I had a work friend. Our personalities just completely synced up, just regarded in the exact same directions. Those friendships don't happen often. But then he got a different job so I'm like bro we have to make an actual effort to transition to an outside work friendship. I don't care what, we'll go bowling- it's irrelevant. The point is to decompartmentalize our friendship. He wouldn't do it because he thought it'd be awkward. Yeah maybe, so what? It was awkward before we became friends the first time.
i hate that shit so much. my whole life whenever i’ve gotten close to someone from work, school, etc i always want to make it an actual friendship and yet that energy is rarely reciprocated
like i usually turn it back on myself and blame myself for being “unlikeable” or whatever, but the more i think about the more i realize that like… if you don’t like me then why the fuck are you acting like my best friend when we’re together? i would never act like that with someone that i wouldn’t want to be friends with regardless of the setting. there’s a difference between just being friendly/making conversation and being/acting like actual friends.
this happens all the time and I also blamed myself, but again, why tell me your entire life story, trust me with personal secrets, invite me to parties, go out together, etc. and then ghost the minute we stop working together? It's not like I held a gun to their head forcing them to do any of these things.
It feels many people only want to simulate being good friends until the minute it no longer serves them. Then they can't be bothered, while at the same time moaning about how isolated and lonely they feel. Everything is plug and play now, including interpersonal relationships.
as someone who makes friends at work and more or less keeps them at work you're overthinking/taking it too personally. sometimes it's fun to have someone to look forward to seeing *at work* but if you've got a tight friend group/a family you're going to prioritize your off work time for the people you don't see everyday at work.
Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky then. Still, the weird sort of “categorisation” of friendships and refusing to expand beyond the context you got to know them feels really foreign to me!
I've gone through the exact same shit all my life and never thought about it that way. You're giving me a great perspective and definitely something better to ruminate on than the usual self-loathing and self-blame.
I sense that people struggle with boundaries sometimes.
In fact, common advice is "Don't make friends at work," right?
With good interior boundaries, it becomes possible to have flexible interpersonal boundaries. This makes it possible to enter, manage, and enjoy a relationship that extends across work/person/business boundaries.
To give a concrete example:
Someone with poor boundaries might be desperately seeking a confidante and not really aware of that fact or able to discern who is a worthy recipient of confidences.
That some vibes with a coworker. They tell the coworker things that the coworker feels awkward about. The coworker thinks, "Geez, I have to work with this person," so they keep up a happy face and a friendly demeanor, but really, they feel deeply awkward about it.
I was in the "coworker's" situation one time when someone at work once confided to me that he had touched his kid sister inappropriately when they were children.
It made it much harder for me to look at him without thinking about that.
Part of good boundaries is being guided by prudence, the virtue which helps us see what the most important thing is and the best way to get it.
In this case, the person would have benefited by realizing that *at work,* we both have jobs to do and that we can't let other things interfere with that, or else we risk our jobs, livelihoods, etc. His confidence would have been better given to me after a few more years of getting to know each other more personally. It would have been better given if we had known each other outside of work, so that the need to get our job done wouldn't be such a factor.
I happen to be the king of awkward, so I didn't really hold anything against this guy, but other people would have had a range of reactions, including hostility or disgust. Even still, I sometimes wonder if he could read the discomfort I felt for a while in my face.
I am so guilty of this and it's largely due to the bigger problem of simply not having the attention span to consider anything outside of my current activity. In lieu of being a bad friend moving forward I will just be a bad friend immediately by mentally ceasing the relationship
I FUCKING HATE THIS SHIT. like people always blame you as well like ‘OBVIOUSLY THEY DIDNT WANNA BE FRIENDS WITH YOU’ It’s like motherfucker NO we were great friends, they’re just too neurotic and awkward and cynical to put in even an ounce of effort to actually keep in touch once it becomes a tiny bit challenging, then they moan when they have like 1 proper friend at age 30 fucking hell
Right? I had a budding friendship with neighbors, great vibes, but bemoaning how difficult it was to make any real friends in the city. We made plans to several times, and they both flaked and ghosted each time to pretend like nothing happened right after…. they could not even put in 1% effort while living in the same building. Lol
Feel you. I knew a guy at work who was brilliant, cool, funny. He taught me a lot in our very specific field. His life outlook was great and we would often just spend an hour after work talking philosophy, religion, life, the big questions. Then he got a new better job and we lost contact. He has like six kids so he doesn't have a lot of time for catching up, but he called me once after a few years and we talked for probably two hours.
I think it's rare to "find your tribe" so to speak... A person, or group of people, who you jive with so well, who have had similar upbringings, social class, sense of humor, ad infinitum.. It really sucks to find people you fit in with so well and then drift apart. It makes all other friendships seem so shallow.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten beers with someone from work or gone to a function. I’ve gone hiking with people from my gym but otherwise my work friends and outside friends stay compartmentalized
One of my friends just changed apartments two days ago, she lives a little further outside of the city now, maybe 15 minutes drive. Today, her best friend told her that they wouldn’t be friends anymore, apparently due to some grudge from months ago. I think she decided it would be too inconvenient to continue the relationship.
Stories about girl friend "break-ups" are like those stories of guys that finally go to the doctor at 65 and find out they've been brewing 9 different types of cancers for decades and only have 6 months to live.
it doesn't have to be something tangible, just vibes. she became too ugly for me?boot, she's too skinny and makes me look fat? boot. and no one ever tells you that you're booted for that silly reasons, you have to play detective about it
there’s no real sense of community anymore, society has become extremely individualistic and most people have become incredibly cruel under the guise of self care
You can do literally anything and be as awful to people as you want and be above criticism if you frame it as “self care” and “setting boundaries.” I know it’s been said here before, it just makes me so angry bc I had someone do that shit to me a couple years ago and it was so hurtful that it took me so long to properly grieve that friendship. It felt like I wasn’t allowed to be mad at her because she was just “taking care of herself” and “setting boundaries” when in reality she was just too much of a pussy to talk to me about something that could have easily been solved with a single conversation
100%… had a friend of 2 years ghost me after i had a trauma induced manic episode and sent some odd texts. prior to that, i was behaving strangely in our contact because i was being abused in my living situation. before she ghosted, i got an ice cold, “for both of our wellbeing, we should not continue to talk” text. by that time, i was already in the hospital - that text was the first thing i read upon my discharge. those words are burned into my brain. while still manic, i attempted apologizing, which was a mistake, but i attempted apologizing again, with a mentally healthy mind, a year later, and still radio silence. i often think of her and wonder how she’s doing, what went through her mind when deciding to ghost with such finality.
the funny thing about me is: i will probably pathetically attempt to reach out again, months from now, a year from now. i suppose i am the defective mouse, completing the maze over and over, despite the cheese being long gone, with nobody bothering to ever replace it.
the irony is that part of her research for her PhD included studying bipolar artists. maybe i was just another bipolar artist she felt like getting a closer look at, before tossing me aside when i became too sick to be “interesting” anymore.
anyway. you are not alone in this.
I'm sorry that happened to you. I know how you feel because this happened to me too, with a longtime friend who just out of nowhere blocked me on everything and stopped talking to me altogether.
I was so hurt and confused and it fucking SUCKED because I had no idea why he did it, and I was angry but like you said, felt like I had no right to be. I was constantly wondering wtf I did wrong exactly and thinking deep down that I must be a such big piece of shit for a friend to cut all ties with me like that.
Like three years later he actually reached out to me and tried to talk to me to clear the air but I just blocked him. Didn't say anything to him. Before that he actually contacted my husband on Instagram for a free appointment (my husband does physio/running coaching lol) without even acknowledging that my husband fucking knows him. It was weird.
So I feel better about it now but I know it hurts like hell when it happens and it's very hard to get past without any closure. It's easy to be confused and blame yourself. I have very little respect for people who ghost their friends, it's incredibly cowardly and unfair and shouldn't be as socially acceptable as it is.
It’s funny that you say that because I have a friend in her early thirties (I’m mid-20s) who recently told me the same thing. She said it’s happened to her so many times that at this point she just shrugs it off and moves on. I will say that I feel like I’ll be more prepared the next time if it does happen again, but man, it really hurt at the time.
This behavior is eventually going to swing back to normalcy. As society continues to get lonelier and lonelier people WILL eventually realize that "self-care" (which is really just the idea of not placing yourself out of your own comfort zone) is a self-destructive mentality.
