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Have you ever broken up with a friend and cut them out of your life? How'd that go? (piefed.social)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
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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?

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[–] 3 points 6 months ago

Yes. Three times. No regrets. I hope I never see or hear about them ever again. I don't feel like sharing every detail though. That would take forever.

One contacted me after a decade of ignoring me, just so I could help their friend to settle in the same country I was living in. What irked me was that they were clearly pretending to be very excited to be in touch with me again. Yea right. If they cared for me surely they would have found the time to send a message even if just once every two years, which they didn't... I can understand people growing apart, but I don't tolerate being taken for an idiot.

The other, it took me a long time to realize what a passive aggressive asshole they were. They moved elsewhere, and we lost contact for a while. Then they reached out online, and that's when I realized how much better things were for me without them in my life. So we had a bland chat in which I said the bare minimum, and after that I cut them off.

The other, I would be typing a wall of text to explain what happened. Some prime reddit AITA material. Summarizing, we used to work together at the same place. I covered up for their mistakes (and unexplained absences and missed deadlines) a lot. This put me under a lot of stress. They were also going through a lot of hardship which was totally self inflicted, and against my advice. The situation escalated until I just had to let it go. It's not exactly the reason my contract didn't get renewed, or the only thing making my life difficult at the time, but burnout at work was at the core. I can't help wonder how things would have resolved if I managed to keep a cool head at the moment. What made me burn the bridge was their complete obliviousness to their own blundering afterwards. They learned nothing out of it, and I don't need a second round of that in my life. So bye bye.

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