cutting people completely out of your life

re dell re spacecadet:

i don't sign up for the "if they wanted to know me, then they'd get in touch" part, but i TOTALLY buy into the committing to plans part. i hate making plans cause i could easily be in a totally fucked up mood for any number of reasons when they come round. seriously, this totally colors my entire life.

most of my friends have, god bless them, adjusted to this, or i have adjusted to them in some non-replicable fashion.

here i was going to catalog my insane foibles, but suffice it to say that while i totally understand where rock hardy is coming from, i might not be able to help it were i his friend. and that's not totally because of the braves thing.

Oh, interesting... I have a difficult time relating to that perspective, b/c my mood invariably improves at the prospect of socializing, whereas if I spend too much time alone then I sometimes find myself slipping into dark moods, fixating on stuff that doesn't even really matter.

This is an emo thread.

and that's not totally because of the braves thing.

lol

This is an emo thread.

Hey fuck you moley *cries into fists*

I WILL COMFORT YOU SWEET ANTIPODEAN

FUCK YOU MOLEY

I have a hard enough time getting people into my life

-- Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, April 12, 2008 3:44 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah w/my sched I can really only make time for a very small social circle of two or three, one of whom I talk to on AIM pretty much daily and the rest who I try to contact once a week or so. I don't know when I'd make the time to shoehorn other people in.

lol mook =)

[here i was gonna write an o you kids thing]

but seriously, it isn't as easy to meet kickass people outside of college/grad school or whatever. or any people at all really.

[here is my mom's thing about college opportunities etc]

CRUT1S YOU RULE PLZ CARRY OUR TORCH FORTHWITH ETC

ALSO CUT YOUR HAIR AND PLZ DON'T TURN INTO KENAN

After school it's basically impossible to meet new people. Impossible. At work everyone's old and married and related to work, and in daily life you can only date and meet new friends through your significant other, who will leave once he/she does.

oh burt_stantonpants

are you forrealz or are you a git?

lol what is "PLZ DON'T TURN INTO KENAN" about?

there's the man behind burt-stanton and the creation known as burt-stanton and every day they struggle for control

dell otm re me, and yes, if I go along with PLANS I am usually glad. I do realise it's fucked up now (I mean, before this thread too, obv) and have been trying to stop but it's hard work to fix old habits, and right now transport and free time are both in short supply, so sometimes I turn things down or fail to act on good intentions to email people and am then not sure whether it was for semi-legitimate reasons or I'm being a fuck-up again.

but seriously, it isn't as easy to meet kickass people outside of college/grad school or whatever. or any people at all really.

It certainly isn't, but I've been emo enough on here. Though university was kind of flake-enabling for me in that I didn't have to make the effort ever, if I wanted to see people or get invited to shit I didn't have to call anyone, just had to go down to the student bar any night of the week and see who turned up.

(This was back when only a few of us had mobile phones, and most of us didn't have landline phones or internet access in our rooms, so this was pretty much the most convenient way of hanging out even for less screwy people. The chances of never making other contact must be lower now the kids are texting and on facebook all day, but I'm sure the basic policy of just going to the bar or the common room every day and seeing who's there survives. And the idea of having a "local", where you know you can find good people with no notice, is by no means restricted to students but is a hell of a lot easier to set up when you are one.)

Graargh you've touched on something that I think bugs me big time - the fact that internet and cellphones mean one is expected to be contactable so much more often than used to be the case.

I'd go into more detail here but I am tired, tipsy and in a foul mood.

I don't initiate contact with people because I don't think they want to hear from me. Rock Hardy, you have made me rethink this, and in fact my life.

people scare me so i do this a lot. it's really overrated

there's nothing wrong with wanting to be wanted but it shouldn't cripple you. you don't want to be the one that always calls but if you never do it, you can't really be too upset when they don't call you either.

AA, glad to hear it.

I'm debating doing this with someone now... my dad's sister is totally irresponsible and addicted to hard drugs, a sociopath, and anytime someone crosses her they are labeled a drug addict - her ex-husband, my mom, my dad's employees, me, etc. She's out of my life completely but she's tied at the hip to my dad and she just hates my mom, my brothers and I. She works for my dad and he will not stand up to her even while she's bankrupting his business while alienating clients and giving herself raises. It's just crazy and she and her kids just seem to have it out for the world, seem to want to bring everyone down a notch. She and her kids have ruined peoples' trust in me and have ruined my trust in others. She pressures my dad not to pay my mom alimony and a decision of hers 15 years ago almost put my mom in prison. It's horrible.
I really don't know what to do but I haven't seen my dad since June and I'm not sure how long I'll keep going, but he let me believe for years that my mom was responsible for all these problems and it messed up my relationship with her for a long time and I've only recently regained trust in her. I just feel like my mom and brothers are not my dad's priority, his extended family is.

