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Friendships Can End with a Whimper

People come and go in your life. Let them.

Jessica Wildfire
4 min readJan 2, 2019

There’s no use doing CPR on a dead friendship. Believe me, I’ve tried. Only to wind up worse off. A few months ago, I finally called time of death on a friendship I thought would survive into old age.

But people change. Our priorities shift. Or we find out we never mattered to each other as much as we thought we did.

One day, you realize you’re not compatible with your best drinking pals anymore. It’s time to let go.

What you used to have in common doesn’t matter. Memories can enrich a friendship, but they can’t sustain them on their own.

Don’t keep friendships on life support just because you feel bad about seeing them go. I’ve learned that it keeps us from moving forward. And if you’re not moving forward, you’re in trouble.

Some of the worst days of my life have happened because I tried to resuscitate a relationship with someone I knew from yesteryear. Once, I went hiking with two high school friends for old times.

We used to get along so well. But since college, we’d only met up once or twice a year. We thought we still liked each other.

A 2-hour drive for a 5-hour hike with people you barely know anymore. Fabulous idea. What could go…

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