Here Is Why You Need To Dump That Toxic Friend
You are allowed only a certain amount time on this earth, so why not spend it with the people that make you your best self?
By Mary McMahon
If you’re anything like me, you give out far too many second chances. You live on the likes of forgiveness. You try to tell yourself to act like “the better person” but there comes a point when enough is enough. So you walk away. Graceless or not, you know it’s the best decision you can make…for you. You spend months, years, a decade pouring into a relationship that you felt was worth the time and energy to sustain. And perhaps, at some point it was. But people change, and despite who changes, you have decide who you’re going to take along with you through the rest of your life. And sometimes it’s best to leave some people behind.
You’ll know when it’s time. You won’t second guess it anymore because it’s all built up over time and you have just had enough of being used and abused. That’s right. Whether they were verbally (or even physically) abusive towards you, or perhaps they talked behind your back incessantly, or maybe they would continuously leave you out unless they needed something from you – regardless of what happened, everyone has their breaking point. You’ve been through the roughage. You’ve collected the battle wounds from their shitty behavior and you’re done. And maybe it wasn’t always like this. Maybe it was fun and awesome for quite some time, but that doesn’t make up for how people treat you in the here and now.
And they might talk a load of garbage about you in defense. They’ll use your reputation as a shield for their ego. But let it all roll off. Because eventually everyone will see what you see. And they don’t, you have nothing in common with them anyway.
As over-the-top as they might want to make it seem, cutting off ties with a bad friend it doesn’t always have to be dramatic. You don’t need to make a scene. There shouldn’t be shade thrown. You don’t have to go out of your way to make the other person miserable to prove a point. What’s the good in that? What makes you better than them? You don’t have to proclaim the end of friendship to them. This isn’t fourth grade. You aren’t a child; you’re an adult who is capable of moving on and living your life without them. You will more or less be asked, “What happened?” And you don’t have to slander, but you should be honest. You should be honest with yourself and with others when asked because you owe that to yourself, especially if you were mistreated by this friend. Especially if this “friend” threw themselves in the middle of your other friendships with their hateful words.
You might miss them, but it won’t matter because your feet are moving forward, and they’re lagging behind you. You will miss them for the times that made it all worth it. You might miss them for those fun, crazy nights out that you’ve grown out of doing EVERY weekend, or you might miss them because you had a true connection and you just simply fell apart. You might miss them because they were continuously teaching you lessons that involved testing your patience. And you might miss them, but more than likely you will not.
If you don’t miss them, or go so far as to forget about them, I guess it just shows how much you didn’t need them in the first place. It just shows how much stress they brought on your life, so much so that the lack of having them is welcome. You need to set yourself free from the life that is being led by someone who is not worth the time or effort or hurt that they have caused you. You are allowed only a certain amount time on this earth, so why not spend it with the people that make you your best self? Leaving behind that bad friend will not only give you the freedom to move past the mess that that person made, it will allow you more time to spend with the people who truly love you for you.
At the end of the day, you need to think about what is in your life that is worth it. You need to know that you have the willpower and the strength to say, “Enough is enough,” and move on with your life. You need to know that you’re worthy of a friend that is good to you as you are to them.