Sociopaths - you can't live with them and you can't live without them.

No, wait. There's something wrong with that sentence that I can't quite put my finger on.

Yes, the few that I've dealt with (mainly this woman and her son), it's like they're constantly, constantly provoking people. Almost as bad, they perceive any reaction as a threat, and they then increase their provocation of others. The amount of lying that goes on is incredible also.

I love how someone gets mad because you won't call them, just because they are on Facebook. I mean I had two sick parents and a death in the family, I just don't feel like immediately re-integrating myself into someone's world when I haven't hung out with them in fifteen years or more. I mean, sorry, deal with that.

Demands like that are such a juvenile drag.

I missed a birthday dinner because I was incredibly ill, I called since I had rsvp'd and said I would be there. I received the most hateful email from the birthday girl the next day, angry that I had missed this one birthday celebration. Facebook wall flamed. Um.....BLOCK!

Sorry, said I WOULDN'T be there.

Yeah there's no room in life for people like that.

That is actually why I cut someone out of my life about 8 years ago. I was very supportive - emotionally, materially - of someone for years and years with very little in return. I was about to move halfway across the country and start law school around the same time that I got fed up with the way this person made choices that perpetuated her endlessly miserable state (and were detrimental to her young son) so I pulled back a little. Her response was to send me an email telling me what a horrible person I was for being distant when she needed me the most and my response was to email her back and clearly and concisely lay out all the reasons why she sucked.* I haven't spoken to her since but she did get her act somewhat together shortly thereafter so that's good, I guess.

*I would probably not do that if I had it to do all over again.

Familiar with that scenario.

More than once I have heard the story of women cutting off other female friends over missed birthdays. So long as my mother remembers, I really don't care. Phenomenon. I have more steady male friends in my life than female for that reason.

argh in a pissed off mood I sent a shitty email to somebody that was an ultimatum about a flickering friendship and since then, total silence. I wrote an apology email, to which no reply has been made. I saw this person at a Pissed Jeans show two nights later and he was "friendly" in a cold ass way but kept looking at me with an unreadable pokerface. We are exes so it's complicated and messy. I feel like the boy who cried wolf about my own proposed-then-recalled "cutting someone completely out" gesture- like I get all the shittiness of having made an attempt, and none of the payoff of succeeding because i'm obviously still hung up on this person as my apology demonstrates. I wish you could soothe or numb the relentless need to be loved, but it's the most basic human stance and maybe you just can't. if only I hadn't sent that email and just let things die out naturally I wouldn't have this awful regret and this feeling that I'm the jerk in the picture.

...In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.

This has had me thinking all day, maybe I cut people out of my life to quickly and to often.

Then I thought, nah...I really go all out for friends and lovers. I become irked and increasingly angered when they begin to just take and take and offer not even the smallest amount of understanding. The day I missed the birthday dinner I had eaten something foul at Alamo Draft House called Sex in a Bowl. It was champagne and cream and crap and I became ill while at the theatre. I returned a gift later that week that I had put a lot of thought into (because I always do. I love buying gifts for people and making it special) and was left quite hurt. We had had this close friendship for two years and it was all over so quickly, it must not have meant much to her.

Happened again recently with a girlfriend of six years. I divorced and she had to "process the situation". Even though she and my ex-husband didn't get along. He made it clear he was not fond of her, to my extreme embarrassment. When I found someone new, she was nothing but sour and weird and finally sent me an email that she wanted no contact for awhile, had to "process". I replied that I would prefer no contact ever again.

Exes, if at the base of relationships is friendship and we failed as lovers, I figure we failed as friends as well. True friends. I like true friends in my life and that is what I am left with.

Yeah you're right about the "failed as lovers, failed as friends" link there- I guess the trouble is that the thing that killed the affair is also what killed the friendship- that same basic disparity tangled us up twice in a row- if I felt like a gullible self-deluding fool for trying out a friendship with an ex, I feel like even more of a jerk for trying to have some dramatic "last word" that in hindsight never needed speaking. But the "forced" quality of the whole thing exposes why it wasn't going to work, on either level.

*tera, your friend's need to "process" your breakup sounds like such self important bs. to what exent was she expecting you to apologise for the way your ex husband had treated her?

Jed: It was weird, I didn't understand it and she offered no other details or reasons, just "process" . I was willing to try and understand at one point. I had long apologized for him and she claimed not to be that bothered. She seemed bothered by the fact that we divorced and that I later found someone. Perhaps too soon for her taste but I'll never know.

My childish action was to erase all my comments from her blog. She then had to "cleanse" the blog and this entailed weeks and weeks of posting photos of roses sometimes more than once a day and a continued announcement that she was cleansing her blog. I felt my childish act was topped and that I made the right decision.

