Do You Break Up With Your Friends?

I also have that sort of character flaw, and for the same basic reason though the family dynamics weren't nil -- they were abusive.

Adding to the interesting coincidence: I, too, left a woman in Florida to return west in '84 and haven't seen her since. I spoke to her in late '89 or early '90 and was glad to have dodged that bullet. She'd since married and had a child, but described her marriage as "strangers who meet across the dinner table", and said that in spite of that she was perfectly content because all she'd ever wanted was to get married, have a kid, and be a stay-at-home mom just as her mother had been. I haven't felt any desire to talk to her since, and I'm just glad that I had good sense enough to not become that guy who was her stranger at the dinner table.

Never mind that I went on to do much, much worse. :wall:

 

Well, when it is about enough disrespect or betrayal things might be different of course. I guess I am less in need of clearly defined boundaries where it comes to a lot of friends. But maybe it is just so that I expect less of them as well
I think i rather hold the lines of communication open (even when there isn't any communication anymore) so I 1) don't have to deal with any guilt or regret later that I end it (perhaps for the wrong reasons, e.g. an urge to have defined boundaries where it comes to friendships), and 2) there wasn't an offical end so we can always get back in touch without such an official end between us. I really see little point with the average friendship, though I guess I am just lucky for not getting intensely screwed over by (at least the good) friends. There may be a few unwritten gradations in the kind of friends I have and what I expect from them in regards of friendship. But I rarely have hold it against them (or feel I had to) if they couldn't meet such an expectation. So that might also make it easier for me not to be in need of clearly defined boundaries here.

 

What's the purpose of burning bridges?

 

Clarity? Closure I guess. But yeah, why is closure or an official break up needed when a friend didn't meet expectations? Can it be the expectations themselves or the urge to have friendship boundaries defined clearly (maybe depending on the details)?

 

Bridges just seem to spontaneously burn in my case. No reason, really. I just always moved on and continued to do what I did in life.

 

To illuminate one's course to a better life, naturally!