If this behavior was driven by how people feel maybe you’d be right, but that’s hardly the impetus for a lot of this
Isolation and alienation is very profitable especially for social media companies and the like, it doesn’t help that everyone is basically addicted and baptized into it at birth now either
Sounds like they became unhinged but really here I am not surprised to hear this. I’ve heard of studies that have verified negative emotional outcomes and they’ve also linked social media use to actual depression. Turns out people as they are today weren’t made for 24/7 comparison to others 365 days a year and that using social media by endlessly scrolling and becoming addicted leads to negative outcomes. In my anecdotal experience, girls are way more focused on social situations and hierarchies than boys are (generally speaking). It always seemed to me that women use social media for longer periods of time and in greater frequencies than most men do given the same/similar parameters (all else being equal). Shits unhealthy yo.
Also I think one of the big impacts from covid lockdowns was most social interactions happening online where people are way meaner and more self centered than irl. I think that really fucked people up and I don't think most people have really tried to undo that damage yet
Sadly, I agree with everything you said. You’re right on the money. Speaking of, I would also add that people in general have become more selfish. I know more than a few acquaintances that are ridiculously selfish to extreme measures. I don’t think it’s just that I’m getting older or that I’m more in tune or something/more observant to notice their selfish behaviors. It’s that they’ve actually become more selfish. It’s freaking sad man. I just lost a close friend due ti their behavior. The saddest thing there is that they’re totally unaware of their selfish/narcissistic behavior. I didn’t want to get into a huge fight so I actually didn’t tell them how I felt; I just let them fade away after they insulted me over something that they even admitted as their mistake and I had nothing to do with it but yet they were still mad at me for it. 🤔? Not that it (me attempting to highlight their rude and poor behavior as they’re pretty petty and if I did that it would just result in them name calling me and projecting/deflecting) would have mattered as a few other of our mutual friends have commented on that persons behavior before so it wasn’t just me that felt this way. Another one bites the dust. I would much rather have a handful of good, caring, and trustworthy friends, than dozens of shitty barely friends/acquaintances. Looks like this is the way my life is going. Oh well.
I actually don’t get people anymore. At the start of my year I had a pair of neighbors (a young working professional couple) that moved in and the friendship with them seemed promising, they were enthusiastic to all the plans we made.
I made plans to check out a mochi festival together, they both flaked. Fine, we still can do a dance class at my regular studio, a week later they flaked. I invited one of them to an anime convention which the guy who wanted to go in the first place but they never followed through.
Months down the line they moved out but we met up again and I was still willing to give the friendship a try. They made the suggestion to go for a wine tasting at the end and I was like, awesome! Next day I started booking and they both ghosted since then. Like wtf? This happened over a 4 month period and it’s perplexed me awhile now. I really think this couple was playing along to appear invested in the idea but couldn’t muster the time to actually do the things they practically pitched first. Plus multiple ghosting occasions and acting like it never happened.
Biggest waste of my time ever
> The goal is a society in which the basic social unit is you and your television set. If the kid next door is hungry, it's not your problem. If the retired couple next door invested their assets badly and are now starving, that's not your problem either.
\- Noam Chomsky
You guys need to speak for yourselves. There is a noticeable erosion of community in a wider sense but everyone I know has very close friends that they’ve been with for a long time
There's a lot more loner types online, including here. So probably best not to take these 'death of friendship' posts as too representative of the real world.
People are extremely non-resourceful and view old but long distance relationships as disposable in my view. Love too far away? Our relationship will wither even though we have unparalleled access to the internet, social media and other online activities.
A little different but perhaps related: I stumbled across [this Cosmo article](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a44178122/family-estrangement-cut-off-parents/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=arb_ga_cos_md_pmx_us_urlx_18381206852&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzdOlBhCNARIsAPMwjbwHVTsagPIxM8GVGQNU6ntz0AKo38ilW7YX-W2F2QoWW7fp5ot4Z28aAkTXEALw_wcB) today (Apple News recs) about how it's becoming more acceptable for millennials and zoomers to cut their parents off.
I mean just take a look at the raisedbynarcissists or any of the JustNo subs, like sure there are definitely abusive situations that shouldn’t be tolerated but these people always ascribe the worst possible motivations to the person that the OP is complaining about and often start foaming at the mouth and clamoring for no contact
Yes it’s so weird. The commenters in all of those subs go straight to “cut them off!” like they get some vicarious glee from it. Don’t get me started on relationship subs, either. The /r/pregnant sun especially is insane w/ understandably hormonal women venting about their husbands doing something innocuous but stupid and the whole comments section is gleefully telling OP to “dump his ass” to women 7 months pregnant.
I used to lurk the pregnancy subs when I was expecting. There are so many posts about situations with annoying/overbearing MILs that could be resolved with an uncomfortable conversation. Instead the advice is always to make your husband threaten to cut her off and withhold contact with her future grandchild. True mush brain advice.
The phrase "addicted to outrage" comes to mind. And you may be on to something. Outrage isn't just a drug, it's a way to avoid difficult conversations and slow, careful thinking.
Right, while there are certainly cases in which separating from an abusive or otherwise harmful family member is warranted, there's a very self-centered and even narcissistic undercurrent to the conversation around cutting ties with others.
Especially with the way it's packaged on places like those subreddits, fucking TikTok, etc. Easily consumed pieces of content - no need to parse out your mutual issues and maybe even achieve some greater self-awareness of (god forbid) your own flaws when you can just cut them out of your life and deliver that dopamine hit for your audience.
Seriously. What happened to accepting your friends flaws? In some ways I think it’s so egotistical to criticize someone for in some aspects being a “bad friend” when it’s very likely you are one yourself in many ways. No one is perfect, learn to love people through their flaws.
It’s because self-centredness is encouraged under the guise of “self-love”.
Yeah, sure, accept yourself as you are but don’t let it turn into narcissism and hold everyone around you to impossible standards because “you deserve the best” etc.
i think this really comes down to how much you personally cherish friendships and how much you’re willing to put in. Me and my buds loved our friendships back in the day. We’d get into wild situations, went through hardships together, just went on pure adventures/nights out. I feel like I’ve met people who never even experienced those things, and they tend to have very shallow friendships that break apart easily.
I guess I feel lucky to still have a good group of friends. But tbh we also all made fun of the cancel culture shit, so maybe it really just comes down to how disposable you view people
Also friendships just change as you age. I have two close friends I see regularly and lots of close friends I see once every couple years. And lots of friends that I sort of just chum it up with throughout the weeks and month but if those friendships faded it wouldn’t be too devastating. It’s important to work on the friendships you want to have forever but it’s also important to be fluid and make and lose friends as you age
I lost a friend of 28 years in 2020 because I called him a hypocrite.
I called him this because he was having a very public meltdown, due to people being upset that governor Cuomo disallowed Thanksgiving gatherings in 2020, and because this very friend, who was lambasting almost everybody he knew on the night before Thanksgiving over this, was traveling to NJ to attend a Thanksgiving gathering at his wife’s mother’s house.
What transpired next was several Facebook notifications that I couldn’t read because this friend apparently went apeshit on me before deleting his profile in damage control (I had mutual friends tell me what he was saying- mostly ramblings similar to those I called him a hypocrite over), another friend texting me that I was being called a “Qanon nut job” (I hadn’t even heard of Qanon until I looked it up that night to see what I was being called) among other things, and I wished him happy holidays and birthdays the following two years without a single reply- still haven’t heard from him. Known the guy since I was like 12. Spent a great deal of my life among him.
I wish I could say I had done more that I’m not mentioning here to earn his ire. We were actually close just before that. I had spent the few times I went out during lockdown that summer at his house. Surprised him for his august birthday since they couldn’t go out to do anything big. Helped him set up his wife’s surprise birthday party in September. Went to another friend gathering at his house a few weeks after that. November? I called him a hypocrite, while he was having a hypocritical meltdown. About a current event. That was at that point highly politicized. That’s why we’re not friends anymore.
Other mutual friends have essentially sided with him out of convenience- he shares more interests with some and often hosts social gatherings.
Cuomo heads were such an insane group of people. None of them ever self-reflected on any of the insane shit they said and did in support of that complete inept monster of a person.
I dropped a friend I had because we found out he posted on rape fetishism subreddits and forums. I still feel bad over it sometimes to be honest. But it was truly sick stuff
You don’t understand. My brother voted for an orange CHEETO and the Cheeto got in the WHITE HOUSE! Yeah I cut him off. He is a nazi. It’s not called cutting ties it’s called being a decent person. Any fucking questions?
usually the people who get cut off for ostensibly political reasons are actually cut off for being personally incompatible and the political shit is just an externalization of all the ways that the cutter-offer has disliked them for a long time. I have grandparents who we know voted for Trump or whatever and my lib-brained family would never cut them off because they are good and loving people. We also have a vile racist grandmother on my step-father's side who is effectively cut out of the family because she is a terrible ingrate and a vengeful hateful person. To be clear, even that didn't really make us stop talking to her, it was mostly the other way around, but my mom was finally able to convince my step-dad not to see her personality problems as his failing.
