When a Friend Keeps Letting You Down: Should You Stay or Go? (What Is a Friend part 3)

Knowing how to tell a friend they hurt you is a skill most of us never learned. So instead of setting boundaries with friends, we drop hints, make excuses for them, and let the resentment pile up. In this episode, I’m talking about how to actually say the thing you’ve been avoiding, and how to figure out whether you’re dealing with a toxic friendship or one that’s totally fixable.

I’m also sharing a personal story about a friend who went missing on me during one of the hardest periods of my life, and what happened when I finally told her how I felt. I think ending a friendship should be a conscious choice you make with your eyes open, not something that happens by default while you simmer and eventually explode over.

In this episode:

• The weird middle ground where a friend is just enough to keep around but also annoying
• Why “but I’ve known them for 20 years” is not a reason to keep quiet
• The two types of people who never actually say what’s bothering them, and how to know if you’re one of them
• What happened when I told a friend she wasn’t there for me after my parents’ car accident
• The line from Tulsa King I fully intend to use on someone someday
• What to do when you’ve asked for change several times and nothing sticks
• The trap of making someone else’s behavior mean something about your worth
• How I’ve actually worded it when it was time to part ways with a friend

This is part 3 of my What Is a Friend? series, so if you missed the first two episodes, here are the links:

1. What is a Friend? Why Making Friends as an Adult Feels So Hard
2. Adult Friendships: Why that Friendship Feels One-Sided

Transcript

 Today is part three of my friendship series, What is a Friend? I thought it would be useful to talk about how to handle the actual friction that happens when your friend isn’t treating you the way you wanna be treated. And this can be anything, like excluding you from group invites, leaving you hanging until the last minute so it’s really hard to make plans, always showing up late, or even going out to eat together and then expecting you to chip in for things you didn’t order.
 
These are just a handful of the complaints that have come up with my clients, but as you already know, this list can really be endless. So it’s basically anything that feels somewhat inconsiderate to you, where you frequently feel frustrated or annoyed by your friends, and you just don’t feel good about how they handle any of this.
 
If this sounds familiar, then buckle up, because you and I are gonna talk about how to think through this and what to do about it.
 
So first, let me say that what makes certain friends kind of hard is that they can be annoying, but they’re usually not 100% douchey, because if they were a total dick, you’d just walk away, right? Like, they’re in this weird middle ground where they’re just nice enough, but frequently ugh in some way. So you often end up feeling like you don’t wanna be mean or making a fuss about nothing, and this is where a lot of people will tell me, oh, they’ve known this person for so many years, and they start making excuses for them.
 
Or even worse, they start spiraling because they feel less than, like, “what’s wrong with me that people treat me this way?” Which is where I probably come in sounding like an asshole, but I always say, “So what?” So what if you’ve known them for 20 years? So what if you know them from church or school or work?
 
I get that that can make things a little bit awkward, but the bottom line is they ain’t treating you right. So what are you gonna do about it? Have you told them you don’t like it when they do this thing or a bunch of these things? Because at the end of the day, you teach people how to treat you.
 
Now, you’d be surprised at how many of these people, when I ask them if they’ve communicated what it is they don’t like, and they’ll usually say one of two things.
 
They either say no because they’re conflict-avoidant as heck, or they say yes, but then I find out that it was done in such a super indirect, roundabout, beating- around- the- bush kind of way that saying it might as well not even have happened. But they think that that person should know, that that person should have picked up on that one tiny time they said something.
 
Okay, so if you are in the first category where you’re conflict-avoidant, and this includes me, I’m raising my hand, this is where setting boundaries comes into play. And I always remind people that you can set boundaries without being mean about it, because a boundary is really just you asking for what you need so that y’all can get along.
 
For other people, the answer is sometimes learning that a disagreement doesn’t necessarily mean conflict. Just because we see things differently doesn’t mean we’re gonna have a fight. Although, side note here, if the other person is the type to get into a fight for you asking for what you need, then they probably don’t belong in your friend bucket.
 
