Cutting People Off 101
I reckon it is actually dangerously unhealthy to cut people off from your life constantly, there probably is some study out there about this, but in fancier terms. Surely if people have studied ghosting and gaslighting, there’s a study on cutting people off by now.
You can not just cut off anyone. Nor for just any simple reason. There’s subtle differences between dumping friends and cutting them off. When you cut people off, it’s a much slyer, meaner and all round less dramatic venture. It is really all about pretending you have somehow ‘won’ in this already dead friendship, best case ‘soon to be dying’ friendship.
Cutting off doesn’t always have to be a negative thing, or a smart move, as presented by a classmate of mine who decided to unfriend a significant (over half the class) amount of people on Facebook. While I’d argue it is an understandable move, one I’ve done myself, I do recommend waiting till the year is actually over, and not doing it 3 days before you’re graduating. Rookie mistake, shame on you. I don’t blame her for doing it though, she got a better circle on Facebook and saved us the effort of deleting her ourselves.
Taking the aforementioned example into consideration, there are obviously two types of cut off. The ones that once mattered and the ones who mattered, simply, because an institution had your paths cross too often to avoid the awkward conversation of not accepting their friend request.
The real satisfying cut offs come of course from people who once mattered to us, people who we invested time in. Actual friends. And to make this as realistic as possible, let’s talk about specifically a person I am cutting off now.
Step 1: Reasons
You can dump a friend for pretty much any one reason, it can be a big fight, and it is done. That is your friendship over. But when it comes to cutting someone off, you’re being so much more petty that you really need those reasons to justify your pettiness. Taking into account a lack of effort from them, a toxic amount of self-centered behaviour, a re-prioritising of your friendship in their hierarchy of friendships and their abilities as a person, you could after that really move forward with cutting them off.
But of course consider time as well, don’t just cut someone off for fading away, people have their quiet periods. So give them time. And once you’ve given them sufficient time to prove themselves useless, and self centred and basically a terrible human to put any effort into, it is time to begin the process of cutting off.
Step 2: Reconsider
You are about to do some of the pettiest shit, you’re going to end a friendship without actually telling the other person why. Unlike me, you may not write a blog post about it and post it on Facebook and Twiter. So really think, are you done with this? Have you given it every try? Did they ever make up for letting you down? Did the friendship ever show glimpses of going back to how it used to be? Or is this person no longer who you needed or were friends with in the first place? Because if it doesn’t feel like a loss, because they aren’t that friend anymore, then why are you still waiting?
Step 3: Cut them off
Facebook: Remove as friend
Twitter: Block, or simply block and unblock so it just looks like they unfollowed you and you unfollowed them
Number: Deleted, my “who dis?” response will be genuine (and with that you disappear from WhatsApp and Viber)
Snapchat: Remove
Intagram: Unfollow
Skype: Technically you don’t need to do anything seeing as it’s used once in a blue moon
Step 4: Relax
Seriously, relax, because if you feel guilty after, then all of this is a waste so…relax. You have cut them out of your life. You toxin free now.