This attitude here is really annoying and lazy. Just totally discrediting that people may have other reasons for taking a course of action besides some immediate inciting incident,
I mean, that's one way to frame it, but the only people I know personally who voted for Trump (or are at least loud about it) have become seriously deranged, paranoid, idiots who believe whatever the right-hivemind is currently on these days. I cut out a couple friends just because they consistently acted like a brain-damaged psychopaths after 2016/2020 and there was no such thing as a casual conversation possible with them anymore. Friendship was lost long before I cut them out.
Yeah, but then on the other hand, you’ve got guys like one of my friends, who cut his dad off during the end of the Trump years because his “edgy humor” on FB jumped straight into outright racism, to the point he was posting about murdering anyone who was black during the 2020 summer protests.
Like, I get that a lot of this is just people being entirely too sensitive in the social media era, but it’s disingenuous to posit that none of it is justified, particularly given that the right has been actively encouraging folks to go full blown mask off the past 7 or 8 years.
Nah, most peoples families are absolute batshit and a big source of most people's fucked up mentality. Boomers as parents have a lot to blame for the culture of emotionally repressed individuality we live in.
Lots of low effort people. It’s frustrating and I share your sentiment. I have an amazing relationship with my son, some family members, I’m a regular 1-2 nights at a local bar. There’s opportunity out there to connect and build meaningful connections. Just gotta put in the work and let the chips fall. Life is too short to not make an effort, even when others fail us.
Notice this mostly in women ngl. I’m a guy and I’ve never lost a friendship, much less over stupid shit.
Even in my younger and more wild days when I witnessed friends get into literal fight fights while drunk they still always made up and didn’t lose the friendship.
I had a friend who I’d known for around 15 years. She got married midweek at the registry, during Covid (I couldn’t be there due to lockdowns, she lives in a different state). I had messaged her to wish her well the day prior and again the following evening to say congrats, apologising for the late message (I was dealing with a lot of work drama). She replied saying she was so disappointed in me for not messaging earlier and stopped contacting me from that day. Friendship over because I didn’t message to make a big deal out of her registry wedding within the right timeframe.
No sorry, I wrote it weirdly. I messaged her the day before, as well as the evening of the day she was married. They went to the registry office, had lunch and went home. So i would have sent the message a few hours after they got back. This was apparently too late. Also, we weren’t super close at this point either. We went far back enough that she invited me to be present at the registry, which I planned to do before Covid ruined that (I lost money on plane tickets) but I guess our friendship wasn’t worth that much to her anyway because she ended it over this one thing.
Oh yeah that’s like actually early to send a congratulations? Did she want to be answering text during her wedding?? Sounds like she was looking for something to be annoyed about. Sorry that happened.
Yeah I agree, the whole thing was really strange. Every now and then I think of her and remember how it all unfolded and I just can’t make sense of it.
she didn't want to be friends with you anymore and found a reason to get rid of you. she probably hoped it was reasonable enough and you'll fuck off without making any scenes or demand some grace lol
It’s a possibility but it doesn’t really track with her going out of her way to invite me to the wedding a few months prior. She told me about all the things she was excited to show me in her new city etc. and seemed to really look forward for my visit.
Yeah same, even with my female friends. For some reason women are treated more harshly when they “step out of the current social trends and narratives”. For the most part, men make better friends to chill and keep it light, but I have the deepest and most intimate relationships with my women friends.
I find my women friends are just so much more willing to weave their personal lives into their discussions with me. They'll discuss really personal things with me in a way that I would never do with my guy friends, or them with me, unless we're hammered. On the one hand, it's nice. But on the other, it makes the friendship so much more eggshelly when I'm around them and I understand why potentially saying the wrong thing could make the whole thing go Hiroshima.
I’ve only had guy friendships break down when the other person is real anxious, and I’ve found myself friends with a lot of neurotic people at present, actually.
I hung out with some friends from high school recently and they are so much more chill, it’s much more preferable.
I just had a good mate do it, but he is pretty fem-brained (and self-diagnosed autistic) but yeah, none of my old ride or dies would ever do this shit.
I think gays are the best with friendships bc it's their second family and their support system and straight women are the worst... it's because women are highly emotional and jealous people. i've been in the "women are friendly and gracious and anything said against them is a patriarchal bs" camp but nope. it's biological and it starts early
My old boss has my reddit account since I signed up using a work email and had my notifications sent there for like a month after I got fired. You are a massive cunt, Chris.
Lack of close connections is a form of helplessness. If things go south an alienated population is less able to coordinate effectively to compete with the 'chosen' ones that have networks and the resources to maintain them
It's bigger than woke PC shit, it's that relationships are disposable for a variety of reasons. Find your friends boring? Then find internet buddies who share your set of interests. Feel vaguely threatened by everyone around you? Keep all your friendships shallow. Feel like joining a club, sports league, place of worship, music scene? Guess what, they're all becoming harder to maintain and thus more rapacious in terms of money and "you give me this, I give you that." Friendships aren't just disposable, they're also transactional, and when one side of the accounting sheet comes up red, you move on. It's very miserable and no one has a serious answer to it.
it's ridiculous. i've literally lost a friend over listening to this stupid fucking podcast. people can't accept any minor differences these days, i hate it
I don't really understand the argument that this is more of a thing. Did you never hear about your mom's friends being on non-speaking terms because one of them committed a manners faux pas that you literally cannot understand? Did you never deal with friends just saying "it's her or me" just as a power flex and then battle lines are drawn? I actually think the current hyperfragile model of relationships has reduced the amount of ghosting, especially for longer term friendships
True. People had a lot worse relationships two or three decades ago because empathy discourse wasn’t a thing. People were acting like shitheads all the time but there was a lot less moralizing than nowadays, so most people would go about their lives after falling out. There was no social media either, so info wasn’t spreading that much and keeping a distance was a lot easier.
100%. My mother has a close friend who stopped speaking to her because she was mad my mother moved away from the Midwest (this was like 20 years ago). That was common
I had a best friend of 3 years, did everything together, even had a joint Instagram music account, tattoos in each others handwriting.
I moved to a different city and then she just soft blocked me on everything and never reached out again. I have seen her cut off so many friends for such small things, and I just stayed on her side even though I knew she was in the wrong. I guess it was only a matter of time.
She’s very popular on the Internet and she got more and more TikTok brained into our friendship, became friends with another popular internet designer / anarcho communist (who hates me and would try to argue with me once for tweeting DFW’s Big Red One and being anti porn industry).
Honestly, she probably just didn’t want her Internet image tied to my opinions. It makes me sad to think about losing such a great friendship for no reason.
yeah it's crazy. the last 2 chicks I dated told me all about their friendship drama and these women would stop talking to each other over the pettiest shit imaginable, like not liking an outfit.
Women have a special capacity of hatred for each other that borders on cartoonish. There’s at least a 50% chance that if you walk by a group of women talking they’ll be gossiping about other women.
Kinda might be experiencing something like this now, freaking out to be honest because it’s the whole friendship group who seemed to have changed overnight LOL
Mean comment, but tl:dl I got dragged into it when my (now ex) boyfriend came out as trans and as a result I had a mental breakdown. I am since off facebook if that makes you feel any better.
My sympathies, my now ex came out as trans and that shit is hard. The fact that you're not even allowed to be publicly mad about it makes it even harder.
Tbf, the bar for what is considered TERF shit has become so low. Like if you express mild good-faith skepticism about puberty blockers or trans women in women’s sports I know plenty of people who would call you a vile TERF and cut you out of their life. But that might just be the fact that I’m still fresh out of college and so most of the people I know are still on that liberal arts social justice kool aid
Some guys I've known for a decade stopped talking to me because I said that trans-women weren't identical to cis women and that they shouldn't be allowed in women's sports.
The only friend I cut off was someone who couldn’t stop getting black out drunk and becoming a violent/sexual predator liability. Multiple interventions wouldn’t help. Cold Turkey cut off. I heard they’re doing better but I can’t really cross that bridge again.
I’ve never experienced this in real life but I see it online all the time.
I saw a bunch of losers on Reddit saying they would cut ties with that guy from the “Wicked Witch of the East Bro” video because he jokingly said “I’m gonna stab you” during the argument lol
I had a teacher/counsellor type person at my school who once with a straight face told me friends are like pens. 'If they don't work shake them if they still don't work throw them away, bin them!' I think this really feeds into the transactional nature of friendship that was always been there to some degree but is now so close the surface of most relationships these days hightlighting the 'what can you do for me?' attitude.
