Ending a friendship

[dudsville]

I've been friends with someone for ten years. Our friendship was work based, for me that is. I highly valued her work and found it helpfulto talk with her. For the most part this took place during work hours but occasionally we'd go for a meal after work, where we'd continue discussing work.

In and around these conversations she'd tell me about her life and I'd tell her mine, but this never became the meaningful basis of the friendship for me.

She retired and we both thought we'd remain friends. I've tried this for a while now, and the absence of the focus on work has left me uninterested. I feel awful. The friendship just doesn't mean to me what it does to her.

She's obviously sensed this and has expressed concern that we don't lose the friendship. I was just reading about "ghosting" and worried this is what I'm doing. Hiding, lengthening the time between contact. I know how to end a date or a relationship well but I've no idea how to end this friendship. Any guidance out there?

This is from wikipedia, but it's it not ghosting?

Don't hang out together.Let the friendship fade naturally. Friends go to different schools, move to different towns, or gravitate to different activities, and they start hanging out with other people. It's quick, painless, and usually mutual. To gracefully put a friendship out of its misery (or let it wilt, if that sounds too harsh), you should:[5]Keep your conversations in safe, shallow territory. Keep all of the emotional, personal baggage in your own bedroom and out of their house.Lose touch with them. Don't make as big an effort to call or text. Skip a phone call or two. Don't overdo it, of course. But if you're not friends, you don't need to be in constant communication.Decline invitations to chill. As the distance between you grows, stop spending time with the ex-friend. They'll stop calling eventually, once they get the idea.

This is always a problem as there's no rules like we have in a romantic relationship where we are expected to tell the other person. That rule just doesn't seem to apply to friendship. I've seen people here advise telling the other person for similar scenario's, but I doubt many do in real life. If it were me I'd carry on pulling back. Just being less available etc. But be prepared to tell her why the way you feel if she asks. From her perspective she's going through a different phase in life and perhaps needs to find new friends so be gentle.

Is she actually annoying you or do you just find you have less in common? If it is the latter, I would keep in touch for a while. She is going through a big life change and it might be really important to her to keep a connection to her working life at the moment. This might well change when she settles more into retirement. So I would be kind and keep the contact for now (but reduce it to acceptable levels for you), and then see what happens in a while. This might naturally sort itself out when she gets more activities and friends in her retired life.

Thanks both. There's no annoyance. We have always got on in a straight forward way with lots of kindness. She's always wanted more non work based contact but that was easy to not do. I guess I will just keep on with less and less contact. Fwiw, she's quite active in her retirement, friends, family and interests and responsibilities to her family. I do think she's more of an extrovert. She needs to see people everyday. When I have a day off to myself she would always offer meeting up and we'd laugh. I think some extroverted sorts might see friendship differently to introverted sorts. I expect that is another factor that will make this a slower process.

Is there an age difference? Just wondering as she has retired. Perhaps she's a bit lonely?

Do you not think friendships are cyclic though, you go through phases where you have less in common and then they pick up again.

10 years is a decent bit of shared history and it sounds as if this a healthy friendship and you never know when you may need a good friend.

Once I go off someone that’s it. I just let things slide to be honest.

10 years is a long time, but she's retired from our shared interest. I lack interest in telling people what I've been up to and asking them what they've been up to. I like taking about ideas and theories, projects concepts. Since she retired it's just been "catching up" about our day to day lives.

There is an age gap, but that's been fine.