How to End a Friendship Tactfully

Video Transcript

"Hi, are you struggling with how to end a friendship tactfully? Well I'm Dr. Felicia and I'd like to share a few tips with you on how to end tactfully, it's very difficult but not impossible. So one of the things you might do when you're trying to end a friendship tactfully is to simply back out and stop answering or responding to phone calls etc. See if the person takes a subtle hint that you're just not interested. Usually if they don't get an answer that provokes their interest even more so you might get an obsession of more phone calls. So the next step you want to take is to actually call them on something. For instance let's say you have a friend that likes to go clubbing all the time, you might say that you're sick of clubbing you don't want to go anymore or you don't believe in it and etc, and that person will just assume that there's something wrong with you. So that's one way of ending it tactfully, you're actually taking on the blame for backing out. The other way to end it tactfully is to actually tell the person some other excuse. A lot of people have used this one, it's not the most honest one but to make an excuse like oh I'm just so busy, I'm working late, I, I don't have time for you right now I'll call you when I'm free etc. So that's another way to end the friendship tactfully. But usually to do so tactfully it's more where you put the blame on yourself then it is on the other person. So ending tactfully is difficult if you're in a large group of friends and you all have mutual friends because you're going to run into them again and again. So when you do end this friendship you're going to have to come up with an idea about why it is or what excuse it is why you're so busy for that particular person if in fact they see you with the remaining friends. So ending a friendship tactfully is not an easy task, it's something that you're going to have to think up really well before you open your mouth because you don't want to risk a major confrontation obviously. So ending tactfully is something where you assess the friendship. What avenue of the friendship can you sort of take the blame for weather it's something going on in your life such as over work or under paid or if there's some other reason or excuse that you might come up with. I wish you good luck in ending that friendship tactfully. This is Dr. Felicia signing out and saying god bless."