How Can I Break Up With A Friend? [Your Unfiltered Dilemmas Answered]

0:11What is up? I'm Grace Beverly and welcome back to Working Hard. the podcast-shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing, because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

0:25What is up, guys, and welcome back to Working Hard. On Monday, we talked about how to build amazing friendships as an adult, and I feel like the episode had such a lovely response. So I really just wanted to take this conversation a bit further, and I feel like alongside lots of people agreeing with the fact that maybe they hadn't necessarily recognized that inconvenience was a big part of friendship or that maybe they were realizing that they were mismatched with people that they'd been friends with and who weren't willing to inconvenience themselves or whatever it might be. I also wanted to maybe answer some friendship dilemmas because I think these show a lot of like the real world things that a lot of us are dealing with when we're talking about friendships as an adult.

1:05Like I think it's really easy for me to sit here and talk about the, I guess the theory behind like what makes a good friendship. However, it's not always going to translate like it's not always going to come through exactly in the way you thought it was going to even if you're doing everything right and I just think that's a natural part of us growing up and friendships becoming harder and having to become more intentional and it being really hard as well to make friends as an adult but the questions that came in were so real and so honest that it kind of felt unfair to cram them into an Instagram story So I thought it would be perfect for a full bonus episode dedicated to exactly that, going through your friendship dilemmas, having a big old chat about what works and what doesn't in your 20s.

1:46Yeah, and just having a bit more of a talk about friendship. I feel like especially with so much girlhood content online, it feels like maybe another thing that's just quite unattainable. And that's why I wanted to talk in the episode like I did on Monday, being like, I have always been a person who's not like struggled with friendships, but I've always been worried about not having like a good group. and I was never in like a good automatic group type thing. So I just like, I really believe in the power of building friendships and intentionally making them happen and knowing that sometimes you build them and they weren't the right one and you move on from that.

2:23Just like with relationships, I don't know, I feel like friendships are such a big part of my life. Despite being married, I think maybe there's this perception that you have your friendships until you have your marriage and then you kind of have your joint friendships like that's not been the case for me at all like I value my friendships so so highly and obviously I'm like two days into marriage so um you know that doesn't say a lot but like genuinely I feel like my friendships are just as important for me as like having a healthy and happy relationship for my general happiness um the other day actually I was thinking because one of my friends um was like dating someone and I literally said in the office I was like oh my god I'm worried she's gonna get a boyfriend and then who am I gonna to hang out with and then I was like oh I I literally have a husband um but I feel like that goes to show just how important friendships are to me and how much of a big part of my entire life they generally are and I just feel particularly female friendships like would go to the ends of the earth for them right so going on to the first dilemma hey Grace I was listening to this week's episode on my walk and I have a question I feel like I've been pulling back from people a lot I used to want plans all the time and now I feel tired by everyone I keep thinking I'm better on my own which feels odd for me do you think that's me prioritizing myself or should I be worried I think naturally as you grow up your appetite for seeing friends and doing certain things changes like when I was at school because I was regularly like home alone I would make sure I was at a different friend's house every night like in half term at school I would stay at a different friend's house every single night and so that kind of continued as I grew into adulthood I was like I must be with friends all the time I must be speaking to friends all the time be seeing friends all the time and I think naturally that kind of changes and for some people it will increase and for some people it will decrease and I don't think that's worrying at all I think maybe when it's a little bit not worrying but you know what isolation looks like for you for someone isolation might be being alone three nights of a week for another person isolation might be you know not seeing a friend once a month like it will be different for everyone I think that it's important to make sure you are around people and you have good conversations and you have that kind of companionship but that doesn't need to look a certain way like that doesn't need to look like going out that doesn't need to look like wanting plans or having big group plans all the time or whatever it might be I see people nowhere near as much as I used to see people like I used to be out and about all the time and very happy to see people all the time and now like I see friends a few times a week max usually probably more likely like two times a week um would be like representative of normal week so I do think that's totally normal I think if it feels like something in particular that's making you feel like a barrier between yourself and the friends you want to have I feel like that's worth looking at do you feel like you're pulling away from people because they are not the type of people you want to be around?

5:22Would you feel energised by different types of company? I think that will tell you more. But I don't think in and of itself, wanting plans less and less of the time is strange unless it feels like you're wanting that and it's not feeling good to you. I think you can just listen to your mind, your body, what you actually want, what's recharging you and reframe what types of friendships you want, what they look like. Like, is it going to a bar or is it chilling at home together or going on a cute walk whatever it might be I think you can get clear on what that looks like and I don't think that's worrying at all as long as you don't feel isolated or feel more and more down while cutting people off the second one is hey grace and non please if you share this obviously guys were always anonymous over here um a friend of mine keeps adding new rules no talking about her mum no talking about her husband and now no conversations about anything political or controversial and I feel like I'm being managed am I overreacting for wanting to step back um no I don't think you're overreacting at all I think that everyone wants different things out of friendships to me that feels a little bit controlling and I say that with caution because I do think you can absolutely set rules and boundaries within friendships like setting boundaries is not controlling however continuously adding new rules and changing goalposts and just saying, oh, I'm not talking about these areas.

