How to End a Friendship

Video Transcript

"Hi, are you struggling with how to end a friendship? Well, this is doctor Felicia and I'd love to share with you, some of my tips on how to end a friendship. It does vary with different kinds of relationships so you might want to pay attention. For instance, if you're going to end a relationship there's several ways to do it. One, if it's a friend that comes around once in a while, it's easy for you to start refusing invitations and just simply back out of that little circle of friends, then you won't have that friendship anymore but that relies on the fact that the other person is sensitive enough to stop inviting you. There are certain friends that come around your circle that will be very pushy and will expect you to answer them, no matter what. They might send e-mails, they might knock on your door unexpectedly, late at night. Those are people who are really pushing themselves on you and maybe, perhaps, have a greater need for the friendship than you so ending that friendship is going to be a little bit more harsher. You're going to have to take harder stands and really be firm about the fact that you don't want any further contact. This is difficult to do because most people do not like to reject others and do not like confrontation but if you have a very aggressive friend that you need to end that relationship with, you're going to have to take drastic measures. Ending a friendship can range as a cross of varieties of spectrum of behaviors from very shallow refusing of invitations, very non-confrontational to all the way to the fact of having to become outright rejecting and say you definitely don't want anything else to do with that person. These are judgment calls that you need to make based on whether or not that friendship has served you any purpose or has served you a good purpose in making you feel good about yourself. Please be wise in making your assessment and know that once the words are out, whatever you say, if you confront the person, you usually cannot take them back so once you do end that friendship, be prepared to have it end forever. In any case, as you're ending a friendship, just assess for yourself what range of spectrum you need to take, as far as being aggressive, assertive, or simply passive in backing out of the relationship. I do wish you good luck with this, this is a hard task to do in life but we all have this encounter throughout life so good luck in ending your friendships, if it's necessary. This is doctor Felicia signing off, God bless."