Anonymous wrote:This is a terrible thing to admit but I feel like I just don't like my friend anymore. Nothing specific has happened, I suddenly just...don't like her. Has anyone experienced anything like this?

Yes. I have had this happen a couple times in the past few years. They were perfectly nice people but I realized When I didn’t know all to them for a few weeks I just didn’t care and didn’t miss them. I really didn’t like them enough anymore to hang out with them. They didn’t do anything or say anything wrong.

Yes, but normally it's when they show who they are in some way that I can no longer look past or ignore. It's not always like one big thing happens; more often, it's a culmination of things over time and at some point, I just reach a tipping point. I doubt this is uncommon.

Yes. For years I was close to a guy friend (once FwB) from law school. I told him a lot about me. After law school I went through a painful period of emotional growth, and I realized that he was a toxic parasite who never had my best interests in mind, who used me for whatever my talents and knowledge could get him. (You'd better believe I helped him get through law school and with his floundering career afterwards!)

So I cut him off. No more narcissist fuel from my tank. Bye.

He didn't take it well and talked badly of me to people we both know. Sometimes that's how it is when you end a toxic, fake friendship.

Anonymous wrote:Yes I’ve lost respect for friends who became MAGA.

Yes, and related to that..extreme Evangelicals who formerly believed in mainstream religions.

Anonymous wrote:It’s a bit like falling out of love with a partner. Sometimes it happens to me when I know someone too well.

This scares me about falling in love. The closeness can become repulsive. I need a healthy distance.

I try not to judge myself for not liking people anymore. Sometimes, people start to irritate me. I had an awesome friend who went on and on about her boyfriend issues. One day, I just lashed out. We never spoke again. I still text and love her. But can't deal with her conversations.

Another friend was so fun. We traveled together, cried together. But she would take these secret jabs at me. It was really annoying. I just lost it.

Then I have people who don't want to speak to me anymore. I am outspoken and opinionated and can sometimes say a rude comment. Certain people have just stopped talking to me. I accept it and move on. People are ever-evolving. I met a new friend at the spa last week. Usually that means I am shifting and another friend may have to fall off.

Yes, I made friends with a woman who moved to my neighborhood. However, over time I realized that she was a big time people user and social climbing and very dramatic/gossipy. The more I got to know her, the less I liked her and didn’t want to be her friend. However, the damage was done already as she used our initial friendship and the connections I gave her to other people in the neighborhood to firmly entrench herself in the neighborhood social scene using the same tactics she used to become my friend. Now I have to deal with her, but I keep my distance. I figure overtime she will be figured out by others. There are snakelike toxic people out there, I was too trusting before. Now I keep anyone new at arms length, as I’ve been burned.

Anonymous wrote:hi fair weather friends

Knowing when to dump a toxic person is not fair weather, we aren’t dumping friends with cancer

Anonymous wrote:It’s odd, OP. These other examples people are sharing is when the person changes or they realize something new about the person they didn’t see before. In your case, you are saying she’s the same person she’s always been but now you don’t like her.

It could be a situation where you are spending too much time together so small quirks are grating on your nerves. Or it could be that something has changed and that’s affecting your perception. But yeah, it’s weird to one day like a person and then suddenly not like them without anything changing.

One thought, have you made or become closer to other people? Sometimes I think relationships are born out of necessity, like you become close because for whatever reason you don’t have other connections. Then when you make other friends you’re not as reliant on the first friend and realize you never actually liked them as much as you thought.

It’s odd, OP. These other examples people are sharing is when the person changes or they realize something new about the person they didn’t see before. In your case, you are saying she’s the same person she’s always been but now you don’t like her.

It could be a situation where you are spending too much time together so small quirks are grating on your nerves. Or it could be that something has changed and that’s affecting your perception. But yeah, it’s weird to one day like a person and then suddenly not like them without anything changing.

Go watch The Banshees of Inisherin. That's basically the plot of the movie where one friend just stops liking the other friend.

Yes, during the height of Covid, I ran the Covid unit with one of my coworkers. We naturally got close and became pretty good friends. She definitely bragged a lot and I knew other people had some issues with her, but I kind of chalked it up to the stress of the situation and I had a feeling the bragging came because she was having major issues in her marriage and with her husband so she over compensated. Anyways, after Covid, the bragging got worse and it became difficult to have any conversation that didn't include how amazing her kids were at sports and how amazing of a nurse she was. Eventually I also started to realize that she talked down about other coworkers. The friendship has since faded, but it has been my only adult friendship to end because I realized I didn't actually like the person.

Yes, and it usually coincides with me moving to a different phase of life. For example: After grad school, I moved to a new city—the same one as a pretty good grad school friend. We hung out a lot, mostly because we didn’t know anyone else. A lot of our hangouts revolves around me driving her places (store, airport, etc) because I had a car and she didn’t. I got married and had kids, and realized there wasn’t much left to our friendship once you removed the things that were super inconvenient to me!

Anonymous wrote:hi fair weather friends

This doesn’t mean what you think it means. A fair-weather friend is someone who is always there for the good times but disappears during times of difficulty. That’s not what anyone is describing.

People are allowed to move on from relationships that don’t work anymore without being told they are a bad person for doing so.

hi fair weather friends