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We all pretty much know how to end relationships with romantic partners. But what do you do if you need to break up with a friend? One basic rule exists: Don’t ghost. It’s emotional warfare. Don’t do it. Jaime shares the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to ending friendships and answers your questions about moving on. Topics include what to do when your lives and interests start to drift apart and how to change your approach if you sense your friends aren’t responding to you anymore.  

FYI: Tell Me What To Do contains mature language and themes that may not be suitable for all listeners.

Please note, this show is hosted and produced by a team that does not have any clinical or other mental or physical health training. If you are having a health or mental health crisis or emergency, please contact 911. For non-emergency mental health and addiction needs, try https://www.samhsa.gov/ for national and local resources. 

Show Notes 

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Transcript

[01:04] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Hey, guys, you’re listening to Tell Me What To Do. I’m Jaime Primak Sullivan, and this is the podcast where you ask the questions and I tell you what to do. But sometimes I ask the questions and somebody else tells me what to do, which is always fun. If you have questions for me, you can call me at 833-453-6662. Or we have this cool new form. OK. I kind of don’t know what that means, but I’m going to give you the address. It’s bit.ly/TMWTDquestions. So I feel like there’s so much going on today. And I did get a COVID test today. Grateful to be negative and grateful for the people that are doing the tests. I’m not going to lie. It looked like some kind of scene out of a horror movie. Do you remember the scene in E.T., when they have E.T. in like the tent and all the people in the spacesuits walking around as if he might be dangerous? Meanwhile, the three kids who had kept him literally in their bed, fed him Spaghetti-Os and had them in their closet were fine. But like, they were in space suits just in case? Well, actually, then Elliott was sort of starting to die, wasn’t he? Wasn’t Elliott kind of dying at one point? 

 

[02:52] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Whatever. That’s what it looked like. Everybody at the testing site looked like they had E.T. in the tent, which I totally get, obviously. And more proof to people who are like, I don’t know if I should wear a mask. Well, let me tell you what the people taking the tests are wearing. Literally, it’s 16 Neil Armstrongs walking through a parking lot. OK? I did see something really cool today and I tweeted it. If you walk into a restaurant and you go into a bathroom, there’s a sign that says all employees must wash hands. What if it said, “We recommend that employees wash hands after they poop. But we don’t want to infringe on their rights. So just the suggestion. Employees don’t have to wash their hands after they poop.” Would you eat there? You’re not going to eat from somebody who may or may not have washed their hands after they pooped!

[04:03] Jaime Primak Sullivan: You know what? This is what my cousin said. My cousin said that someone said to her — they were at a swim club. That’s a big thing in Jersey. Oh, you go into the swim club? We call them. What do we call them here? Country clubs. Yes, we’re very snooty here. But in New Jersey, it’s just the swim club. She said that someone at the swim club was like, “you’re wearing a mask at the swim club?” And she was like, “well, I was just exposed to COVID, but if you think I should take it off –” And she took it off. And the woman was like, “what are you doing? Put the mask on!” Like, which way do you want it? You want the mask on or you want the mask off? 

 

[06:18] Jaime Primak Sullivan: I want to talk today about friendship breakups. Because there are a lot of rules, a lot of conversation around romantic breakups, right? It feels very clear on how to end a romantic relationship. And there’s also very clear rules about whether you are in a romantic relationship. It’s like we’re dating. We’re seeing other people. We’re exclusive. So, like, there are terms that come with romantic relationships. You can change your relationship status with someone you are in a romantic relationship with. There’s levels to this shit as the young and say. So if you are exclusive with someone and it’s not going as well as you want it to go, you can say, listen, I think we should see other people. And then it’s established. We’re still hanging out. We’re still doing our thing. But we’re not exclusive anymore. Then there’s the old. This ain’t working out either, I want to break up. And when you tell someone you broke up with someone romantically because it wasn’t working out, you were applauded for that. 