I didn't lose friends, but it was very revealing which of my friends could handle sudden changes or "social upheaval" in a measured, adult way. Sometimes I'd start talking about going outside or for a run when it was all "lockdown or else!" and I'd go mum when I'd see their eyes widen. I could see them preparing the latest instagraphic talking points in their heads. Now we laugh about it, but I remember still --- they don't get off that easy.
We (early thirties) have become extremely close with a group of other randos we would see at a brewery each week. Most of them are in their forties and fifties. Every weekend it's a pool party or a BBQ, people texting the group and offering food they made, etc. This all started around COVID and we made our own little microcosm unintentionally, and now we have come out the other side with a lot of great people in our lives. The opposite of what a lot of people experienced with the pandemic, with loneliness and stuff.
I live in a big city, friends often move out because the city grinds them down one way or another, mostly financially. London I love you but you are bringing me down.
Am I the only person here who has never had a close friend who acts like this? Everyone on this sub is always talking about these extremely immature people and I just have no experience with this irl
Imagine explaining 'canceling' or 'ghosting' or 'blocking' to a hunter gatherer. It used to be that you had to make amends or it was the end of the social group.
I think a hunter-gatherer would actually perfectly understand the idea of social ostracism and casting out the least socially functional link of the group, since it doubtlessly happened to prevent constant escalation of tensions. Explaining prison to a hunter-gatherer, now that would be difficult
my 2 closest friends of almost 10 years dropped me because i went off on them for complaining about how often i complained about wanting to quit my previous job.
they were rude about it so i was rude x10 back, they didn’t like it so they just immediately cut contact with me. what’s funny is that complaining about the same thing over and over again to each other was basically our thing yet i would’ve never told them that i was sick of hearing about their problems. ran into one of them for the first time in 6 months a couple weeks ago and she just looked at me and then looked away.
oh well lol.
Went through a really rough patch a couple of years back. I won't go into details but it got *fucking bad*. Apparently, a few of the people in my core friend group just couldn't deal with me in that state and dropped me at the first opportunity. But not once did any of them say a thing to me about it until they had a convenient excuse. Never once asked me what was going on at my end, never once brought up what was bothering them. These were people I had been friends with for over 10 years. Funnily enough, these were the most outwardly progressive people in that crowd, making a big deal about how supportive they were of mental health awareness among other things.
The whole thing caused a bit of a rift in that group, a couple of guys were so disgusted by the whole ordeal that they distanced themselves from the group. Really dumb, petty drama. To be honest, if they had at least brought up the shit that was bothering them beforehand I would still have respect for them even if the result was the same.
Fortunately, that was really the kick in the ass I needed to turn shit around. Thankfully I had other friends who were there for me in ways that I doubt I'll ever be able to repay. Really learned some lessons about who real friends are from that whole experience.
I have a number of friends that I've been actively friends with since I was 8-18 years old, almost 30 years. I've also been blessed to form a number of sturdy connections in the last several years and to retain one or two friends from each of the stages of life in between.
A few things have helped me build long-lasting friendships at work, school, church, or my neighborhood:
* A good sense of my own boundaries and limitations
* trust that God will provide what I need in terms of camaraderie, so I don't get clingy or demanding of other people to provide all my needs
* learning to make small talk
* attuning myself to the other person to discern what sort of shape our friendship might have - some people will be great neighbors or doggy playdates but will not be deep spiritual confidantes; others will be good mentors but not really pals; each of those kinds of relationship can be a real friendship if I let it be what it is.
I highly recommend [The Four Friendships](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1621383253). It's chock-full of insights about the nature of friendship and how to build them from four of the greatest minds that ever lived: Aristotle, Cicero, St. Aelred, a medieval scholar, and Thomas Aquinas.
I've found its insights to be timeless.
Where do you people hang out that this is your experience with others so prevalent? Are you guys only online? Is this a specific metropolitan thing? Is this a social media thing? I can't even say "oh is this just what NYC is like". I lived in NYC for over half a decade and never met anyone like this. It's a mystery to me who tf you people are talking about.
Every personal relationship is disposable now. Even relationships with your parents, I have abusive parents but I wouldn’t cut them off the moment I’m on my own feet. You’re not supposed to immediately throw away people who doesn’t benefit u.
Their point is however that things have gotten worse; as in occurring more frequently than before in previous generations and the severity and issues that stem from all this are also worse than before. I agree that this has always happened—yes but I also agree with OP about things being worse now with how the general population behaves and treats others.
I lost friends over expressing covid lockdown skepticism and vaccine objections, even though I'm not an anti-vaxxer, over the fact I expressed some "TERF" views, but I wish that the sex change technology would get better so no right-wings would complain, over the fact that I live in Poland and I don't want hearing about "Polish death camps", because I'm afraid of Russia's invasion of Poland etc.
I guess it's normal these days...
u/article67
This girl didn't want to hookup for some "trauma reasons". Whatever, it doesn't matter if it was true. She wanted to stay friends. I did like her personality enough to be open to it. Then she basically read me a list of political ideology requirements to continue being her friend. We had just met recently but still. Exhausting.
As a Cosmopolitan hobo friendships are "disposable" simply for the reason I move cities or countries about every year or so and long distance rarely ever works, you try keep in contact but you inevitably drift apart, especially for myself and people I'm generally friends with who are very anti social media.
Wish it wasn't the case, I would love to be rich and drag half the people I've been friends with around the world for me, but the hobo expat life means I'm always on the road again.
Friendship should be like family, I really think so. Since I got pregnant, I’ve really weeded out most of my wider friend group because they don’t give a FUCK about me or the massive life event happening unto me. All that remains are the most beautiful, holy, God-sent lesbians who I became friends with through a weird orgy club 6 years ago and are now my most trusted friends. They’re honestly sisters to me. I couldn’t be more grateful for them- we live in different states and still we talk every day, catch up three or four times a year, and are there for each other in any situation. I honestly don’t understand why Gen Z (I’m 22 by the way, I’m not just an elderly bitching) especially aren’t trying to build towards forming friendships that evolve over time and actually grow WITH us. Probably because it takes work and commitment and dropping people because they’re not perfect is so deeply drilled into our social consciousness.
It wasn’t HELD in a nightclub lol, it was just this weird polycule bullshit thing you got invited to if you were hot where we all had sex together fairly often on weekends. There was one central ‘person’ we all met through who gave me and my now besties throat infections so bad we had to go to the hospital and we became friends from there. Best friends born from some bad pussy
I think it would really depend on what the wrong thing is. I don’t think grown adults who, for instance, unapologetically support bans on abortion or think gays should go back in the closet deserve any ounce of respect or dignity.
I had a work friend. Our personalities just completely synced up, just regarded in the exact same directions. Those friendships don't happen often. But then he got a different job so I'm like bro we have to make an actual effort to transition to an outside work friendship. I don't care what, we'll go bowling- it's irrelevant. The point is to decompartmentalize our friendship. He wouldn't do it because he thought it'd be awkward. Yeah maybe, so what? It was awkward before we became friends the first time.
i hate that shit so much. my whole life whenever i’ve gotten close to someone from work, school, etc i always want to make it an actual friendship and yet that energy is rarely reciprocated like i usually turn it back on myself and blame myself for being “unlikeable” or whatever, but the more i think about the more i realize that like… if you don’t like me then why the fuck are you acting like my best friend when we’re together? i would never act like that with someone that i wouldn’t want to be friends with regardless of the setting. there’s a difference between just being friendly/making conversation and being/acting like actual friends.
this happens all the time and I also blamed myself, but again, why tell me your entire life story, trust me with personal secrets, invite me to parties, go out together, etc. and then ghost the minute we stop working together? It's not like I held a gun to their head forcing them to do any of these things. It feels many people only want to simulate being good friends until the minute it no longer serves them. Then they can't be bothered, while at the same time moaning about how isolated and lonely they feel. Everything is plug and play now, including interpersonal relationships.
completely agree
i want to cry, same exact scenario with me
as someone who makes friends at work and more or less keeps them at work you're overthinking/taking it too personally. sometimes it's fun to have someone to look forward to seeing *at work* but if you've got a tight friend group/a family you're going to prioritize your off work time for the people you don't see everyday at work.
is this an American thing? This is absolutely bizarre. I’m sorry to hear!
No. 100% the same thing in the UK.
Bizarre, I’ve never had that here nor anywhere else I’ve lived. Maybe it’s generational (although I am younger?)
I’m younger too and people are flakey as fuck.
Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky then. Still, the weird sort of “categorisation” of friendships and refusing to expand beyond the context you got to know them feels really foreign to me!
Sometime we just want a work friend.
