What do you do when you feel a friendship has run its course?

[franch]

I think I have to trust my gut on this one: I'm due to meet a friend tomorrow night, she's just called me several times to arrange it and I haven't picked up the phone. My heart is sinking at the thought of it.

She's a lovely person, good fun and extremely affectionate - but I never feel like I'm myself when I'm with her, that's the problem I think. We got to know each other when our DDs were little but I really don't feel we have much in common or are on remotely similar wavelengths.

The thing is, she's very intense and has acted like we're absolute best friends right from Day 1. At one stage she tried to get me to commit to seeing her once a week (I only go out once a week, so that would have left room for no other friends!!), and although over the last few months I've done my best to subtly cool things off, she's extremely insistent about setting dates to meet up.

She also tends to bitch about my other friends, and has quite dramatically dumped a friend who was clearly her best friend before she found me - which puts me under additional pressure.

Even stranger, I'd say almost 9 out of 10 times we do arrange to meet, she cancels at the last minute. DH always laughs when I say 'I'm seeing X tomorrow night', and just says 'I'll believe it when I see it.'

Anyway I don't really want to analyse the whole thing too much, I just don't really want to go out with her tomorrow night. I'm not saying I want to cut myself off from her forever; I really just want to let things fizzle out gently somehow (says she pathetically). I certainly don't want to make some big statement to her; she's extremely sensitive and wouldn't take it well.

Oh and also, she's adamant that our DDs are best friends, which they're not (not from my DD1's point of view anyway). PLUS I've ended up being pushed into a kind of 'mentor' role for her older DD, and get texts and phonecalls from her almost daily - which makes it even harder for me to disentangle myself.

Writing this I can see I've been disastrously passive about this whole thing (which is not like me) and probably need to do something before it goes even deeper - but what?!

She sounds hard work. If you really can't face her, play her at her own game and cancel at the last minute for the next few dates and, hopefully, she will dramatically dump you - I don't see this one just fizzling out, I'm afraid.

Yes you're probably right there lala!

I think cancel at the last minute with some emergency as she seems to have a habit of, or maybe she will cancel on you if you are really lucky. Why are you texting her older child, why not advise her to speak to her Mother, or do you get something from it?

Well after reading the other thread about shitty things friends have done before you dumped them, I would say tell her the fecking truth.

You don't want to go out with her, tell her why and have done with it. It's this subtle, passive aggressive, dissolving of friendships which causes all the whoo haa. I'm sure she would appreciate a short sharp e-mail rather than a gradual, confusing, phasing out of your life.

Thanks all.

Bumble: to be honest I can't remember exactly what went on with the other friend but it was faily low-level stuff which got out of hand.

I'm not sure she gets bored but I wonder if she puts friends on a bit of a pedestal and accelerates friendships too fast instead of taking the time to get to know people - and then gets upset when they're not the perfect person she'd envisaged.

MH: I don't initiate the texting with her DD, but I do reply when she texts me (though I leave it a while as she always texts/calls straight back). A lot of the stuff she texts me about is education/career-related stuff that her mum has no knowledge/experience of. Her mum has actually said to her that if there's anything she doesn't feel able to talk to her about, she can always ask me.

BLD: I haven't read the other thread. What exactly is the fecking truth that I should tell her?

fairly low-level