The kindest way to break up with a friend is to ghost them 💬 jess_barrett for ipaperviews
This has become known on social media as the “HR-ification of friendship”: we are now speaking to our friends as if they are colleagues we’re letting go from the company in order to ease our own mental loads.
Treating friendship as admin has perhaps become a byproduct of our overstretched lives which are already filled with more communication than we know what to do with. Endless, free flowing chat via Whatsapp or social media can start to feel like work you need to keep up with. Writer Flora Gill recentlyshe even ranks her friends by importance on a spreadsheet, giving points for “unusualness” and subtracting them when they have a baby.
Do we need to adopt Brandolini’s method to streamline our social lives? I’m not sure I would ever appreciate an upfront dumping. I like to think I’m smart enough to understand if it’s not working. Sure, it can be hurtful to be cut off or ghosted but I would genuinely prefer that in the long run than to be wished “all the best” as I’m told I haven’t made the cut in the friendship process.
Like me, I suspect that a lot of people have actually already seen friendships naturally fall away as a result of the pandemic. My friendship circle is now very much smaller as a result of a few factors: I left London in 2018 to move to Bath, then lockdown happened and travelling to visit people wasn’t possible. Add to that the fact I had a baby last year and socialising hasn’t been my priority, and my social calendar is embarrassingly empty. I have felt very lonely at times.
I haven’t yet felt the need to update the friends I’ve not seen for several years to let them know that I don’t have the “capacity to invest in our friendship any longer”, and vice versa. I think each of our circumstances make that quite clear. I miss a lot of them but I believe that people come in and out of your life over time for a reason. I do wish them all “love and success”, but I’m not going to be dumping anyone quite yet.
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