Now, if you’re the person who drops a lot of hints or has said something once, like a while ago, my two cents is that maybe you wanna try being more direct, at least one more time before cutting ties. Because to me, okay, and, you know, keep in mind that I am very literal, very Drax-like. This is some of that autism, okay?
 
But there is a huge difference between saying, “I’m not a fan of that,” versus, “if you wanna hang out together, can we do something else?”
 
Or you can be super-duper direct like this character in Tulsa King who told his girl, “If you do it again, then you and I are not gonna know each other.”
 
Now, I know that comes off super confrontational, so obviously you don’t have to say that, but I love that show, by the way, okay?
 
I remember watching that scene like, “Oh, shizzles, I’m totally stealing that line. I’m banking it for a future day.”
 
Anyway, the point is, I don’t care how you say it as long as you say it. Like, if you care about being fair and giving the friendship a real chance, then you kinda gotta open your mouth and say something to the other person and see how they respond. And that’ll tell you, because this will be their chance to repair the relationship or your permission slip to walk away.
 
But unfortunately, I do think a lot of us make ourselves the silent judge, jury, and executioner. I think you know what I mean here, where we wait and we don’t ever say anything when something bothers us, so then our resentment grows and keeps growing over time until we reach the point of no return.
 
By then, we don’t wanna be friends with them anymore, so there’s no chance to fix it.
 
I think that’s sad because sometimes it’s true, you gotta leave the relationship, but sometimes it was totally fixable, but we didn’t give them a chance.
 
And God knows I’ve done that plenty of times. Not proud of it, but also kind of not surprising considering that’s the only example I’d ever seen from my parents cutting friends out of their lives without any discussion. Which now that I think about it, that’s pretty f’d up because those people were good to my parents, and I think they deserved at least a conversation.
 
So over the last decade, as I’m really focusing on learning who I am and trying to become more of who I’m meant to be, there’s a lot to this where I think, “I don’t wanna be my parents.” They’ve set some great examples, but in a lot of examples, especially around how they treat people, I just don’t wanna make the same choices.
 
So for me, I’ve started having these difficult conversations with my friends or some now ex-friends, and it for sure has not been easy. I still remember there was this time in 2022 when both my parents were in this terrible car accident, and they were both in the hospital.
 
My so-called friend asked me once, okay, just once about it before changing the subject to her launch not going well. She was selling a program at the time, and yeah, that’s all she ended up talking about. And I still remember after we hung up, I was thinking, “ how the heck did this turn into me comforting her? Like, WTF?”
 
And every single time she called during that period, she only ever talked about herself. She was acting like everything was normal for me, which it most definitely was not, because this was super traumatic.
 
Now,  how I handled it is I let a few weeks go by because at the time, I think I was just overloaded with the trauma of my parents and wanting to make sure that I was there for them, taking care of them, driving them to their doctor’s appointments, right?
 
It was a lot on my plate, and the last thing I wanted to handle was this one more thing. So I let a few weeks go by, and then after I got back to my own life, I ended up telling her that it was really disappointing for me as one of the hardest periods of my life, where I needed someone to lean on and she wasn’t there for me.
 
How did she respond? Well, she got freaking defensive, which told me a lot about her character. But even despite that, I eventually forgave her, and we moved on. But I’m not gonna lie, it was never the same after that.
 
Now, I’ve had other friends handle that same scenario very differently, where when I shared how I felt, they immediately owned it and they tried their best to make it right.
 
For me, those friendships are so much stronger now because I know I can trust them to have my best intentions at heart, and they can trust me to be honest about how I’m really feeling.
 
So for me, the main takeaway is that people aren’t perfect, and they’re never gonna be perfect, because sometimes we have an off day or we don’t handle something the right way. The important thing to remember is that if something’s wrong, we’ll tell each other and give the other person a chance to fix it, because that’s what having a healthy relationship means.
 
