Dear Sasha, I ended a friendship over a year ago due to my friend being verbally abusive and just plain toxic. Since then, I have run into her at events held by mutual friends. I talk with her since I'm usually seated next to her, but keep it short and simple. She pretends to be polite at first, but then she makes passive-aggressive remarks, gives me judgmental looks, and plays victim so that I get told to "be nice". (Wtf?) I have thought about pulling her aside and talking to her, but knowing her, she would probably just scream at me (again). After seeing her, I get upset and don't understand it- what am I doing wrong? Why do I feel like the "bad guy" here?
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There’s a weird guilt that settles in when you finally pull a plug on a friendship. It’s not that you feel bad that they’re out of your life, because halle-f-cking-lujah, but it’s that you know you hurt another person’s feelings. It’s almost counter-intuitive because the whole reason you ended the friendship is because they were a dick and now here you’re having to be a dick to get them out of your life. It’s that strange push and pull of emotion that takes a little time to get over.
But sh-t V, what should be assuring you that you made the right decision is that this chick is still roaming around life like an asshole. That’s on her, not you. What's that elementary school saying? "I'm rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” Seriously, that’s some Dalai Lama sh-t right there.
B, it seems as though you still haven’t completely shaken her out of your life yet, so if I were you I’d take some more advanced steps. If that means missing a couple of events in order to bypass her bitch then do what you need to do. In the meantime, continue to weed the bad and foster the good. Life is too short to be rolling with a bunch of ball sucking losers.
Thanks for writing in and keep your questions coming to [email protected].