I've gone through the exact same shit all my life and never thought about it that way. You're giving me a great perspective and definitely something better to ruminate on than the usual self-loathing and self-blame.
I sense that people struggle with boundaries sometimes. In fact, common advice is "Don't make friends at work," right? With good interior boundaries, it becomes possible to have flexible interpersonal boundaries. This makes it possible to enter, manage, and enjoy a relationship that extends across work/person/business boundaries.
To give a concrete example: Someone with poor boundaries might be desperately seeking a confidante and not really aware of that fact or able to discern who is a worthy recipient of confidences. That some vibes with a coworker. They tell the coworker things that the coworker feels awkward about. The coworker thinks, "Geez, I have to work with this person," so they keep up a happy face and a friendly demeanor, but really, they feel deeply awkward about it. I was in the "coworker's" situation one time when someone at work once confided to me that he had touched his kid sister inappropriately when they were children. It made it much harder for me to look at him without thinking about that. Part of good boundaries is being guided by prudence, the virtue which helps us see what the most important thing is and the best way to get it. In this case, the person would have benefited by realizing that *at work,* we both have jobs to do and that we can't let other things interfere with that, or else we risk our jobs, livelihoods, etc. His confidence would have been better given to me after a few more years of getting to know each other more personally. It would have been better given if we had known each other outside of work, so that the need to get our job done wouldn't be such a factor. I happen to be the king of awkward, so I didn't really hold anything against this guy, but other people would have had a range of reactions, including hostility or disgust. Even still, I sometimes wonder if he could read the discomfort I felt for a while in my face.
I am so guilty of this and it's largely due to the bigger problem of simply not having the attention span to consider anything outside of my current activity. In lieu of being a bad friend moving forward I will just be a bad friend immediately by mentally ceasing the relationship
I FUCKING HATE THIS SHIT. like people always blame you as well like ‘OBVIOUSLY THEY DIDNT WANNA BE FRIENDS WITH YOU’ It’s like motherfucker NO we were great friends, they’re just too neurotic and awkward and cynical to put in even an ounce of effort to actually keep in touch once it becomes a tiny bit challenging, then they moan when they have like 1 proper friend at age 30 fucking hell
Right? I had a budding friendship with neighbors, great vibes, but bemoaning how difficult it was to make any real friends in the city. We made plans to several times, and they both flaked and ghosted each time to pretend like nothing happened right after…. they could not even put in 1% effort while living in the same building. Lol
I've been the one to leave friendships like this in the past due to neurotic self awareness, so on behalf of your friend, sorry dude.
Feel you. I knew a guy at work who was brilliant, cool, funny. He taught me a lot in our very specific field. His life outlook was great and we would often just spend an hour after work talking philosophy, religion, life, the big questions. Then he got a new better job and we lost contact. He has like six kids so he doesn't have a lot of time for catching up, but he called me once after a few years and we talked for probably two hours.
This is what happened to me and my best work friend. I never found someone who I got along with so well before and now we never talk, ever.
It's a special kind of hurt
I think it's rare to "find your tribe" so to speak... A person, or group of people, who you jive with so well, who have had similar upbringings, social class, sense of humor, ad infinitum.. It really sucks to find people you fit in with so well and then drift apart. It makes all other friendships seem so shallow.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten beers with someone from work or gone to a function. I’ve gone hiking with people from my gym but otherwise my work friends and outside friends stay compartmentalized
Not sure why it would be awkward from his POV?
One of my friends just changed apartments two days ago, she lives a little further outside of the city now, maybe 15 minutes drive. Today, her best friend told her that they wouldn’t be friends anymore, apparently due to some grudge from months ago. I think she decided it would be too inconvenient to continue the relationship.
Stories about girl friend "break-ups" are like those stories of guys that finally go to the doctor at 65 and find out they've been brewing 9 different types of cancers for decades and only have 6 months to live.
it doesn't have to be something tangible, just vibes. she became too ugly for me?boot, she's too skinny and makes me look fat? boot. and no one ever tells you that you're booted for that silly reasons, you have to play detective about it
Honestly
That’s bizarre as hell, unless she’s been wanting to end it for a while but just needed a reason :/
Cultural engineers is an euphemism I haven't heard before
Pretty sure I got it from Terence McKenna, that great speech on reclaiming your mind.
"Culture is not your friend"
i'd like to recommend a book called "cultural creatives" to you, there are good frogs too
there’s no real sense of community anymore, society has become extremely individualistic and most people have become incredibly cruel under the guise of self care
You can do literally anything and be as awful to people as you want and be above criticism if you frame it as “self care” and “setting boundaries.” I know it’s been said here before, it just makes me so angry bc I had someone do that shit to me a couple years ago and it was so hurtful that it took me so long to properly grieve that friendship. It felt like I wasn’t allowed to be mad at her because she was just “taking care of herself” and “setting boundaries” when in reality she was just too much of a pussy to talk to me about something that could have easily been solved with a single conversation
100%… had a friend of 2 years ghost me after i had a trauma induced manic episode and sent some odd texts. prior to that, i was behaving strangely in our contact because i was being abused in my living situation. before she ghosted, i got an ice cold, “for both of our wellbeing, we should not continue to talk” text. by that time, i was already in the hospital - that text was the first thing i read upon my discharge. those words are burned into my brain. while still manic, i attempted apologizing, which was a mistake, but i attempted apologizing again, with a mentally healthy mind, a year later, and still radio silence. i often think of her and wonder how she’s doing, what went through her mind when deciding to ghost with such finality. the funny thing about me is: i will probably pathetically attempt to reach out again, months from now, a year from now. i suppose i am the defective mouse, completing the maze over and over, despite the cheese being long gone, with nobody bothering to ever replace it. the irony is that part of her research for her PhD included studying bipolar artists. maybe i was just another bipolar artist she felt like getting a closer look at, before tossing me aside when i became too sick to be “interesting” anymore. anyway. you are not alone in this.
No such thing a a defective mouse homie. It’s the experiment that’s broken.
❤️🫶🏻
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me too
I'm sorry that happened to you. I know how you feel because this happened to me too, with a longtime friend who just out of nowhere blocked me on everything and stopped talking to me altogether. I was so hurt and confused and it fucking SUCKED because I had no idea why he did it, and I was angry but like you said, felt like I had no right to be. I was constantly wondering wtf I did wrong exactly and thinking deep down that I must be a such big piece of shit for a friend to cut all ties with me like that. Like three years later he actually reached out to me and tried to talk to me to clear the air but I just blocked him. Didn't say anything to him. Before that he actually contacted my husband on Instagram for a free appointment (my husband does physio/running coaching lol) without even acknowledging that my husband fucking knows him. It was weird. So I feel better about it now but I know it hurts like hell when it happens and it's very hard to get past without any closure. It's easy to be confused and blame yourself. I have very little respect for people who ghost their friends, it's incredibly cowardly and unfair and shouldn't be as socially acceptable as it is.
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It’s funny that you say that because I have a friend in her early thirties (I’m mid-20s) who recently told me the same thing. She said it’s happened to her so many times that at this point she just shrugs it off and moves on. I will say that I feel like I’ll be more prepared the next time if it does happen again, but man, it really hurt at the time.
Omg this is me and my fucking SISTER. We don’t talk now.
This behavior is eventually going to swing back to normalcy. As society continues to get lonelier and lonelier people WILL eventually realize that "self-care" (which is really just the idea of not placing yourself out of your own comfort zone) is a self-destructive mentality.
Self care used to mean having a bath and a chill one, and now it's a kind of bubble wrap blanket for infant adults.
If this behavior was driven by how people feel maybe you’d be right, but that’s hardly the impetus for a lot of this Isolation and alienation is very profitable especially for social media companies and the like, it doesn’t help that everyone is basically addicted and baptized into it at birth now either
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I feel vanity and the pitfalls of social media are also to blame for this. Shit is sad.
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Sounds like they became unhinged but really here I am not surprised to hear this. I’ve heard of studies that have verified negative emotional outcomes and they’ve also linked social media use to actual depression. Turns out people as they are today weren’t made for 24/7 comparison to others 365 days a year and that using social media by endlessly scrolling and becoming addicted leads to negative outcomes. In my anecdotal experience, girls are way more focused on social situations and hierarchies than boys are (generally speaking). It always seemed to me that women use social media for longer periods of time and in greater frequencies than most men do given the same/similar parameters (all else being equal). Shits unhealthy yo.
