to ask if you have and why you have let go of some long friendships?

[CoolToned]

Friendships that lasted for years.

Yep ex friend was a complete drama queen and I stupidly supported her with her on/off affair with a married man then an abortion and her parents almost kicking her out, when I fell pregnant we had planned a trip away for my birthday which was much needed after Dd's arse of a father who I wasn't with was being horrible to me and she said she couldn't afford to go two weeks before, this was after I'd paid for the train tickets, she had told me she had booked and paid for a hotel which was a lie (luckily my mum went away with me instead and we had a wonderful time) a few weeks after that she had tagged herself going away to a concert so no money my arse Was still friends at this point for some reason!

Then when I was nearing the end of my pregnancy I use to always drive down about every 2 weeks and visit her I asked if she would come and visit me as we lived 45 mins away from each other and I couldn't do long drives due to back and hip pain she said it was only fair we meet half way which was still a 30 min car journey. I pointed out it wasn't fair as I use to come down all the time and it was her turn and that I needed some support she told me it was my own fault as I had gotten pregnant with someone I knew I wasn't going to be with. I blocked her and she sent me a nasty message then I had messages constantly after that trying to apologise but I ignored everything.

My life is now a lot more drama free without her and I realised I was just someone she could offload her problems on.

Sorry that's very long but I don't really speak about it, feels good to get it off my chest!

No empathy. She'd always been a bit cold and unfeeling but got worse over the years, complaining about her friend with depression because he didn't want to go out, not understanding people in financial difficulty, etc. The final straw was when I left a job after suffering from severe stress and needing anti-depressants and she wanted to meet up, I said yes but we'd need to go for a cheap drink rather than a nice meal as usual; she picked me up and drove me to an expensive restaurant I hated and didn't ask about me at all, and just slagged off the older girlfriend of a man she was having an affair with.

I have let go of friendships after time when efforts to keep in touch have been onesided

Because I didn't support Scottish independence.

She was a fab friend and a brilliant person and I'm a bit gutted - but guess the friendship meant more to me than it did to her. I thought I was OK with it but I'm not.

My best friend from the ages of about 14 until 25. Our friendship made it through school, her moving away to go to Uni, I was a bridesmaid at her wedding, she had a baby (I was long term single) and then she moved to a house down the road from where I live. I realised one day I was the one putting in all the effort, every single time, so I thought I'd stop and see what happened. I never heard from her again. I still wonder if she even cares what what went wrong.

Kids used to go to same school, she took mine to school for me for a while as she was also a childminder (I paid her), my kids were bridesmaids at her wedding and she was my eldest's sponsor at confirmation. She moved 35 miles away. I let her and her DD live in my spare room for six weeks rent free while they waited for school to finish at the end of the summer term.

She didn't drive. I drove to see her every few months for 3 years. about 1 in 4 times she would cancel an arrangement at short notice claiming to be ill. When I left exH and moved house, she came up and helped clean my new house.

About five years after she moved, she was cancelling arrangements at short notice about 50% of the time. Sometimes DD would see her post something on FB about what she was doing when she was supposedly too ill to see me. One time we had plans and she text to cancel the night before and it was one time too many. I did not reply and have not seen her since. She has never got in touch again.

Quite a few

I put that down to having been bought up in the forces so I didnt 'do' long term friends until I was well into my twenties. Now in my forties and I have my bitch radar finely tuned.

I used to hang out with a group of women but got miffed with the constant bitching. Then one turned on me and accused me of all sorts of shite. I walked away from the lot of them and didnt regret it.

One was a mum friend. We met when our eldest were babies but 10 years on I felt we had little in common. She was always making digs about my children whilst making out hers were perfect. Plus some very sly digs about my weight etc. I started dreading meeting her and felt backed into a corner as she would always get her pen and diary out to book the next meet up. It was so forced.

Then there was the nice colleague who I stayed in touch with when I left. We met up but it all felt awkward out of the office. She got ridiculously drunk and began confiding in me about all sorts. I felt like a counsellor. It was the exact same the second time so I didnt do that again.

