Burning Bridges: How To End A Friendship

Rachael Pace, Author

Rachael Pace

Expertise: Mental health, Parenting

Rachael Pace inspires with motivational articles on loving partnerships. She encourages making room for love and facing challenges together.

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Updated: 10 Jun, 2023

Table of Contents

Treasure time together, invest your precious hours in the relationship and in people who lift you both, so you feel seen and closer.
Set healthy boundaries, gently limit contact with draining influences so your relationship has space to breathe and both of you feel secure and supported.
Choose compassionate boundaries over revenge, address hurts with honest conversation and care, so your trust grows and you both feel equipped to navigate challenges.

A wise man once said never to burn bridges. This isn’t something that you should follow. Why? Because not everyone in this world deserves your time and friendship.

You don’t have an infinite amount of time to give, so you have to carefully choose who you give it to. Giving away something more valuable than money to people you don’t consider important takes it away from those who are.

But as years pass you by, it will make sense.

It’s a matter of time.

Nobody in their deathbed said, “I wish I spent more time in the office.”

When you have lots of money, what you don’t have is time.

So it is important to manage money and time wisely. Using the money to buy time, and using the time to make money.

One of the ways you can save time and make money is by ending your friendships with some people -those so-called fake friends.

Here’s how to end a friendship with people who drag you down.

1. Ignore them

Ignoring someone is the best method to end friendships because it works for all kinds of fake friends and is effortless on your part.

You don’t have to talk to them, erase their contact information, unfriend them in social media, or anything of like that, just mute/ignore the conversations, and you’re all done.

It works best for the type of friends that only reach out when they need something from you. We all know someone that fits this profile, they always have a great Facebook page, very friendly, bubbly, and fun.

They are also the type that asks for a lot of favors They sometimes borrow money that they never pay back.

They also gossip a lot.

They use gossip as a weapon. They would backstab anyone who refuses to indulge what they want.

Cutting off ties with people like this will expose you to a bit of gossip, but it will go away after a while when the user-friendly person stalks its next victim.

So how to end a friendship with a user-friendly gossip mongering asswipe? Ignore them and leave them to their own devices. If they feel that they won’t benefit from you, they will move on.

2. Burn the bridge

How To End A Friendship

It is a not-so-subtle version of ignoring them. It is done by blocking all possible electronic contact with the person. If you meet them in the real world, say in the office, ignore them completely. If you absolutely have to talk to the person, you give them single word replies.

This is for so-called-friends who betrayed you. It’s a dog eats dog world, and people screw over other people all the time. But we all have our friends and family to support us, but when they do the screwing, things change.

If someone inside your trust circle turns on you, you would have to cut off ties right away.

It’s a competitive world, but nobody gets anywhere without stepping over other people. If it’s someone who has close bonds with you, then they either set it up from the start or will not hesitate to betray you again.

So don’t keep a snake in the house. It’s stressful to be on guard all the time. Unless you’re the type that’s into revenge, then that’s a different animal.

But is it right to alienate a person without proof? You could be making a big mistake and end up losing a friend because of a hunch.

It depends on your principles, but it’s not the court of law. The rule of evidence does not apply. You are the judge, jury, and executioner of your own life. You don’t have to keep people you don’t trust.

So let them go for your own peace of mind, move on, and stick to your life goals.

3. Get revenge

If you are the vindictive type, then don’t let them go until you teach them a lesson. We don’t recommend this route because it’s the most time consuming and dangerous so we won’t tell you how to do it.

But we do hate negative people who take advantage of other people and would not criticize anyone who stands up to them.

Regardless of proof, if you do premeditated acts of malice against someone else, there are possible repercussions. Consider yourself warned.

If you do go down this route, be aware that things may escalate to a non-stop cycle of revenge. It gets real ugly.

Takeaway

Losing friends is always hard, but like cancer cells, it’s better to lose a breast than your life. Ending friendships is never a good thing, but keeping a terrible friend is always a bad thing.

Your time is important. We all have a limited amount of time in this world and regardless if you are rich, poor, smart, dumb, beautiful, or ugly we have the same 24 hours in a day.

How you spend your time will determine what kind of life you will live. If you want to surround yourself with people you care about and people who care about you, then spend it wisely. Giving it to people who are only using you is a waste of your valuable time.

It’s important to stay calm and not blow things out of proportion. Someone who helped you in the past failed to return 20 dollars is not a reason to end a 10-year friendship.

Treasure your friends, make sure they treasure you too. Don’t count favors, but you will notice it if someone is just using you. This blog post tells you how to end a friendship, but be sure to keep your door open and make new ones. Nobody can go through life alone.

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Rachael Pace Author

Rachael Pace is a noted relationship writer associated with Marriage.com. She provides inspiration, support, and empowerment in the form of motivational articles and essays. Rachael enjoys studying the evolution of loving partnerships... Read more and is passionate about writing on them. She believes that everyone should make room for love in their lives and encourages couples to work on overcoming their challenges together. Read less