In the past year I’ve distanced myself and am NC with a former friend for several reasons.
For context, when we first met 15 years ago we socialised quite a lot, with her and her husband. Several years ago she started being very bitter about certain people that I happen to like, and was constantly vile to her husband when we were altogether - constantly demeaning him and just being nasty. Around the same I had recommended her for a job at my work, which she got. It went well for a while and then she embarrassed me there as she managed to piss a number of colleagues of mine off by lying, being difficult and letting people down. She left under a cloud. At that point I cooled things but also didn’t hear from her.
More recently I have heard on the grapevine she’s asked mutual friends why I haven’t been in touch and why, when she messaged my DH a couple of months ago (which she’d never do normally as she’s contact me) to invite us for a drink, he said no thanks. (After our last social encounter during which DH challenged her on how she was speaking to her DH, we both said that was the last time we wanted to be in her company socially).
To get to the point, I know she will be at a birthday celebration I’ve been invited to this weekend.
Please equip me with a simple way of expressing why I went NC as I know she will be quite forceful and want to find out why and I tend to get a bit hot and bothered in a situation like this. I don’t want to be awful but I also don’t want to resume our friendship. To add, I’m not the only friend who has gone NC with her.