Then the frenemy. To coin a MN phrase. Total loon. I sort advice here many times when she was horribly rude to me. Finally I ditched the bitch. We have mutual friends so there has to be some contact.

I have a few close friends but thats it. As the saying goes, most friends are for a reason or a season. I think its rare to have the type of friends you had in your youth as you go through life. I now endevour to be a good friend and nice person but I dont allow people to treat me badly.

I don't see her any more after she abandoned me when I needed her. She'd tell everyone I was an amazing friend and had always been there for her...but I realised it was very one sided and I never got anything from her. I did try and patch things up with her, because 13 years of friendship isn't worth losing over one thing, but she was very self absorbed and much as I tried I couldn't relate to her anymore. It hasn't ended nastily but we haven't spoken for a good few months now.

Because I only existed in reference to her. I was not supposed to have a life of my own, I was just the supporting cast in her swirl of self obsession.

I just got fed up with being the "comedy sidekick", having everything that mattered to me or affected me dismissed and brushed aside so she could talk about herself again.

Everyone has their limit and I reached mine.

Because she slept with my ex while I was still getting over the breakup; guilted me into loaning her money and made it a real hassle to get it back; found fault in all my other close friends; when my DF died suddenly promised to come to his funeral to lend support then bailed at the last minute 'because it would be too upsetting' for her...and thereafter avoided no opportunity to exhaustively (and oh so exhaustingly) detail what a crap friend I was. It's a long while since that cord was cut and only regretted not doing so much earlier. Hope she's gone on to have a happy life but relieved she's no longer part of mine.

Awwww this thread is so sad!!!!
I think I abandoned 2 friends but it's pretty obvious they were trying to abandon me when I look back on it!
Friends for years but realistically only on terms of 'the main one'.
I hope they are happy now but doubt it as (well at least one of them is incredibly boring) a twosome there is no character left from the original foursome.
I have definitely grieved though

I've drifted apart from friends and have definitely been finding my own dear sister a bit of a handful of late in terms of her absolute obese saiid with her ex who treated her terribly.

I tend to keep my distance from people but regroup every now and again.

One was a woman double my age that attended a 12 step programme with me, she helped me through some tough times and was my sponsor for ages.

She was quite controlling though and I ended up feeling so uncomfortable about this that I left said 12 step programme.

all the time she was continuing to move further and further into her addictions she was telling me I needed to do a list of about five things that I didn't have time for a day in order to keep my sobriety.

She would guilt trip me that the meeting was collapsing because people weren't taking responsibility but she was bullying and dominating all of the brave attendees.

Two years later, I tried to have an ordinary friendship with her and mentioned one day that I wanted to set up a 12 step programme in my area, she gave a bit of unsolicited advice about this and asked if she could accompany me to the venue I'd secured.

I (reluctantly) agreed and she text me later on that day saying that she'd just been to have a look and felt that it wasn't suitable and that at the meeting with the key holder the following day she would 'let me do most of the talking' It was at this point that I realised how unhealthy our dynamic was and why I wasnt managing to gain anything from it all because she was a very controlling person to the highest extreme and my life has been so much better off without her in it.

From time to time, I feel bad that I let it get so far before realising but mainly I'm just relieved to have seen the wood from the trees.

Something that confirmed my decision was when I broke the friendship off she texted me and said 'if only you could have been honest about my controlling behaviour' and 'do you do forgiveness?' As though it was my responsibility to keep on top of her personality defects!

I'm so much better off now.

Just in the process of doing it.

It's been her way or not at all for 20 years, and I've come to the realisation that "not at all" is the preferable option. I've had enough of doing all the running. Neither of us drive, but it's always been me making the 3 hour/2 bus trip to hers, I'm the butt of 99% of the jokes, and since I started trying to lose weight she had done her best to thwart my healthy eating when I was over there. (Well, if I'm not gonna be the fat friend anymore it opened up a vacancy for the position, and she couldn't have that).

I thought I'd feel sadder than I do. Right now it's just relief.

