Focus on your own needs when breaking off friendships
Q: Maybe a friend’s behavior during the pandemic bothered you. Maybe you realized you didn’t have much in common besides being in the same school, workplace or social circles. Or maybe the pandemic has shrunk your social capacity and ability to maintain several friendships. Regardless of the reason, how do you kindly break it to someone that you will not be reviving your friendship?
A: The key I’ll always trust is to focus on your new needs and not the other person. So even if you saw them behaving in a certain way, or if you saw them take certain political positions or make certain comments online and it has you looking at them differently or not sharing values the same, you still want to bring the focus to yourself. Whenever you’re communicating that something isn’t working for you anymore, the key is to highlight the needs you have that are not being met, as opposed to the inadequacies in this other person.
We don’t want to play the blame game and we don’t want to set them up to be defensive and not get the message. So a couple of ways to do that are to say, “Hey, I know we haven’t chatted in a while, but lately I’ve been prioritizing XYZ and I don’t think it will really allow me to maintain our friendship in the same way.”
The first thing I’ll advise is to be very clear that this is what you want to do so that there’s no back and forth or behavior that’s counter to what you said. The second thing is to be clear about the reason why, because you can’t communicate a reason until you have made it plain in your own mind. And three, say it compassionately.
If it’s kind of like a friendship fade and it’s mutual, there doesn’t necessarily need to be a formal announcement. But if the other person’s under the impression that you all will revive it, then you owe them an explanation as to why. The last thing you want to do is ghost someone and have them texting you and you’re not responsive.
— Danielle Bayard Jackson, publicist and certified friendship coach, founder of Tell Public Relations