Now, I know that having these conversations can be super uncomfortable. I get it. It has not been easy for me either. Sometimes I’ll be sitting there with sweaty palms and sweaty armpits, feeling weirdly hot and cold at the same time, and maybe really angry or upset, you know, depending on what’s going on, which I don’t love.
 
But I guess that’s the price to pay for growth.
 
I do think some of us are lucky where we learn these skills much earlier in life, but a lot of us are actually more like me, where we never learned how to have the healthy discussions with uncomfortable topics while keeping a safe space and maintaining respect for one another without name-calling or resorting to nasty language.
 
That’s because my family was very negative with very violent and judging language. It hasn’t been great.  And because we were like that, you know, that’s how I was so I lost a lot of friends from not having that emotional and social intelligence, which sucked.
 
But I think that’s what life is, right? Life is about learning these lessons.
 
Now, maybe you’re thinking, well, what if you have the conversation, and maybe you’ve had it multiple times, right? Asking for what you need, like two or three times or more, and the other person says that they’ll change, but then it doesn’t. Maybe stuff changes for a week or two, and then it goes back to how it’s always been.
 
What do you do? Well, from my perspective, this is where you have to make a choice.
 
You have two options. You stay friends or you don’t.
 
If you continue the friendship, then that means you’re gonna have to learn to accept them as they are without harboring unrealistic expectations that they’ll change.
 
And personally, I haven’t seen this work out too much because usually the resentment keeps growing and just poisons the vibe.
 
The only time this hasn’t happened is when you continue the friendship, but you consciously dial down the level of closeness you have, right? Like, you recognize that you’ve placed them in a friendship tier higher than they deserve to belong in.
 
But otherwise, it just seems to be human nature that we can’t let go of certain things. I also know that sometimes some people can. As rare as it is, they can, and kudos to them. You know, maybe they’re related to Mother Teresa or something.
 
But whatever you do, I do think that you need to make a very intentional and conscious choice about this. Because what a lot of people do here, in a very unproductive manner, is that they are hoping that the other person will change, even though there’s no evidence that that will happen, and then they’ll make that lack of change mean something about themselves, usually that they’re unloved or unworthy, and then it turns into this weird waiting and proving game. So they just kind of end up getting dragged along for the ride.
 
And my whole take on this is that there are some people who are in our lives for a season, or maybe even multiple seasons, and then it’s just time for them to move on.
 
But there are other people who stay in our lives, and they grow alongside us, and it’s beautiful.  But you know what? It’s really hard to find the good ones when our lives are filled with the wrong people. It’s kinda like trying to grow flowers in a garden that’s overrun by weeds.
 
Now, it’s not my place to tell you to remove the weeds or even to tell you which people are the weeds, but I think you already know, right? They’re the people who leave you feeling drained and not good consistently.
 
So let’s say you have a bunch of people like that and you’re just like, “No, these people have got to go,” and you decide to formally end the friendship.
 
The way that I’ve said it in the past was something like this: “Hey, I think it’s time for us to part ways. Thank you so much for your friendship, and I wish you the very best.”
 
I did not feel like I owed an explanation, and if they kept asking for one, I just said that we weren’t a good fit. We were going in different directions. We had different goals.
 
I usually don’t tell people unless they really show that they wanted and valued honest feedback. But that’s been very, very rare.
 
Anyway, I’ve said it before, but I will say it again. There are so many people who would love to be your friend. Now, what stops a lot of people from ending unhealthy, toxic friendships is this fear of being alone or being lonely, of thinking, “But then I’ll have no one.”
 
So I just need you to know that I think you’re awesome, and you deserve to be surrounded by people who think you’re hot shit. I promise you, those people are out there, but it’s up to you to find them instead of waiting for them to just fall in your lap, okay?
 
You deserve to have people who love you and have your back.
 
Alrighty, that’s it for this week. If you know someone who needs to hear this episode, do me a favor and send it to them. You know, it’ll help them and it’ll help me grow the show. If you have any questions, hit me up on LinkedIn.
 
As always, thank you so much for listening. You’re amazing, and I believe in you. See you next time.