Yeah there's no room in life for people like that.

That is actually why I cut someone out of my life about 8 years ago. I was very supportive - emotionally, materially - of someone for years and years with very little in return. I was about to move halfway across the country and start law school around the same time that I got fed up with the way this person made choices that perpetuated her endlessly miserable state (and were detrimental to her young son) so I pulled back a little. Her response was to send me an email telling me what a horrible person I was for being distant when she needed me the most and my response was to email her back and clearly and concisely lay out all the reasons why she sucked.* I haven't spoken to her since but she did get her act somewhat together shortly thereafter so that's good, I guess.

*I would probably not do that if I had it to do all over again.

― pullapartsquirrel (Jenny), Wednesday, October 5, 2011 2:58 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This person is apparently moving to Chicago and has made overtures about "getting together." :|

I think I kind of do this organically with boring people. When people send platitudinous e-mails, or we have multiple uneventful nights out, I just find myself "drifting away" from them. Not such a bad thing-- though I am constantly in fear of being on the receiving end of this.

But anyway, I am actively having to do this right now with somebody I genuinely love. He is fun and intelligent and talented, but has absolutely zero compassion. He has to go. The thought of him vacating my sphere of concern is extremely soothing, like a headache finally dissipating.

But it's interesting. As I was working today, I was internally rehearsing future conversations with him, practicing how I was going to blow him off, trying to find the right balance of nonchalance and finality. Of course, this doesn't at all mean I have been successful at "cutting him off"... I mean, even now, I'm still typing about him. I look forward to getting my head to a place where it doesn't dwell upon his existence with more than a passing acknowledgement.

the fantasy of explaining to someone who you believe is genuinely oblivious to what it is that might be difficult or draining about their personality in order to do the right thing and possibly even give them useful insight or perspective rather than resorting to dropping the steel shutters of what could appear to them inexplicable and harsh coldness

Dear Goon Tie, this does not sound like a situation for "cutting off completely" (this is generally reserved for people who are actually abusive or toxic) but more for a slow fade, or what Captain Awkward calls the "African Violet of Friendship". It's worth searching Captain Awkward for the series of posts on this, the conceit being that although our culture has many accepted rituals for ending romantic relationships which are no longer functioning, it has no comparable ritual or method to end platonic friendships which are no longer functioning. So the "African Violet of Friendship" is a kind of "how to break up, non-awfully, but still firmly, with friendships".

This is the original post where the phrase came from:

http://captainawkward.com/2011/01/18/reader-question-5-how-do-i-deal-with-a-clingy-friend-who-tries-to-make-over-my-life/

Unfortunately while our culture provides many scripts for breaking up with romantic partners, it has no template for ending friendships. There should be a ritual.

“Dear Friend, please take this African Violet as a symbol of the close and wonderful friendship we once shared. Please enjoy it in good health, and if you are having a problem or just want to chat, please call someone else from now on.”

And this is how the tag became a catchphrase:

http://captainawkward.com/tag/the-african-violet-of-broken-friendship/

Q: does anyone think this would be a good candidate for de-indexing? I started to post about a person that fit this and then realized it might not be advisable.

i have not spoken with my father in over 3 years and this has been v good for me. in favor of cutting people out of your life who are abusive, obv.

word

way to go.

This can be a good thing to do. Life is short. Time is precious. There are too many people on the planet to allow your life essence to be sucked away by vampires and victims. Cutting a bad person out leaves more room for good people.

when does "love" with so many toxic strings attached become "abuse". the hardest for me was dealing with how i missed those relationships (parents) but then realizing what i actually missed was love-minus-toxic-strings-attached, which i never received and will never receive from them, and mourning this in wider context. working on building a sense of love without the strings afterwards, that's actually the hardest. xpost

I have never made a concious decision to cut my parents off, but when it has happened I liken it to an internal circuit breaker that popped and can't be reset. Fuck all that papist quaker-babble about the sanctity of parents! One thing I learned recently is that my mother is just as loathsome as my father and I was blind to this for decades, and she was adding to my low self esteem woes with her slow, hateful attrition.

I guess to give the non-specific version: a friend of ours for a number of years has gone increasingly batshit since her divorce a few years ago, making a series of painfully bad choices in terms of work and dating, and also behaves very frustratingly every time we're around her (showing up absurdly late for everything, having the food ready four hours after you arrive if you go there, etc.) We realized we just couldn't be around her anymore and decided to stop accepting invitations.

Keep hearing this thread title to the tune of Got To Get You Into My Life, with the big horn section and all.

ironically

If you're going to cut someone out of your life, it's best to do with with a big horn section accompaniment.

Someone I considered my best friend did this to me for reasons I truly can't fathom. It was hurtful.