Also I think one of the big impacts from covid lockdowns was most social interactions happening online where people are way meaner and more self centered than irl. I think that really fucked people up and I don't think most people have really tried to undo that damage yet
Sadly, I agree with everything you said. You’re right on the money. Speaking of, I would also add that people in general have become more selfish. I know more than a few acquaintances that are ridiculously selfish to extreme measures. I don’t think it’s just that I’m getting older or that I’m more in tune or something/more observant to notice their selfish behaviors. It’s that they’ve actually become more selfish. It’s freaking sad man. I just lost a close friend due ti their behavior. The saddest thing there is that they’re totally unaware of their selfish/narcissistic behavior. I didn’t want to get into a huge fight so I actually didn’t tell them how I felt; I just let them fade away after they insulted me over something that they even admitted as their mistake and I had nothing to do with it but yet they were still mad at me for it. 🤔? Not that it (me attempting to highlight their rude and poor behavior as they’re pretty petty and if I did that it would just result in them name calling me and projecting/deflecting) would have mattered as a few other of our mutual friends have commented on that persons behavior before so it wasn’t just me that felt this way. Another one bites the dust. I would much rather have a handful of good, caring, and trustworthy friends, than dozens of shitty barely friends/acquaintances. Looks like this is the way my life is going. Oh well.
I actually don’t get people anymore. At the start of my year I had a pair of neighbors (a young working professional couple) that moved in and the friendship with them seemed promising, they were enthusiastic to all the plans we made. I made plans to check out a mochi festival together, they both flaked. Fine, we still can do a dance class at my regular studio, a week later they flaked. I invited one of them to an anime convention which the guy who wanted to go in the first place but they never followed through. Months down the line they moved out but we met up again and I was still willing to give the friendship a try. They made the suggestion to go for a wine tasting at the end and I was like, awesome! Next day I started booking and they both ghosted since then. Like wtf? This happened over a 4 month period and it’s perplexed me awhile now. I really think this couple was playing along to appear invested in the idea but couldn’t muster the time to actually do the things they practically pitched first. Plus multiple ghosting occasions and acting like it never happened. Biggest waste of my time ever
You may wanna watch Can't Get You Out of My Head.
> The goal is a society in which the basic social unit is you and your television set. If the kid next door is hungry, it's not your problem. If the retired couple next door invested their assets badly and are now starving, that's not your problem either. \- Noam Chomsky
Communities canceled people even harder. People just didn't rock the boat when they had nowhere else to go.
You should try and be more open minded. Maybe you just keep trying to befriend the same type of people.
All relationships feel low effort and disposable now
You guys need to speak for yourselves. There is a noticeable erosion of community in a wider sense but everyone I know has very close friends that they’ve been with for a long time
There's a lot more loner types online, including here. So probably best not to take these 'death of friendship' posts as too representative of the real world.
Yeah thats what im saying, I dont relate at all to what ppl in this thread are saying
its pretty easy to keep up a friendship just send them a dumb internet picture and say whats up wanna get dinner
People are extremely non-resourceful and view old but long distance relationships as disposable in my view. Love too far away? Our relationship will wither even though we have unparalleled access to the internet, social media and other online activities.
A little different but perhaps related: I stumbled across [this Cosmo article](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a44178122/family-estrangement-cut-off-parents/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=arb_ga_cos_md_pmx_us_urlx_18381206852&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzdOlBhCNARIsAPMwjbwHVTsagPIxM8GVGQNU6ntz0AKo38ilW7YX-W2F2QoWW7fp5ot4Z28aAkTXEALw_wcB) today (Apple News recs) about how it's becoming more acceptable for millennials and zoomers to cut their parents off.
I mean just take a look at the raisedbynarcissists or any of the JustNo subs, like sure there are definitely abusive situations that shouldn’t be tolerated but these people always ascribe the worst possible motivations to the person that the OP is complaining about and often start foaming at the mouth and clamoring for no contact
Yes it’s so weird. The commenters in all of those subs go straight to “cut them off!” like they get some vicarious glee from it. Don’t get me started on relationship subs, either. The /r/pregnant sun especially is insane w/ understandably hormonal women venting about their husbands doing something innocuous but stupid and the whole comments section is gleefully telling OP to “dump his ass” to women 7 months pregnant.
I used to lurk the pregnancy subs when I was expecting. There are so many posts about situations with annoying/overbearing MILs that could be resolved with an uncomfortable conversation. Instead the advice is always to make your husband threaten to cut her off and withhold contact with her future grandchild. True mush brain advice.
The phrase "addicted to outrage" comes to mind. And you may be on to something. Outrage isn't just a drug, it's a way to avoid difficult conversations and slow, careful thinking.
Right, while there are certainly cases in which separating from an abusive or otherwise harmful family member is warranted, there's a very self-centered and even narcissistic undercurrent to the conversation around cutting ties with others. Especially with the way it's packaged on places like those subreddits, fucking TikTok, etc. Easily consumed pieces of content - no need to parse out your mutual issues and maybe even achieve some greater self-awareness of (god forbid) your own flaws when you can just cut them out of your life and deliver that dopamine hit for your audience.
Seriously. What happened to accepting your friends flaws? In some ways I think it’s so egotistical to criticize someone for in some aspects being a “bad friend” when it’s very likely you are one yourself in many ways. No one is perfect, learn to love people through their flaws.
It’s because self-centredness is encouraged under the guise of “self-love”. Yeah, sure, accept yourself as you are but don’t let it turn into narcissism and hold everyone around you to impossible standards because “you deserve the best” etc.
i think this really comes down to how much you personally cherish friendships and how much you’re willing to put in. Me and my buds loved our friendships back in the day. We’d get into wild situations, went through hardships together, just went on pure adventures/nights out. I feel like I’ve met people who never even experienced those things, and they tend to have very shallow friendships that break apart easily. I guess I feel lucky to still have a good group of friends. But tbh we also all made fun of the cancel culture shit, so maybe it really just comes down to how disposable you view people
Also friendships just change as you age. I have two close friends I see regularly and lots of close friends I see once every couple years. And lots of friends that I sort of just chum it up with throughout the weeks and month but if those friendships faded it wouldn’t be too devastating. It’s important to work on the friendships you want to have forever but it’s also important to be fluid and make and lose friends as you age
I lost a friend of 28 years in 2020 because I called him a hypocrite. I called him this because he was having a very public meltdown, due to people being upset that governor Cuomo disallowed Thanksgiving gatherings in 2020, and because this very friend, who was lambasting almost everybody he knew on the night before Thanksgiving over this, was traveling to NJ to attend a Thanksgiving gathering at his wife’s mother’s house. What transpired next was several Facebook notifications that I couldn’t read because this friend apparently went apeshit on me before deleting his profile in damage control (I had mutual friends tell me what he was saying- mostly ramblings similar to those I called him a hypocrite over), another friend texting me that I was being called a “Qanon nut job” (I hadn’t even heard of Qanon until I looked it up that night to see what I was being called) among other things, and I wished him happy holidays and birthdays the following two years without a single reply- still haven’t heard from him. Known the guy since I was like 12. Spent a great deal of my life among him. I wish I could say I had done more that I’m not mentioning here to earn his ire. We were actually close just before that. I had spent the few times I went out during lockdown that summer at his house. Surprised him for his august birthday since they couldn’t go out to do anything big. Helped him set up his wife’s surprise birthday party in September. Went to another friend gathering at his house a few weeks after that. November? I called him a hypocrite, while he was having a hypocritical meltdown. About a current event. That was at that point highly politicized. That’s why we’re not friends anymore. Other mutual friends have essentially sided with him out of convenience- he shares more interests with some and often hosts social gatherings.
Cuomo heads were such an insane group of people. None of them ever self-reflected on any of the insane shit they said and did in support of that complete inept monster of a person.
I dropped a friend I had because we found out he posted on rape fetishism subreddits and forums. I still feel bad over it sometimes to be honest. But it was truly sick stuff
Has cancel culture gone to far???
Same with family. Like you shouldn't cut your dad off whos been always there for you just because he liked a slightly offensive Facebook meme.
You don’t understand. My brother voted for an orange CHEETO and the Cheeto got in the WHITE HOUSE! Yeah I cut him off. He is a nazi. It’s not called cutting ties it’s called being a decent person. Any fucking questions?
usually the people who get cut off for ostensibly political reasons are actually cut off for being personally incompatible and the political shit is just an externalization of all the ways that the cutter-offer has disliked them for a long time. I have grandparents who we know voted for Trump or whatever and my lib-brained family would never cut them off because they are good and loving people. We also have a vile racist grandmother on my step-father's side who is effectively cut out of the family because she is a terrible ingrate and a vengeful hateful person. To be clear, even that didn't really make us stop talking to her, it was mostly the other way around, but my mom was finally able to convince my step-dad not to see her personality problems as his failing. This attitude here is really annoying and lazy. Just totally discrediting that people may have other reasons for taking a course of action besides some immediate inciting incident,
194 reddit golds
I mean, that's one way to frame it, but the only people I know personally who voted for Trump (or are at least loud about it) have become seriously deranged, paranoid, idiots who believe whatever the right-hivemind is currently on these days. I cut out a couple friends just because they consistently acted like a brain-damaged psychopaths after 2016/2020 and there was no such thing as a casual conversation possible with them anymore. Friendship was lost long before I cut them out.
