them).
My sign was I felt super depleted after every hang out, and I would never introduce him to my other (more diverse) friends, despite his persistence. Then I had to ask myself why am I even friends with this guy?