They can be so tough, but also so special. These conversations are so hard to have but do often provide the closure or information we need to move forward in a relationship. It sounds like you have worked hard to prioritize the tough conversations. I do think the pandemic has changed people’s perspectives and priorities and this may have caused shifts in friendships as well. Focus on those friendships that feel loving and nourishing to you!

Wow, so brave of you, Erin, to face that head on and unfortunate that it backfired on you! I’m sure the individual was acting out of hurt and maybe will come to appreciate your honesty in the future.

Great point, Stacia! Sometimes that talk can be more harmful vs. helpful if you know in advance that individual isn’t going to be open to it. Also so nice to hear that you were able to move on and feel a sense of relief and happiness in your decision to move on from a friendship.

Thank you for sharing, Brittany. Breakups with friends can be just as heartbreaking as a breakup in a romantic relationship. Similarly there are always things you still love and miss about that person but in the end you know when something just wasn’t meant to be. Hopefully you can find peace in appreciating the friendship you had and also moving forward and learning from it in your future friendships.

More recently, during the pandemic- I have been ghosted by friends and I think I would rather have been “broken up” with so that I could have time to grieve the friendship and move on. Instead I am left wondering what happened.

To round this out, I made a pledge to speak up when I’ve been hurt. I did so recently and it ended up with me being gaslit about what had hurt me. It also made me reevaluate the friendship as a whole.

Adult friendships- they are tough!

Sigh, reading this I realized that I could have written these words myself about a long-term friendship that I am moving away from for similar reasons. It is helpful to hear from you that your quality of life improved – that happened almost immediately for me (a sense of relief) once I decided that it is in my own best interest to put this friendship in the rear-view mirror. I am now at the point where I have to decide if the ‘break up talk’ is going to be helpful for either one of us. This particular friend has a completely different communication style than I do so I suspect that whatever I say to her will be misinterpreted – leaving the conversation possibly more harmful than helpful… I have also accepted the fact that sometimes people change in ways that do not serve a long-term relationship. This has been hard for me to understand as I am a very loyal person (most of my friends are either life-long or decades long and I don’t give up easily).

I think about this friend from time to time, and sometimes she visits me in my dreams. I feel a sense of nostalgia for the good times – she was such an interesting, curious, eccentric person who I really did connect with in a lot of ways. The times I am tempted to send her a ‘hope you are well’ text, I remember that it’s stupid to reach out or spend mental ram on someone who was ultimately never a true friend to begin with, despite the good times and tender moments we did share. I’ve moved past a point of being bitter, and my quality of life really did improve once she was no longer in it – which weirdly made me more sad. All of this is to say, friendships are tough and require maintenance and work, and it’s not something we talk about enough.