moving on from a bad friendship

Moving on can be difficult. It’s hard to leave people behind, even if you’ve fallen out, because there’s still parts of you that remember the times before then. Every friendship has it’s ups and downs but sometimes the ups make it hard to move on, even if the person is truly hurting you and mistreating you.

It’s important to remember exactly why it is you need to move on - for example, it might be because the person was abusive or toxic, or maybe you just grew apart. I’ve been in both those situations and it hurt both times, but I learnt that it’s important to pull through and leave them behind.

I know I felt like I was a bad person for doing it. Even when someone was a complete asshole to me and used me, I would still stick around out of fear of being as bad as them, or out of fear of hurting them.  But putting yourself before them doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you selfish, it just means you’re doing something for yourself to ensure happiness.

There’s also the part where you might feel yourself falling back a bit - picking up your phone to message them, or remembering a good time you had and wanting to go back. I think that part is more about self control. In one situation, I blocked them on every social media because I knew I’d end falling back into a really toxic friendship otherwise.

In fact, it took me multiple attempts to move on. I would always fall back and always end up being the one who got hurt. Maybe it was me being too forgiving or just giving too many chances, but it’s taught me how important moving on really is.

You have to look at it the same way you might look at solving a problem - look at the pros and look at the cons, and you might find that the cons outweigh the pros. You might see that they’re more rude than they are kind.

It’s about remembering all of the person and not just the bits you want to - you could say they’re mean to me but they’ve been my friend for so long. It’s important to realise that the them treating you shittily cannot be made up for by anything.

A friendship is about being there for someone and treating them well. There’s always gonna be arguments and falling out in any friendship but them making you feel bad and mistreating you isn’t a friendship, and it’s vital to know that.

It might hurt and you might miss them for a while, but it’s important to realise that your long term happiness and confidence is far more important than someone who hurts you.