fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2597 ]

[ SECRET POST #2597 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2597 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #371.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - titc ].
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At what point does it take for you to cut off all contact with a former friend if they're doing something that makes you uncomfortable? Do you have limits, if any? If so, what are they? If you've ever stopped being friends with someone because something they did disgusted you, what was it?

I usually end up losing touch with people because I get sick of being the one to always make the first contact. If I suggest a date to hang out and they never respond, then that's it. I will try to schedule things with you several times but if you don't want to hang out with me or make solid plans, that's fine.

I'm sort of in the middle of not speaking to who was once my best friend. He and I were incredibly close but then he got a girlfriend and he suddenly no longer called me and I just gave up on trying to call him. He'll come over my house occasionally to hang out with my sister but in the last year we've spoken maybe 4 times. It's taken a lot to get to this point and I've made my peace with it.

I hate having to be the one to initiate contact too. I have a friend who listened to me when I talked to her about it and has been making an effort to make things more equal and I love her for it (among other things, obviously). I'm drifting away from others where I've had the same problem, though I still try to contact them occasionally.

there are certain friends where I understand, my one friend works 6AM-6PM so she's exhausted by the end of the week and planning a wedding, LEGITIMATE! But when I see others posting the stuff they do on facebook all the time but you can't be bothered to respond to a text? Sorry, I don't need that shit anymore.

Fucking this. This is why I don't even bother anymore.

I feel you on that. I dropped my best friend as well because of basically the same thing. If I can be married and make time for you, you sure as hell can spare some time away from your boyfriend to make time for me,

Exactly. I managed to work full time, go to grad school and hang out with you. But I will give him credit, even though we didn't speak for months, he still texted me on my birthday.

Another friend of mine actually got better about talking to me after she got married and I'm forever grateful for that.

I'm glad that even though you had to drop one friend, another friendship got even stronger! That's always awesome.

Same. Friendships are supposed to be equal, not one-sided. If I'm always the one putting in all the effort, I'm just going to assume that you don't care about it as much as I do, so why should I bother?

One of the only times I've cut off contact with someone was when I felt we had an unhealthy friendship and that there was no way to salvage it - which was combined with a realisation that my friend wasn't going to stop doing the things they did that pissed me off anytime soon. A big fight was the tipping point for all of this.

So I guess my limit is whether I see the friendship is salvageable/ worth salvaging, and if the other person is willing to change their behaviour. If you want to continue being friends with this person, I'd say you should definitely have a talk with them about whatever they're doing, explain why you don't like it, and see how they react. But if you don't really care that much, I don't think there's anything wrong with deciding to drift away from the friendship.

This all depends on what your friend is actually doing of course. It's possible you're the person being unreasonable in this.

Yep, this. The tipping point for me was when she finally contacted me after refusing to speak to me for almost a month after saying some astonishingly hurtful things to me because I dared to call her on her shit, and then, when she finally did start talking to me again, didn't offer an apology or an explanation, just "I've decided to forgive you". That was when I knew that there was no hope that she'd ever even consider that she might be in the wrong, let alone that her behaviour might be hurting the people she claimed to care about, and there was no way in hell she'd ever consider changing her behaviour. (Also, that no matter what she said, she didn't give a flying fuck about me beyond my willingness to be her doormat, but hey, it's not like I'm bitter or anything.)

Don't let it get to that point, OP.

It's usually a slow build thing. I make small excuses for a lot of my close friends, but sometimes over time all that adds up until I just can't make excuses anymore and have to admit that the friendship isn't going to last.

But it's usually more of an "I stop making efforts to contact them/make plans/get together" and the other person never tries at all so we lose contact.

For acquaintances rather than close friends that bar is a lot lower. I've stopped talking to people for racist, homophobic, sexist or other such opinions.

Mildly uncomfortable? Then I probably wouldn't cut off all contact, but I'd cut way back and try to figure just how much contact I'd be okay with having. But this is for someone whose friendship I had, up until that point, highly valued. For a casual acquaintance, forget it. Life's too short to waste time and energy over "friendships" that just drain you and give nothing in return.

For some really terrible? Cold turkey. I don't think I'm a high maintenance friend. We don't have to talk every day (or week), you don't have to remember my birthday or hold my hair when I'm puking or anything. But you have to be a decent person I can trust, and I don't befriend assholes.

I once stopped being friends with someone who was an Ebay junkie. It's a pet peeve for personal reasons. She had no savings, she couldn't afford to buy crap because she was on a limited income, and she KNEW damn well that there'd come a time in the near future when she and her precious dogs were on the verge of going hungry and cold because she couldn't afford to buy food or pay her bills.

All of that, I didn't hold against her. But what I did hold against her was that she expected ME to validate her buying sprees. I was expected to ooh and ahh over every ugly statue or overpriced knick-knack she bought, even when I knew she'd soon be eating ramen and not taking her dogs to the vet. If I didn't ooh and ahh, she'd get hurt or angry and lash out at me for not being supportive.