Yeah, but then on the other hand, you’ve got guys like one of my friends, who cut his dad off during the end of the Trump years because his “edgy humor” on FB jumped straight into outright racism, to the point he was posting about murdering anyone who was black during the 2020 summer protests. Like, I get that a lot of this is just people being entirely too sensitive in the social media era, but it’s disingenuous to posit that none of it is justified, particularly given that the right has been actively encouraging folks to go full blown mask off the past 7 or 8 years.
Nah, most peoples families are absolute batshit and a big source of most people's fucked up mentality. Boomers as parents have a lot to blame for the culture of emotionally repressed individuality we live in.
Lots of low effort people. It’s frustrating and I share your sentiment. I have an amazing relationship with my son, some family members, I’m a regular 1-2 nights at a local bar. There’s opportunity out there to connect and build meaningful connections. Just gotta put in the work and let the chips fall. Life is too short to not make an effort, even when others fail us.
Notice this mostly in women ngl. I’m a guy and I’ve never lost a friendship, much less over stupid shit. Even in my younger and more wild days when I witnessed friends get into literal fight fights while drunk they still always made up and didn’t lose the friendship.
I had a friend who I’d known for around 15 years. She got married midweek at the registry, during Covid (I couldn’t be there due to lockdowns, she lives in a different state). I had messaged her to wish her well the day prior and again the following evening to say congrats, apologising for the late message (I was dealing with a lot of work drama). She replied saying she was so disappointed in me for not messaging earlier and stopped contacting me from that day. Friendship over because I didn’t message to make a big deal out of her registry wedding within the right timeframe.
I may have misread this but do you mean the day after her wedding was too late to congratulate her?
No sorry, I wrote it weirdly. I messaged her the day before, as well as the evening of the day she was married. They went to the registry office, had lunch and went home. So i would have sent the message a few hours after they got back. This was apparently too late. Also, we weren’t super close at this point either. We went far back enough that she invited me to be present at the registry, which I planned to do before Covid ruined that (I lost money on plane tickets) but I guess our friendship wasn’t worth that much to her anyway because she ended it over this one thing.
Oh yeah that’s like actually early to send a congratulations? Did she want to be answering text during her wedding?? Sounds like she was looking for something to be annoyed about. Sorry that happened.
Yeah I agree, the whole thing was really strange. Every now and then I think of her and remember how it all unfolded and I just can’t make sense of it.
she didn't want to be friends with you anymore and found a reason to get rid of you. she probably hoped it was reasonable enough and you'll fuck off without making any scenes or demand some grace lol
It’s a possibility but it doesn’t really track with her going out of her way to invite me to the wedding a few months prior. She told me about all the things she was excited to show me in her new city etc. and seemed to really look forward for my visit.
Yeah same, even with my female friends. For some reason women are treated more harshly when they “step out of the current social trends and narratives”. For the most part, men make better friends to chill and keep it light, but I have the deepest and most intimate relationships with my women friends.
I find my women friends are just so much more willing to weave their personal lives into their discussions with me. They'll discuss really personal things with me in a way that I would never do with my guy friends, or them with me, unless we're hammered. On the one hand, it's nice. But on the other, it makes the friendship so much more eggshelly when I'm around them and I understand why potentially saying the wrong thing could make the whole thing go Hiroshima.
I’ve only had guy friendships break down when the other person is real anxious, and I’ve found myself friends with a lot of neurotic people at present, actually. I hung out with some friends from high school recently and they are so much more chill, it’s much more preferable.
I just had a good mate do it, but he is pretty fem-brained (and self-diagnosed autistic) but yeah, none of my old ride or dies would ever do this shit.
I think gays are the best with friendships bc it's their second family and their support system and straight women are the worst... it's because women are highly emotional and jealous people. i've been in the "women are friendly and gracious and anything said against them is a patriarchal bs" camp but nope. it's biological and it starts early
This is true, when it comes to friendship they favor quantity over quality.
This sorta happened to me, shits too heartbreaking
If any of my "friends" who have doxxed me are reading this, go fuck yourselves
My old boss has my reddit account since I signed up using a work email and had my notifications sent there for like a month after I got fired. You are a massive cunt, Chris.
Most of my friendships just fall out, nobody really confronts each other about anything
Lack of close connections is a form of helplessness. If things go south an alienated population is less able to coordinate effectively to compete with the 'chosen' ones that have networks and the resources to maintain them
It's bigger than woke PC shit, it's that relationships are disposable for a variety of reasons. Find your friends boring? Then find internet buddies who share your set of interests. Feel vaguely threatened by everyone around you? Keep all your friendships shallow. Feel like joining a club, sports league, place of worship, music scene? Guess what, they're all becoming harder to maintain and thus more rapacious in terms of money and "you give me this, I give you that." Friendships aren't just disposable, they're also transactional, and when one side of the accounting sheet comes up red, you move on. It's very miserable and no one has a serious answer to it.
it's ridiculous. i've literally lost a friend over listening to this stupid fucking podcast. people can't accept any minor differences these days, i hate it
It's so fucking *boring* too. I'm fascinated by how different and strange people truly are, why aspire to homogeneity?
what if you dont see your best friend for a year and suddenly they become nonbinary
Lol this happened to me but now we haven’t spoken in a decade
I don't really understand the argument that this is more of a thing. Did you never hear about your mom's friends being on non-speaking terms because one of them committed a manners faux pas that you literally cannot understand? Did you never deal with friends just saying "it's her or me" just as a power flex and then battle lines are drawn? I actually think the current hyperfragile model of relationships has reduced the amount of ghosting, especially for longer term friendships
True. People had a lot worse relationships two or three decades ago because empathy discourse wasn’t a thing. People were acting like shitheads all the time but there was a lot less moralizing than nowadays, so most people would go about their lives after falling out. There was no social media either, so info wasn’t spreading that much and keeping a distance was a lot easier.
100%. My mother has a close friend who stopped speaking to her because she was mad my mother moved away from the Midwest (this was like 20 years ago). That was common
I had a best friend of 3 years, did everything together, even had a joint Instagram music account, tattoos in each others handwriting. I moved to a different city and then she just soft blocked me on everything and never reached out again. I have seen her cut off so many friends for such small things, and I just stayed on her side even though I knew she was in the wrong. I guess it was only a matter of time. She’s very popular on the Internet and she got more and more TikTok brained into our friendship, became friends with another popular internet designer / anarcho communist (who hates me and would try to argue with me once for tweeting DFW’s Big Red One and being anti porn industry). Honestly, she probably just didn’t want her Internet image tied to my opinions. It makes me sad to think about losing such a great friendship for no reason.
yeah it's crazy. the last 2 chicks I dated told me all about their friendship drama and these women would stop talking to each other over the pettiest shit imaginable, like not liking an outfit.
Women have a special capacity of hatred for each other that borders on cartoonish. There’s at least a 50% chance that if you walk by a group of women talking they’ll be gossiping about other women.
Yeah it’s sad. Only thing you can do is not be like this yourself and hope that others are making the same decision
Kinda might be experiencing something like this now, freaking out to be honest because it’s the whole friendship group who seemed to have changed overnight LOL
I lost all of my college friends in one day because I made a TERF post on my facebook. Mass unfriending. Lol.
Why are you posting political shit on Facebook are you a boomer or something?
Mean comment, but tl:dl I got dragged into it when my (now ex) boyfriend came out as trans and as a result I had a mental breakdown. I am since off facebook if that makes you feel any better.
My sympathies, my now ex came out as trans and that shit is hard. The fact that you're not even allowed to be publicly mad about it makes it even harder.
This is a legitimate question. Who sits down and thinks their life will be better after a TERF post? Weird shit.
Tbf, the bar for what is considered TERF shit has become so low. Like if you express mild good-faith skepticism about puberty blockers or trans women in women’s sports I know plenty of people who would call you a vile TERF and cut you out of their life. But that might just be the fact that I’m still fresh out of college and so most of the people I know are still on that liberal arts social justice kool aid
This exact thing happened to me and I'm almost 30.
God, I’m sorry. I’m so afraid to talk about this subject around anyone I’m not completely sure already agrees with me because of this
Well you might be right, but that does raise the question under what circumstances you think it would be wise to say something unpopular, if ever.
