Ditching friends that don't act like friends. Anyone else done this?

Spidergirl76

Thank you everyone!:)

MrsSparrow you have summed up my feelings/thoughts exactly.

Globetraveller, I disagree:)

pink68

Isn't sometimes the point of a counsellor to give you the strength you lack and the clarity to act on it?

I went to counselling after losing my mother-in-law, partly because i felt guilty about never liking her, but mainly because i wanted to quit my job and all i needed was someone to say 'so quit it then'. My hubby was reluctant to support me quitting even though it made me very unhappy.

My counsellor said 'so quit if you want to', and i did. best decision ever! But not one i could have made on my own. It sounds like the OP just needed someone to say it was alright to cut these people out.

My mother used to say 'you can have too many friends' which when i was younger i thought was awful but now i realise she was right and i have let some of them drift away, including the one who accused me of 'overreacting' when i told her my mother was dying (three weeks before she died). And the one who my husband refers to as 'what xxx wants, xxx gets'.

I now have two friends i would call in an emergency, and a group of good friends (school mums), who all support each other as a group, but never socialise in less than threes! Then there are the people further down the pecking order, one or two who i like to keep up with and maybe see once every six months for a catchup, but who i have little in common with anymore.

More than enough!

LandyAndy

Nicki wrote: »

I'd be slightly cautious of any counsellor who is cutting you off from most of your friends to be honest. I'd want to be sure in my own mind that these assessments of their role in my life were my own, and that I hadn't been influenced by the counsellor in forming them.

. Thankfully though, a third party hasn't been analysing isolated examples of our interactions, so the relationships have stayed intact.

. But if you have genuinely been receiving no pleasure at all from them, it's odd that you never noticed this until a counsellor popped onto the scene. .

^^ This ^^

Do people really need to pay to be told who their friends are?

Fella

There's nothing wrong in principal with ditching people who treat you badly. On the flipside there's something in the saying "you can always make new friends but you can't make old ones".

Spidergirl76

LandyAndy wrote: »

^^ This ^^

Do people really need to pay to be told who their friends are?

Counselling is so much more than this, it's certainly not a case of sitting down and being told who your friends are. In my case there were a lot of other complex things that I had to work through. And I say I, as all my counsellor did was guide me in this, they certainly didn't tell me what to do or who to cut out of my life. I came to the conclusion myself that I had too many people in my life that weren't of any value at all to me and weren't bringing any happiness or pleasure to me, only the opposite.

poet123

Although I have had counselling training I am wary of counsellors. I actually agree with Nicki it is very easy to believe that the circle of friends we have all have to have their value assessed in terms of what they bring to the table.

Sometimes friendships wax and wane, life intervenes. Unless someone is causing you real emotional pain ( and evaluating that with some people is very difficult) then I would never advocate ending a friendship because they are not reaching an artificial bar on the friendship scale at that particular moment. By that I mean irrevocably saying to a friend "I am cutting you out of my life", by all means distance yourself, but to make a final cut is just that, final, and in time you may come to think differently about that person based on acquired knowledge perhaps of their own issues. I have seen it happen many times, and there is usually a counsellor in the picture somewhere when it does.

Counselling fills a need in many, and does a lot of good. Equally, for some people it causes too much introspection and angst and relationships do suffer because of it. I have seen this first hand with those who train to be counsellors a lot of their marriages break down during the initial training period because they are bringing their work home!!

Counselling is certainly not a blanket panacea.

lostinrates

I have ditched friends and been ditched. I have also ditched counsellors, and feel they can be very dangerous. In truth and the real world people are not perfect. It might be argued, for example, that in allowing friends to mis treat you you too have been a poor friend in failing to challenge them and afdord them the opportunity for personal growth. People get things wrong, most people are in some ways self centred, and expecting ideally balanced relationships always is a hiding to nowhere but one's own sense of righteous indignation.

By all means 'drop' friends who are not really friends, but make new ones too. I would point out tje four 'main friends' and more minor ones are interesting to me, because i feel if someone has more 'real' main friends than they can count on one hand they are extraordinarily blessed or....have fewer than they realise. I think nicki's 'ranking' of friends is closer to the mark generally, and wonder if in having so many main friends to ditch these mbalances occur because in some cases you are expecting 'inner circle' friendships from people who you might be better 'matched' with as cup of coffee a couple of times a year friends with.

Brighton_belle

Fella wrote: »

There's nothing wrong in principal with ditching people who treat you badly. On the flipside there's something in the saying "you can always make new friends but you can't make old ones".

The new friends I started making 15 years ago are now wonderful old friends:)

It sounds to me OP like your counsellor has helped you explore what you want in life and what and who really matters to you . And with new insight and clarity, you made your own decisions as to the way forward for you.

bestpud

Counselling has transformed my life, just to balance the negativity on here. I should add mine ended 2 years ago so has nothing directly to do with the relationships I have ended recently!

OP - if you feel it is helping you and you've not rushed into decisions about friends, then worry not.

Nobody should have to put up with people who make them feel bad.

Maybe those suggesting you are being petty have never had a true leech in their life? And maybe they have never lacked confidence to the extent they will let these people take from them for years on end.

poet123

bestpud wrote: »

Counselling has transformed my life, just to balance the negativity on here. I should add mine ended 2 years ago so has nothing directly to do with the relationships I have ended recently!

OP - if you feel it is helping you and you've not rushed into decisions about friends, then worry not.

Nobody should have to put up with people who make them feel bad.

Maybe those suggesting you are being petty have never had a true leech in their life? And maybe they have never lacked confidence to the extent they will let these people take from them for years on end.

I am not sure anyone has suggested the OP is being petty, and it is certainly not something I would suggest. I would suggest that she is cautious about making decisions which stem from the counselling sessions.

Often I have seen people rush into things so that they can report back in their next session that they have made changes. Issues which come up need time to be reflected upon and looked at from different perspectives. It is very easy to go down one road, the road which seems the one which jumps out at you as the solution, only to find that it wasn't right for you.

You are right about it often being a self confidence issue though, and often those we blame actually cannot correctly be blamed for what we do blame them for. Both parties are in the learned cycle with them reacting to our actions and behaviours.

Once we effect change it is surprising how others appear to have changed.;)