The Case for Breaking Up...With A Friend

Too Tired To Pretend? Great. Ending a Friendship Isn’t Cruel. Avoiding It Is.

Last week I was listening to Michelle Obama's new podcast with Issa Rae when a question Queen Michelle asked stopped me in my tracks….

“What do we owe adult friendships?”

The moment she said it, I felt this jolt of awe and clarity. That one question stirred up a tidal wave of reflection—on my relationships, the ones that have lasted, the ones that ended messily, the ones I have been burnout by and the ones I quietly let die.

It made me ask another question I haven’t been able to shake:

What do we owe other adults?

I’ve sat on this question for the past week and have finally come to an answer. I think we owe all adults the 3 things: honesty, kindness, and respect. That’s it. That’s the floor. So…if that, why then, when it comes to adult friendships—especially the exhausting ones that no longer serve us—do we forget all of that? Why do we ghost, breadcrumb, withhold, or slowly back out until we’ve left something we once cared about completely dried out?

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My Hypocrisy

I am, by nature, a confrontational person. The Utendahls don’t see confrontation as scary. We see it as love. We are a big, expressive, passionate family who believes that when you care about someone, you say the hard thing. You have the hard conversation. You clear the air. You don’t let things fester. That’s the culture I come from. So it’s especially ironic—and frankly hypocritical—that I’ve let more than a few friendships slowly wither on the vine.

I didn’t confront. I didn’t explain.

I didn’t say, “This no longer feels mutual.”

I let myself get exhausted by them…and then, quietly or abruptly, let them go.

And I’ve done enough therapy to know why. Some of it is people-pleasing. Some of it is guilt. And a lot of it comes from the fact that those friendships were boring and unbalanced from the start. I was burnout by them. They felt one-sided. The other person was more invested in me than I was in them, and instead of being honest, I avoided the guilt by staying halfway in. Not fully present, but not fully out either. Somewhere between available and emotionally absent. That limbo state? It drained me.

The truth is, I’m a full-on friend. If I love you, I LOVE YOU HARD. I will show up, I will stay late, I will text you random thoughts, I will send you 10000 unrelated DMs on Instagram, I will celebrate you, and text you back even when I have nothing left in the tank. My friends are not acquaintances. They are my family. So when I give someone 25%—and they’re giving me 100%—it starts to chip away at my integrity. I begin to feel like a fraud, which turns into resentment. Which turns into distance. Which turns into… apathy….the most dangerous emotion of them all.

But here’s the damn truth—I’ve done this not because I don’t care about people, but because I care too much about not being the asshole in someone else’s story. I didn’t want to be the friend who ended it. So I avoided the ending entirely and that has in fact…made me the asshole.

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Mirror, Mirror

That podcast episode with Michelle Obama and Issa Rae was the mirror I didn’t know I needed. At one point, Issa reads a letter from a woman asking for friendship advice—but the letter wasn’t really a question. It was a confession. The woman shared how a friendship had ended in a messy breakup, one she admitted was largely her fault. She hadn’t been honest with her friend. She didn’t express that she didn’t feel the same closeness anymore, didn’t want to talk on the phone, didn’t want to make plans. So when her friend finally confronted her and said, “You don’t make an effort, I don’t want to do this anymore,” she was shocked—but not for the reason you’d expect.

She wasn’t upset that the friendship ended. She was upset that… she didn’t care. She wasn’t grieving the relationship. She was grieving the guilt of feeling like a bad person for not wanting to keep it alive.

I gasped. Because same. The friendships I’ve let fade? I don’t miss them. But I have had to work through the shame of not missing them—and that’s something no one really talks about. So many of us do this. We let friendships drift, waiting for some arbitrary fallout to end it so we don’t have to. We pull back, give less, hoping they’ll take the hint. We avoid. We disappear. And we carry around guilt because we know it wasn’t the best way to go. But we were tired. We didn’t know what to say. No one taught us how to break up with a friend. No TV show or movie has shown this in an admirable way. And the reality was simply—that we just didn’t want to be friends anymore—but saying that felt too brutal.

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When You Know Your True Friends

I think the real ache of ending a friendship shows up most clearly when you know what deep, mutual friendship actually feels like. I feel so lucky—rich, really—to have lifelong friends like Jennifer M., who I’ve known since I was six. Brendan D. and Olivia F., who’ve been ride-or-dies since college. And also: Tembe, Elsa, Kayla, Allegra, Cleo, Brooke, Siraad… friendships that came into my life after 25, but feel just as soul-level. That’s the thing: friendships don’t need decades to matter. What they need is depth. What they need is mutuality. And when they end, what they deserve—at the very least—is truth.

So here’s where we have to be honest with ourselves: If we believe in honesty, kindness, and respect, that has to include how we exit, not just how we show up. We can’t call ourselves self-aware or emotionally intelligent and still ghost people we once loved. We can’t say we value honesty while keeping certain friendships on life support just to avoid confrontation.

Not every friendship is meant to last through every chapter of your life. Some friendships are for your party era. Some are for your career climb, your crisis, your glow-up, your grief. And that doesn’t make them any less real. But not all of them are meant to come with you—and that’s okay.

The next time a friendship starts to feel unbalanced, exhausting, or simply over, what if… we just say the thing? “I care about you. But this friendship doesn’t feel aligned anymore.” It’s not mean. It’s not cruel. In fact, it might be the kindest thing you can do—for them and for yourself.

In my 30s, I’ve come to believe that real friendship confrontation is an act of love. And that includes loving yourself enough to be honest about who gets to walk with you into your next chapter. Friendship isn’t static. Some are for a season. Some are for a lesson. Some are for life. And that’s all valid.

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So…If You're Standing at a Crossroads, Try This:

• Ask yourself: What’s really keeping this friendship alive—connection or obligation?

• Journal: What would I say if I were honest? What would it feel like to let go with intention?

• Write a letter—even if you don’t send it. Sometimes just naming the truth is enough.

• Offer a soft landing. “I’ve felt things shifting, and I want to be honest. I’m in a different chapter of life, and I want to close this chapter with care.”

• Create a ritual for release. It doesn’t have to involve the other person. It can just be a way to symbolically say: I’m letting go.

And lastly, because I AM that kind of friend, try saying one of these phrases that I wish I had said to former friends when I was ready to let go:

Friendship Break Up Lines:

• “I want to be honest with you, because I respect you—this friendship hasn’t felt aligned for me for a while, and I think it’s time we both move forward separately.”

• “You’ve been an important part of my life, but I don’t think I have the capacity to continue this friendship in the way either of us deserves.”

• “I’ve realized that I’ve been holding on to this friendship out of obligation, not mutual connection, and that doesn’t feel fair to either of us.”

• “This isn’t easy to say, but I’ve grown in a direction that no longer fits with our dynamic—and I want to be honest about that rather than slowly drift away.”

• “I’ve appreciated what we shared, but I need to step away from this friendship. This choice is about me honoring what I need right now, not about blame.”

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Friendships aren’t failures because they end.
They only fail when we pretend they never mattered in the first place.

So next time you feel that slow, subtle drift… don’t wait for the blow-up. Don’t wait until you’re so depleted you can’t be gracious. Don’t wait for the out.

Give the friendship what it deserves.
Give yourself what you deserve.

A little honesty. A little kindness. A little respect.

The rest will sort itself out.

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