6:47Like, feels strange from a friendship if it's not associated with like, oh, actually, I feel a bit sad when we talk about these areas or when I see you, I prefer distraction from that or whatever it might be. Like, a friendship goes both ways and you might want to talk about those things. Like, maybe you don't want to talk about her mum or her husband, but you might want to talk about political and controversial things and that might be important for you in a friendship. So, I feel like that's totally fair enough. I think it all depends on like the extent to which that is the case, because you shouldn't feel like you're being managed and boundaries are important.

7:18And it's always good to put boundaries in and say, you know, I'm not, I don't love talking about this at the moment or whatever it might be. But I think like cold, hard barriers that are like, this is what our friendship is. And like no room for movement doesn't necessarily feel like the most like relaxing and healing friendship. Okay the next dilemma is I met this girl at my fitness class and we hung out once. She's nice but we didn't click at all and she keeps asking to meet again. I still want to go to her class though. How do you distance yourself without making the next class awkward? Thanks so much.

7:51I think this is one of the tough things about when we talk about adult friendships. Like when you want to build friendships as an adult like it is tough. It's much harder than when you're at school and you were forced into the same group of people over and over and I think that it's totally understandable then that different people meet and are on different pages. If you think about it, it's no different from kind of dating and someone meeting and having a great time and the other person being like, this is not my bag at all. And so I think that it's always just like either a conversation or if you feel like, like you don't need to have a big breakup conversation with someone who you met and hung out with once.

8:23I think that generally, I don't know, it's tough because you don't want to necessarily say like, oh, they'll get the hint over time if you just like I don't I wouldn't recommend like ignoring someone but I do think that friendships could at one point have been on one road and then move to a different road and I feel like you don't necessarily have to have a huge conversation about that if you hung out once if you feel like the message really isn't getting across and you're being polite and you're being kind um but you're just saying you know I'm super busy at the moment or whatever it might be I think that you can then say I don't know it's a really tough conversation isn't it like you don't want to necessarily be like oh I didn't love hanging out um but I think you can just say maybe you're busy like you don't someone doesn't need to be your type of person I don't think that you necessarily need to tell someone you dislike their personality or didn't like them um and I know you're not suggesting you say this but I think a lot of the time we talk about having conversations about these things and actually it might have just been that you didn't love their personality and certain things about it and if it's not something that's like immoral in any way and you just don't get on you don't need to tell them that you don't like their personality because they don't need to change that for you you just probably need to make it clear that you don't necessarily see like a future in terms of like having friendship but I do think like keep going to that class keep being polite like kindness is easy and it doesn't you know you can make it very clear that you're not free to hang out afterwards or whatever it might be but still be nice and polite and you know it might be a little bit awkward at the beginning but it can just be a friendship that is one of those like I see you at the class and that's great type friendships without needing to be a lot more.

10:01On to the next one so this is hi Grace I move every couple of years for work and each time I start from scratch with friends I feel like I get close to people and then I'm gone again and I'm kind of tired of feeling like the temporary friend. Do you know how people build long-term friendships while their life keeps shifting? I think this is really hard and to be honest I don't know if I'm the best person to keep advised for this because I've lived in London for most of my life. At the same time, I've had friends who've moved across the world, like two of my closest friends live in Australia. I have friends from when I was living in LA.

10:31I don't know. I have different friendships from different times. I do think you can keep friendships over long distance. I do think with your job, it is going to be hard not to feel this way a little bit. And if this is something that's really important to you, it might be something that you consider changing about your job like if you constantly feel like you're having to move around all the time and like you're temporary in everyone's life and they're temporary in yours you can make that decision just because like I think people normalize making big decisions for relationships but not necessarily for friendships and it doesn't need to be that way so I think you can think about that I also do think you can have really great friendships long distance like some of my best best friendships are long distance and some of them have I did a tiktok about this a while ago just saying like how many of my friendships had got more intentional and closer when we were longer distance because we were constantly having these like long phone call conversations rather than being just texting back and forth because you often text back and forth with friends that you might I don't know see out and about and then just not see them as much so you're constantly like kind of catching up in that way um but yeah I would I would really recommend trying to keep some friendships that mean a lot to you and like can you see them on your like can you see them when you have your annual leave or like do you guys ever cross paths in other ways again like I think that can be absolutely amazing of course it's going to be harder but you do get amazing experiences from traveling around as well so I think it's just about deciding what's most important to you and also building those long-term long-distance friendships by just investing in it like give them a call when you can like I when I was living in LA I would call one friend most days when I was like on my way to the gym or whatever it might be and I never would have done that in London because my life was so busy in London that I just felt like that was time to myself and actually when I started doing that phone call it was so recharging and we talk about so much and we catch up so much and I feel like that I don't know I feel like it's a great way of building friendship because you're still having that conversation so I do think you can still keep that in that way.