I can't be supportive of destructive habits. I won't. If people ask me to be an enabler for their self-destruction and they punish me if I'm not, I'm leaving, because that'll hurt less than being party to someone's stupid decisions.

When I look at the pros and cons of the friendship and realize that it's hurting me more than it's benefiting me.

I wait until they repeatedly act like dicks. Acting like a dick every so often isn't really a sin, and if it is we are all guilty. Repeatedly acting like a dick? Ain't nobody got time for constant negativity.

This is going to be a very long post, as this question has dredged up some uuuugly memories for me.

Most of the time friendship dissolutions for me happen slowly and quietly and we just stop talking.

But there are a couple of major, painful disconnects from several years back, mostly involving a lot of the same people.

Cast of characters: H, J, A, R, H-GF, and J-GF.

H is an MMO nut. I haven't spoken to him in many years, but I know that he's probably still playing fucking MMOs and doing zippo with his life.

J used to be something of a womanchild with an obsession with marijuana, a complete lack of ambition/desire to get ahead, an inability to deal with emotional issues, and a tendency to, when things go pear-shaped, invent details and project personal failings onto other people.

A was once a good friend, got sucked into MMOs and last I saw her has gained like a million pounds and is still playing fucking MMOs.

R was once a very close friend, but was essentially an overgrown teenager who bashed stuff I liked just to piss me off but got VERY ANGRY if anyone trashed stuff she liked, would often dredge up very, very old shit from years ago to use as ammo in arguments, and refused to take responsibility for her own participation in an argument and would blame others for everything. She got even more unbearable after she got a boyfriend. She was also an abject, slobbering Blizzard fangirl and once told me that it's okay if Blizzard ripped off Games Workshop, because Warhammer 40K (which she had never played, but knew I enjoyed) sucks.

H-GF was H's girlfriend and also a friend of A. I didn't know her too well.

J-GF was J's (sort of) girlfriend and also a one-time friend of mine but we started to drift apart. R didn't seem to like her, but that didn't really amount to much -- I get the impression that R hated other girls in general.

ACT I:

H and H-GF had a fight -- H-GF basically completely screwed H over, broke his heart, and ended up costing him money in the process by cheating him out of a financial investment. A, who had been drifting away from me because of her newfound fucking MMO obsession, got herself involved, taking H-GF's side for no reason other than she and H-GF were friends; I nominally took H's side because I didn't like what H-GF did, but I wasn't that invested in it. A got angry with me because how dare I side with H, H-GF is her FRIEND and I have no idea what the fuck I'm getting involved with blah blah blah. It got worse and worse over the course of a month, and finally we had an argument, where she basically told me that I had no idea what the fuck was going on and I never would because I didn't have any real friends because I was a fat loser. I told her anyone who tells me I don't have any real friends is automatically disqualified from being one.

ACT II:

Some time later, after I'd cut A off, I got into an argument with J. Over what? I was trying to help her pick out computer parts and she just BLEW UP AT ME. For no reason. It'd been several months of her basically snapping at me over stupid shit and basically treating me like my problems were insignificant compared to hers (it's not a fucking contest) and so on, to the point where when I told her that I was in an accident, it went right over her head and she went on talking about how she was upset because she was out of weed, and things kind of came to a head and I basically tore her a new one. Well, J-GF got mad at me about it and screamed at me for it. J found out about it, offered to talk to her about it, but I told her I didn't care. So a couple hours later she goes to talk to J-GF anyway and J-GF gets mad at her. J comes back and gets into a screaming match with me, and basically completely invents a scenario where I forced her to go talk to J-GF -- that was an ugly fight, her basically shrieking at me and I'm telling her "you're yelling at me for something that didn't happen" and that just made her shriek louder, and then she told me that she has a lot of problems she's dealing with (read: she was out of weed and couldn't deal with her parents demanding she get a job) and I should just shut the fuck up, and I called her on that and she just basically screamed FUCK YOU repeatedly and stormed off.

Amazingly, we made up after that, but I ended up avoiding her as much as possible for a little while. And she and J-GF broke up and J-GF kind of disappeared, good riddance.

ACT III:

Couple years later...

So, even before the fight with J in Act II, several of our mutual friends had grown very tired of her obsession with pot and yuri manga and absolutely nothing else -- it was impossible to hold a conversation with her on any subject that wasn't one of those two, and she was basically doing a good job at being even more of a vegetable than Terri Schiavo, to the consternation of everyone. At one point I unloaded on H my frustrations with J. (Remember this detail, it becomes important in Act IV.) That had been going on in the background for some time, and my increased exasperation with her probably started bleeding through to the point where she actually fucking noticed -- by which I mean I had to explain it explicitly to her. Cue a fight over something stupid -- she was like OMG LISTEN TO THIS SONG and I'm like "J why do you keep making me listen to shit you know I don't care about" and she blew up at me. "omg you don't like anything" (read: you don't like what I like) and basically a whole bunch of hypocrisy followed. It was stupid, but the argument petered out, probably because in terms of what we argued about, that was especially fucking pointless. Little while later there's another fight over a misunderstanding and she got mad at me for being upset with her, which devolved into her bringing up the music argument, only it was a COMPLETELY different recollection as to what happened -- and then she accused me of bringing the music argument up. (If you haven't figured it out, J was/is some seriously damaged goods.) And finally it ended up resulting in me telling her exactly what I thought of her at the time -- and I told her outright that she needs to grow the fuck up and that all our mutual friends think she's an idiot too. (In retrospect, that was cruel of me, and at least two people -- H included -- told me they wished I hadn't done that.)

