Should I end a friendship that hurts me?

I distinguished three kinds of friendship. Some friends love each other for what they are useful for. Some love each other for the pleasure of their company. And some, the rarest, love each other for their character, for who they are, wishing each other good for the other's own sake. The first two kinds are not false, but they are fragile. When the usefulness or the pleasure ends, the friendship ends with it, and no one should be surprised.nnSo first ask which kind this is. If it was built on shared work, a shared stage of life, or simply fun, and those have gone, then it may already be over in substance. Letting it go is not a betrayal. It is recognising what happened.nnIf it was a friendship of character, the question is harder. I asked whether one should break off with a friend who has changed for the worse. Not at once, I said. We should try to help them recover their character, even more than we would help them recover lost property, since character matters more. But if they cannot be helped, and the friendship now harms you, you may dissolve it.nnEven then, you owe something to the friendship that was. Do not treat a former friend as a stranger. Remember the good you shared, speak of them fairly, and if they ever need help in a way you can give without harm, give it, for the sake of what you once were to each other.

Of all the things wisdom provides for a happy life, the greatest by far is friendship. I lived among my friends in a garden, and I believed that what we need from friends is not so much their help itself as the confidence that they will help us when we need it. A true friend makes you feel safe in the world.nnThat gives you a simple test. Does this friendship make you feel safer, calmer, more at ease? Or does it bring you anxiety, dread before you meet, a sense of being judged, a lingering unhappiness after you part? I measured everything by whether it led towards peace of mind or away from it, and friendship is no exception. A friendship that steadily disturbs you is not doing what friendship is for.nnI do not say this lightly. I valued friends so much that I thought the wise person would, in some circumstances, even die for one. That is precisely why I would not waste your capacity for friendship on someone who wounds you. Your time and attention are limited, and every hour spent in a painful friendship is an hour not spent with someone who would give you the security you need.nnSo do not end it in anger. Simply withdraw your time, gently, and give it to the friendships that nourish you. If there are none, that is where your effort should go next: not into repairing what hurts, but into finding people who make you glad.

I once wrote a short passage about friends who have become strangers to each other. We were friends, I said, and now we are estranged. That is how it should be, and we should not hide it or make it something shameful. We are like two ships, each with its own course and its own destination. For a while we lay in the same harbour, in the same sunlight, and it seemed we were going the same way. Then the force of our separate tasks drove us apart, into different seas, under different suns, perhaps never to meet again.nnThat is not a failure. People grow, and growing means outgrowing some things, including some people. Often the friendship that hurts is one that is trying to hold you to who you used to be. The friend who belittles your new direction, who preferred you smaller, who keeps dragging you back into old roles, is not necessarily wicked. They are simply on a different course, and the strain you feel is the strain of two ships still tied together.nnSo I would ask you not to stay out of guilt, and not to leave in bitterness. Let it be what it was. I wrote that we should believe in a kind of star friendship, the friendship of those who were once close and now follow distant orbits, who honour each other from far away.nnCut the rope cleanly, without accusations, and wish them a good voyage.