12:42The next one is I feel like I'm in the stage of life where work kids and life admin just wipe me out. I want deep friendships like you spoke about but I'm so drained and I struggle to even text back. How do you keep friendships strong when your energy is zero? I'd appreciate any advice. So I think the first thing I want to say about this is like I do not believe that strong friendships are built from texting back. I believe that strong friendships are built from making plans and sticking to them and doing that in the least difficult way possible. So I understand that it's really difficult to get plans in and that's why like I really recommend you know I love my Monday night with the girlies however that might be way too much for you and it might be the last Friday of every month or it might be every other week and you like hang out with the kids together or whatever it might be.

13:29I think find something that would fit into your routine and like if you want those friendships they do need to fit in somewhere and it's going to require a little bit of inconvenience however obviously when you've got so much else that's going on in your life and when you've got kids I can imagine it's so difficult to balance having those friendships and being able to kind of really build those when you're dealing with so much like there is so much mental load on motherhood and I know that when I speak about friendship obviously I talk about that from the perspective where I don't have kids and therefore I'm not going to be able to think about it in the same way and like come from that in the same way but I do think as much as possible where you can fit things into your life in a way that does not feel draining like that is the answer so don't formulate things around texting back like I struggle to text back too after a day of emails the last thing I want to do is go through all my whatsapps but like maybe text them specifically just can you do this date and hang out with the kids together or go for dinner last Friday of every month or have a whole group of you that have a little movie night like every other week or whatever it might be find something that can fit into your life and make it take less energy so you're saying your energy is at zero and so it's hard to have your friendships I assume when you're actually with your friends you feel really recharged like make your friendships less effort if that makes sense it doesn't need to be effort every single time to find when you're seeing each other to decide what you're doing and to do something out of your routine build friendships into your routine as much as possible and I feel like that will make the big difference.

15:03Okay the last on Emma is hello I need your help please. I feel like all my friendships feel surface level. Nothing bad has happened but the closeness has just faded. I miss deeper connection and I don't know how to bring it back without making it weird. Any advice would be amazing. Thank you so much. Right I feel like this links back to the catch-up friends thing that we talked about a while ago. So I have a podcast on the catch-up friends thing and I also did a video on it but basically the concept is that so many of us have stayed connected to so many people because of social media and everything that a lot of us have just become catch-up friends and obviously life gets busy and everything so you're seeing a cycle of however many people over and over and you're just catching up with them over and over you're not having that deeper level friendship one of the important things is in that article the antidote or the kind of antithesis of catch-up friendship was friends you make memories with so i do think this is the real crux of it it's like how do you avoid just seeing people at a surface level and how can you actually make memories with them that being said obviously you it feels like you've had these friendships before and the closeness has faded like it's gone away I feel like just like sometimes that starts by being the person who leads it how could you get deeper conversation at your dinner like rather than just I don't know talking about other people or talking about your day or whatever it might be like can you bring up something you're really struggling with or something that you've been going through or whatever it might be that in my experience has been where friendships have opened up and got deeper for me where before maybe they just started being like nice and surface level and if you have that history with these people I think there's no reason why that shouldn't be able to happen however some people want different things from friendships and they don't want to talk about non-surface level things and it might just be that you need to find more people that do want to do that I do think that deeper connection is built and honed I guess over like over time and over leading by example and showing vulnerability and all of those different things like it doesn't just happen like sometimes you get an amazing person who is super open and super vulnerable and just happy to do that and other times it's built over years and years so I do think that like you can lead by example and that's more likely to get the ball rolling maybe it's just they're not the right people to be talking about things with if that doesn't work so maybe it's like other people that you have those deeper friendships with right that's actually all we have time for today which feels like it's absolutely flown but we are back to our usual episodes on monday but if you have a dilemma that you want me to dig into just send it to the working hard pod instagram i read them all and i answer one every week in the newsletter and every now and then we do episodes like this where we unpack them properly and talk about them in relation to topics we've covered or conversations we've been having and it kind of just feels like a big friendship itself like I feel like this is the type of thing I like talking about with my friends um but anyway as always have a wonderful week and thank you for listening