Amazingly we made up, and she agreed that she needed to try and grow up a little and I agreed not to make fun of her behind her back anymore.

ACT IV: Literally a few days later.

I post a link to gog.com and say "hey, here's a site that sells old games and fixes them up so they're playable on newer machines."

That was it. That was my crime. I get a message from R, and she's furious with me. She took it as a personal attack, because she had been making several posts about how PC gaming sucks and is for rich assholes obsessed with graphics over gameplay blah blah blah -- deliberately trying to irritate me, basically. This resulted in an argument. H cut in blaming me for the argument and said he wasn't talking to me anymore, not that we ever talked much anymore anyway because MOTHERFUCKER PLAYS WOW 24/7 and I told him that -- and I also gave him shit for a snap judgment on a situation he knew nothing about because he doesn't do anything but play MMOs all day. His response was to tattle to J about my venting of frustrations about her from the previous week, despite knowing that we'd made up. That was it for him.

Oh, and after a couple more arguments with R over the next several months that friendship fell through too -- and of course it ended with her basically dragging up stupid shit I did 10 years earlier and acting like I hadn't changed at all, when the truth is she was still the same person I met in 2000, right down to the teenager attitude. I pointed that out to her and she just blew up at me. Whatever.

Out of all these people the only one I'm still friends with is J, and I suspect that means something.

Edited 2014-02-12 01:19 (UTC)

When they don't make any effort to make contact, when they say they're taking my advice but they're totally lying (ie. they go and get a restraining order on an ex and swear up and down in front of all of us that they're done, but really they started seeing the ex again), when they're just not fun to be around ever, etc. lots of reasons.

And then sometimes they'll come back years later and want to be friends again. I get that people change, but some people (and relationships) should just stay in the past.

If they continue to keep doing the thing that makes you uncomfortable even if you've talked to them about it, then it may be time to cut ties.

I've cut off two friendships in the past 4-5 years. One of them was really unhealthy, bordering on the side of toxic, and at one point, I had enough. They eventually apologized for their behavior, but the thing that they did that had me at my breaking point was just so vile that I couldn't forgive them for it.

The second one had to do with boyfriend drama and how they were blowing me off for their boyfriend, but they also said some mean, spiteful and shitty things that no one should say to their best friend, ever. And when I told them that they really hurt me with their words, they decided to act like a child and ignore me in hopes of forcing me to apologize to them instead. I wasn't about to be emotionally manipulated again after the shit I went through in the first friendship, so I cut them off as well.

It really depends on the situation and the severity of things, but if you feel like you're being borderline abused, it might be time to say goodbye.

Hmm...Well. for me it's less disgust that makes me cut off contact and more "I can't handle this anymore" - which has happen a couple times.

First time was with someone who was so thin skinned I couldn't even say "I strongly disagree with -well known extremist faction of X group-!" without her going "OMG, how dare you generalize everyone in X group!". Point in fact, the final straw was when she spent 2-3 hours ripping me a new one over something I said to someone else, that she heard about second hand.

Second time? A close friend, and rp partner, basically freaked out at me for rping a specific character with someone else [to the point they "felt cheated on"]. At first they admitted that it was a pretty stupid thing to freak out about - and yeah, it was on them both for making assumptions and lashing out how they did...until a week later when they changed their mind and decided to rake me over hot coals for a week straight...Again, because I dared to rp a specific character with someone else.

At that point I went "Fuck this shit" and dropped their ass.

Depends on what they're doing. I cut off all contact with a friend 3 weeks ago, it took 2 hours of frustrated uncomfortable annoyance.

Other friends I may just...distance myself then fade in and out of contact and if it turns out they keep making my uncomfortable the fade out becomes permanent.

Trying to talk me into running to the store for supplies for his friend's meth lab.

You might tell us what "something that makes you uncomfortable" means in this context. Is it something that's taking place within the relationship--like, for instance, someone whose constant complaining is making you unhappy? Or is it something on the order of them belonging to a political party or being an activist for causes you seriously disagree with, or consuming media you find problematic and trying to get you interested in it?

There has to be a big breach of trust. Once I stopped talking to a casual friend for kicking up a fuss and very publicly dragging my bestie's name through the mud for what turned out to be the heinous crime of not RPing the way she liked. If you do that shit to my friend, you will do it to me someday, and I'm not hanging around and waiting for it to happen.

There's been other stuff too, but nothing that bears repeating in public.

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[ SECRET POST #2597 ]

Burning bridges?

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tl;dr my friends 5-10 years ago all sucked

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