Yup. Had only been friends for a couple of years but slowly it dawned on me that she was apparently always right, was quite horrible about others, and her children were the second coming of Christ. Final straw came when my ds accidentally hurt her dd - they were only a year old ffs! - but she behaved as though I was raising a tiny psychopath. I've kept my distance ever since. Ironically, it seems she is finding her dc's behaviour a challenge at the moment - turns out all children have their phases. Funny that.

My friend of 20 years changed into someone I didn't like, it got to the stage that I used to dread meeting up with her as she became very materialistic and for want of a better term 'up her own arse', and it wasn't just me who thought this as her own nephew had voiced that to her also. I would mention a place I would love to go and sure enough she would book up to go then tell me how great it was or if I mentioned it I was saving up to buy a lovely bag she would go out and buy it first, I know it doesn't sound a lot but it used to happen all of the time and with practically everything to the point where I wouldn't tell her anything.
She would also put me down quite badly but always with a tinkly laugh to cover up the put down, I think the final straw was when my son was in hospital very poorly and she never visited or asked how he was . I wrote her and basically said that our friendship had run it's course and I hoped her all the best.
I do miss her because all of my teenage memories involve her and we had some bloody great times, our oldest children grew up together too. People and friendships change and I think you do have to cut people out of your life if they are bringing nothing but negativity to the friendship, it's not easy and I still miss her but not the person she became.

Yes, two or three. Two because unless I made the effort to contact, meet up and so on, it just wouldn't happen. I miss one in particular.

The third, well it took me a while to see it, but she liked if I put myself down. Liked pushing buttons, and gleaning information out of people for later use. And she let me down once too often.

Am ready to lose a friend. In the last year she has shown more issues, bullied me, treated me like dirt until she has no one left and has been lying. She's very toxic and all our group wish to walk away!

I moved away through work, about an hour away. In seven years she never once visited me, she never once made arrangements for us to meet up. I realised that while we still had a nice time when we did meet with no awkwardness, I was making all the running so I just stopped.

I haven't heard from her since. :(

She had an affair with her boss when her boss' wife had just had a baby. I was the person she confided in and I was genuinely horrified by the amount of lying she was doing to everyone else. It made me see her in a whole new light and not a particularly flattering one.

I am currently in the process of phasing a friend out. I realised that she has never ever even once been there for me when I have needed her for anything serious. She disregards my opinion and my feelings if they don't match hers and will cold shoulder me for weeks afterwards then tell me I'm being ridiculous if I try to bring it up. She behaved appallingly at my wedding too - I married abroad and she was one of only five guests (we paid for her to come) ... Half way through the evening I realised she was missing and went to check on her to find her shagging a waiter in her room. She has children and a husband. She has never apologised and thinks I am stupid to be offended by it.

I have not tried to contact her now for around 6months since I realised how different we are and how toxic our friendship was. She has not contacted me once in that time other than to ask for childcare.

I clearly am right in my opinion that she has never given two figs about me and it really hurts but I know I am doing the right thing for me.

Yes another one with differing parenting styles, we were friends over 10 years. We had a spat and she 110% holds grudges. After numerous attempts to at least be polite to each other I gave up. Her marriage broke up because of grudges...I don't need that in my life.

I really appreciate you starting this thread OP as I've had issues with this kind of thing recently.

Reasons I've finished long standing friendships - emotional immaturity, negativity, noseyness, being taken advantage of, feeling nothing in common any more, etc etc

I suggested to a friend that her son might be on the autistic spectrum. I tried to be gentle about it, but she was completely defensive, and then angry. Maybe I was out of line, but it really frustrated me to see her son struggling while she refused to acknowledge that there was a problem. She dropped me immediately. Years later I heard that she finally came to terms with his issues in her own time. I'm just glad that he finally received the help he needs.

i have. one very good ftiend which i look upon now as a shame. she was married and trying to negotiate her way through a divorce with lots of different men whilst keeping exh close for financial support. i had just met my dp and was settling down. we went in completely opposite directions. shame really as i do miss her but too much time has passed really.

i also have the flakey friend who misses u meets u once then two years later the scenario replays which is fine now i know it happens. tbh whenever we meet up we always have lots to talk about etc so i dont mind.

ive lost lots of other friends along the way but all for the right reasons and dont miss them.