I'm 44 and I recently ended a friendship that had been slowly making me smaller for years - not through cruelty, she was never cruel, but through the accumulated weight of a dynamic that required me to need her more than she needed me - and the ending felt like grief and relief simultaneously and I have stopped trying to decide which one was the right response - Silicon Canals

"When friendship becomes a performance, I was constantly performing a version of myself that needed her approval, her validation, her attention. The more I performed, the less of me there seemed to be."

"This friendship had become a black hole, pulling everything into its orbit. It started with small things, like sharing good news and getting a lukewarm response, which accumulated over years to create a dynamic where my needs were consistently secondary."

Ending a decade-long friendship can evoke feelings of failure, particularly when the relationship gradually diminishes one's sense of self. The friendship became a performance, requiring constant validation and approval, leading to a loss of identity. Emotional energy was disproportionately consumed, creating an imbalance where one person's needs were consistently prioritized over the other's. Small instances of neglect accumulated over time, resulting in a dynamic that was difficult to recognize until it became overwhelming.

Read at Silicon Canals