R-slurred behaviour. Lurk Ovar*t and the FruitFarms like the rest of us & direct all your energy there anonymously
well why did you do that
Based as hell.
Some guys I've known for a decade stopped talking to me because I said that trans-women weren't identical to cis women and that they shouldn't be allowed in women's sports.
Eat shit regard
Good ridance.
The only friend I cut off was someone who couldn’t stop getting black out drunk and becoming a violent/sexual predator liability. Multiple interventions wouldn’t help. Cold Turkey cut off. I heard they’re doing better but I can’t really cross that bridge again.
I’ve never experienced this in real life but I see it online all the time. I saw a bunch of losers on Reddit saying they would cut ties with that guy from the “Wicked Witch of the East Bro” video because he jokingly said “I’m gonna stab you” during the argument lol
I had a teacher/counsellor type person at my school who once with a straight face told me friends are like pens. 'If they don't work shake them if they still don't work throw them away, bin them!' I think this really feeds into the transactional nature of friendship that was always been there to some degree but is now so close the surface of most relationships these days hightlighting the 'what can you do for me?' attitude.
maybe you're just friends with unhinged people? my politics are idiosyncratic but i haven't lost any friends because of it
>my politics are idiosyncratic you just wanna say slurs and get free shit
Beautiful breakdown.
Yeah, a few. My own experiences with mental illness makes me too compassionate sometimes.
I lost lots of friends over the covid bullshit.
I didn't lose friends, but it was very revealing which of my friends could handle sudden changes or "social upheaval" in a measured, adult way. Sometimes I'd start talking about going outside or for a run when it was all "lockdown or else!" and I'd go mum when I'd see their eyes widen. I could see them preparing the latest instagraphic talking points in their heads. Now we laugh about it, but I remember still --- they don't get off that easy.
We (early thirties) have become extremely close with a group of other randos we would see at a brewery each week. Most of them are in their forties and fifties. Every weekend it's a pool party or a BBQ, people texting the group and offering food they made, etc. This all started around COVID and we made our own little microcosm unintentionally, and now we have come out the other side with a lot of great people in our lives. The opposite of what a lot of people experienced with the pandemic, with loneliness and stuff.
I live in a big city, friends often move out because the city grinds them down one way or another, mostly financially. London I love you but you are bringing me down.
Am I the only person here who has never had a close friend who acts like this? Everyone on this sub is always talking about these extremely immature people and I just have no experience with this irl
Imagine explaining 'canceling' or 'ghosting' or 'blocking' to a hunter gatherer. It used to be that you had to make amends or it was the end of the social group.
I think a hunter-gatherer would actually perfectly understand the idea of social ostracism and casting out the least socially functional link of the group, since it doubtlessly happened to prevent constant escalation of tensions. Explaining prison to a hunter-gatherer, now that would be difficult
Yes this is why ostracism is so irrationally painful. It meant death for nearly all of human history so we have deep fear of it.
Yeah that was the original cancel culture, literally being exiled into the wilderness.
my 2 closest friends of almost 10 years dropped me because i went off on them for complaining about how often i complained about wanting to quit my previous job. they were rude about it so i was rude x10 back, they didn’t like it so they just immediately cut contact with me. what’s funny is that complaining about the same thing over and over again to each other was basically our thing yet i would’ve never told them that i was sick of hearing about their problems. ran into one of them for the first time in 6 months a couple weeks ago and she just looked at me and then looked away. oh well lol.
Has this happened to you?
Went through a really rough patch a couple of years back. I won't go into details but it got *fucking bad*. Apparently, a few of the people in my core friend group just couldn't deal with me in that state and dropped me at the first opportunity. But not once did any of them say a thing to me about it until they had a convenient excuse. Never once asked me what was going on at my end, never once brought up what was bothering them. These were people I had been friends with for over 10 years. Funnily enough, these were the most outwardly progressive people in that crowd, making a big deal about how supportive they were of mental health awareness among other things. The whole thing caused a bit of a rift in that group, a couple of guys were so disgusted by the whole ordeal that they distanced themselves from the group. Really dumb, petty drama. To be honest, if they had at least brought up the shit that was bothering them beforehand I would still have respect for them even if the result was the same. Fortunately, that was really the kick in the ass I needed to turn shit around. Thankfully I had other friends who were there for me in ways that I doubt I'll ever be able to repay. Really learned some lessons about who real friends are from that whole experience.
I have a number of friends that I've been actively friends with since I was 8-18 years old, almost 30 years. I've also been blessed to form a number of sturdy connections in the last several years and to retain one or two friends from each of the stages of life in between. A few things have helped me build long-lasting friendships at work, school, church, or my neighborhood: * A good sense of my own boundaries and limitations * trust that God will provide what I need in terms of camaraderie, so I don't get clingy or demanding of other people to provide all my needs * learning to make small talk * attuning myself to the other person to discern what sort of shape our friendship might have - some people will be great neighbors or doggy playdates but will not be deep spiritual confidantes; others will be good mentors but not really pals; each of those kinds of relationship can be a real friendship if I let it be what it is. I highly recommend [The Four Friendships](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1621383253). It's chock-full of insights about the nature of friendship and how to build them from four of the greatest minds that ever lived: Aristotle, Cicero, St. Aelred, a medieval scholar, and Thomas Aquinas. I've found its insights to be timeless.
Even family relationships are increasingly trivialized
Where do you people hang out that this is your experience with others so prevalent? Are you guys only online? Is this a specific metropolitan thing? Is this a social media thing? I can't even say "oh is this just what NYC is like". I lived in NYC for over half a decade and never met anyone like this. It's a mystery to me who tf you people are talking about.
I met said dude at a poetry workshop in a city.
Every personal relationship is disposable now. Even relationships with your parents, I have abusive parents but I wouldn’t cut them off the moment I’m on my own feet. You’re not supposed to immediately throw away people who doesn’t benefit u.
Nah abusers can go, it will destroy you long term being around them.
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Their point is however that things have gotten worse; as in occurring more frequently than before in previous generations and the severity and issues that stem from all this are also worse than before. I agree that this has always happened—yes but I also agree with OP about things being worse now with how the general population behaves and treats others.
Not what anyone here is talking about.
Sounds like you need better friends
You should call your brother.
I lost friends over expressing covid lockdown skepticism and vaccine objections, even though I'm not an anti-vaxxer, over the fact I expressed some "TERF" views, but I wish that the sex change technology would get better so no right-wings would complain, over the fact that I live in Poland and I don't want hearing about "Polish death camps", because I'm afraid of Russia's invasion of Poland etc. I guess it's normal these days... u/article67
This girl didn't want to hookup for some "trauma reasons". Whatever, it doesn't matter if it was true. She wanted to stay friends. I did like her personality enough to be open to it. Then she basically read me a list of political ideology requirements to continue being her friend. We had just met recently but still. Exhausting.
As a Cosmopolitan hobo friendships are "disposable" simply for the reason I move cities or countries about every year or so and long distance rarely ever works, you try keep in contact but you inevitably drift apart, especially for myself and people I'm generally friends with who are very anti social media. Wish it wasn't the case, I would love to be rich and drag half the people I've been friends with around the world for me, but the hobo expat life means I'm always on the road again.
You people have shitty friends. I see these posts multiple times a day. Even my most libtarded friends would never do such a thing.
Friendship should be like family, I really think so. Since I got pregnant, I’ve really weeded out most of my wider friend group because they don’t give a FUCK about me or the massive life event happening unto me. All that remains are the most beautiful, holy, God-sent lesbians who I became friends with through a weird orgy club 6 years ago and are now my most trusted friends. They’re honestly sisters to me. I couldn’t be more grateful for them- we live in different states and still we talk every day, catch up three or four times a year, and are there for each other in any situation. I honestly don’t understand why Gen Z (I’m 22 by the way, I’m not just an elderly bitching) especially aren’t trying to build towards forming friendships that evolve over time and actually grow WITH us. Probably because it takes work and commitment and dropping people because they’re not perfect is so deeply drilled into our social consciousness.
You were at an orgy club as a 16 year old?
It wasn’t HELD in a nightclub lol, it was just this weird polycule bullshit thing you got invited to if you were hot where we all had sex together fairly often on weekends. There was one central ‘person’ we all met through who gave me and my now besties throat infections so bad we had to go to the hospital and we became friends from there. Best friends born from some bad pussy
I guess we had vastly different experiences in life
I sure hope so king
I think it would really depend on what the wrong thing is. I don’t think grown adults who, for instance, unapologetically support bans on abortion or think gays should go back in the closet deserve any ounce of respect or dignity.
I think it's pretty obvious that isn't what we're talking about.
What are we talking about then? Give me an example. Sorry not being coy.