to ask what the best way of dealing with this is

[hopeflowers]

I have a friend who to be honest I don't like any more. She's changed a lot - she has always had a tendency towards dryness but over the four years or so we've known each other she has become increasingly bitter and what has made me decide to sever ties is that she's becoming a bully and I can't abide bullies. I don't want anything to do with her.

Do I tell her or just ignore her if she tries to make contact? I want to remove her from my Facebook and so on and part of me wants to tell her exactly why but another part wants just to move on. What do you think?

I've been in a similar situation recently. I'd tried talking to my friend about my issues with her behaviour, but was met with a sort of outraged defensiveness, and criticism of my own behaviour etc. All well & good, but I just didn't care enough about the friendship to get involved in these sorts of protracted discussions. So I've basically just gradually fazed said 'friend' out. I started by taking a few days to answer calls, not being available or being non-commital when she suggested meeting up, and stopped calling/emailing her myself unless absolutely necessary. She seems to have got the message, and we now have just sporadic contact, which I am comfortable with. If you want her out of your life altogether/ defriended on FB etc you probably do owe her some sort of explanation.

I'm in exactly the same situation too, where someone I was quite friendly with gradually started becoming more and more bitchy and bullying. I'm currently just trying to avoid her (it's SO not worth the hassle of a confrontation, when all I'll get from her is a stream of self-justifying bollocks), but I have no idea what to do about the Facebook thing. Defriending her seems petty but we're really not friends any more and I don't want her knowing my business. (But, again, I don't want to provoke a confrontation with an aggressive bullshitter - life really is too short!) I'll be really interested to see what advice the collective wisdom of Mumsnet comes up with!

Ooh, that works for me! Thanks twoistwiceasfun - I'd never heard of that