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Top 10 Tips For Breaking Up With Toxic Friends
Toxic, or bad friendships are unhealthy. They drain you emotionally, mentally, and even physically. They can encourage bad habits, unhealthy ways of thinking about yourself, and serious damage to your self-esteem.
You have a toxic friendship if you:
* Put each other down.
* Encourage each other’s bad habits.
* Don’t let each other be yourselves.
* Create a power imbalance where one of you has too much control over the other.
* Don’t allow each other to talk about the things that matter in your lives. You don’t always have to agree or like the same things, but you should at least be able to talk about them.
A lot of the time the above warning signs of a bad friendship don’t necessarily forecast the death of the friendship, but just mean that you and your friend have some serious talking to do. But if you’ve tried to work it out and can’t, here’s what you do:
1. Put up boundaries
If your bad friend is a co-worker, a roommate, or a family member, you probably can’t cut them out completely. In these cases, a trusted, neutral mediator should be called in to help you work out your issues. If there is no working it out, what you can do is put up boundaries. Only see that person when you have to. Don’t spend too much emotional or mental energy on them, and don’t share too much about your life with them.
2. Prepare for the break up
Your friend break up will be hard, so prepare your exit strategy in advance. Decide if you want to stay casual acquaintances or if you want to cut them off completely, but realize that you can’t control their reaction. They might be so angry that they’ll want nothing to do with you, so prepare for this possibility in advance.
3. Let it fade
Friend break ups don’t need to be dramatic. Author and life coach Christine Arylo says that it’s okay to let a friendship fade away quietly if you can. Stop calling or start making the conversations shorter. If you let it end this way, you keep things open for friendship in the future.
4. Be nice
If you need to talk about a break up make sure you’re nice about it. Express your reasons honestly and firmly, but keep your criticism constructive and polite. Also focus on the ways in which your friendship showed you how you would like to change. Don’t make it all the other person’s fault.
5. Focus on your good relationships
When you’re having a problem with a friend, it can seem like the end of the world. You can feel extremely alone. But chances are, you’re not. You most likely have other friends and family members to reach out to now that the negativity of your toxic friendship has cleared.
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