Earlier this year something unprecedented happened: I called time on a friendship. Not permanently, but I got to the point where I needed a break. Somewhere along the line it had all got too much for me. It was too intense, too bogged down in negativity, and it was no longer making me happy. I was expending huge amounts of time and energy and getting very little in return. It had become what no friendship should ever be: difficult and one-sided.
I understand how and why it happened. The friend in question was finding lockdown particularly difficult, and had gradually come to rely on me as a sort of emotional dumping ground. I spent many evenings locked into long, repetitive WhatsApp conversations where he vented about his worries and insecurities. I dished up the same advice I’d dished up a dozen times before, knowing that I would only have to repeat myself before too long. The problem with those kinds of conversations is how intensely draining they are for the person doing the listening. It is not a passive process, and your mood can be deeply affected by the other person’s negativity. I could start the evening in an effervescent mood and by the end of it feel miserable. We all need to offload to our friends sometimes, but if you’re doing it to such an extent that you are negatively impacting on them, that is not fair and you need to find other outlets.
It was hard, having to tell the friend in question that I needed a break. Even though it had been a long time coming, it was a deeply upsetting thing to have to do. I spent a long time worrying about how he would take it, whether I had done the right thing and how we were going to move forward when the time came. After much reflection, I can categorically say that it was the right decision, and the three-month cooling-off period did me a world of good.
It’s a sign of just how far I’ve come that I even felt able to have that conversation. Early-twenties me would never have dared make such demands. I would have just carried on regardless of how unhappy the friendship was making me. It would never have occurred to me to stop and ask myself what I was getting out of it or whether my needs were being met. At that point in my life I was all about meeting other people’s needs and not worrying about my own. Relationships for me were all about giving. I gave and gave and gave…