[07:34] Jaime Primak Sullivan: People are like, “go you!” You get in 100,000 fucking Instagram memes. Yes. You’re the strong woman. You’re independent. You don’t have to stay in a bad relationship, you know. Look at you seeing those red flags and swimming between the lifeguard posts. We love it. But when you end a friendship, there’s so much shame in that because you almost have like a scarlet X on you. It’s almost like, what’s wrong with you that you couldn’t keep a friendship going? You’re applauded when you leave a bad romantic relationship. But you are judged and shamed when you end a friendship. And I think that that’s something that I want to kind of break the stigma on, because I’ve had so many public friendships since Jersey Belle, and public breakups with those friendships. And while I tend to stick with the moniker of it’s not my story to tell, because I don’t think it’s fair to give a story an ending of a friendship that feels one-sided if you’re only hearing my side, I don’t pretend to not have fault in any endings of any friendships. But if I present my side to you, then it feels like I’m telling someone else’s business without giving them the opportunity to weigh in. And I don’t know how many people that I’ve ended friendships with actually want to come on a podcast and be like, yeah, I’ll tell people why you ended the friendship, or why I ended the friendship. Some of the endings have ended because they hurt me so bad that I actually couldn’t breathe. Like it was a gross betrayal. Some I have not yet forgiven. 

 

[09:32] Jaime Primak Sullivan: I want to because I want to be free of it. But I just like literally I know how to forgive, I know it requires a lot of prayer, requires releasing. It requires understanding of where they are, and what they’re going through at the time that they betray you. So it’s not that I don’t know the steps on how to forgive. It’s just that I’m not ready to forgive, because whenever I am praying and I say, “OK, God, let’s try to get to this person,” my other voice goes, “no the fuck we’re not.” And I go, OK, we’re not. We’re not doing it yet. We’re not ready. But some I have absolutely forgiven. And if I saw them in the street and they were like, “hey girl.” I’d be like, “hey girl.” But also stay on that side of the fucking street. Like, I forgive you, but I don’t have fucking amnesia. I know why we’re not friends anymore. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. So I recently had to end a friendship with someone. And the ending was actually heartbreakingly beautiful for me because I am the kind of person who ghosts. If you hurt me, fuck you. I’m out. I block you everywhere on social media. I’m not even addressing anything with you. You know what you did. Maybe I’m not going to kill you in the shower. Like, I’m not that. But I am the person that’s like, you know what you did. So I know that about myself. The last friendship I had to walk away from, I actually FaceTimed her and we cried together. We sobbed. It was sad. Ending a friendship is sad, but I said, do you understand why I can’t be your friend anymore? 

 

[11:37] Jaime Primak Sullivan: And she was like, yes. And it was sad. And I know that that seems crazy, but I valued her enough to understand that the pain she caused me said more about her in that moment than it did about me. She knew that I knew that, I didn’t have to punish her. You know, it was like, I have to go because this is the best thing for me, but I’m sad about this. And we actually had closure in that I was like, I can never talk to them. But now you know why.

 

[16:52] Jaime Primak Sullivan: There are all different reasons why people end friendships. Circumstances change. You move, you don’t live in the same state anymore. I have a lot of long-distance friendships. Everybody lives all over the place. And so I work really hard at maintaining long-distance friendships. I happen to be better at those friendships than most people because I’ve had to maintain them for so long. But a lot of times, if your girls play on the same soccer team, or go to the same school, and then the kids end up on different soccer teams or change schools, you know, those friendships kind of begin to fizzle out. And those are like naturally ending friendships. Nothing actually happened. It’s just a change of life situation or circumstance. But what about when it’s lying or rivalry? How about those frenemies who always have to one up ya? Those one uppers. You know, you’re like, wow. My husband, I had really good sex last night, right? We had really good sex last night and this morning and on his lunch break, it’s like, really? No, you did. You’re lying. And if you did, put it on pay per view, because I would totally pay to see that. Or they just become toxic. The truth is, sometimes friendships turn toxic. The person is obsessed with you. They order everything you order at the restaurant. They start wearing all your clothes. They start talking like you and friending all of your friends on Facebook. And suddenly it doesn’t feel like a friendship anymore. It feels like Single White Female. And you start like feeling like this doesn’t feel good anymore. It’s starting to feel toxic. It feels weird. Or, you know, let’s be honest. It’s 2020. Maybe your values have changed. 

 

[18:39] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Maybe the political climate or COVID has bubbled certain things to the surface. And you realize you don’t have things in common with this person anymore. You don’t have shared core values. That’s another reason people are ending friendships now. There are healthy ways to end friendships and there are unhealthy ways. I am working on healthy ways because I have done — I made a list of unhealthy ways Jaime has ended friendships. One: becoming hostile. I am a fighter. We know this about me. And if you’re new to this podcast, you’re probably wondering how the fuck you got here. Well, hang on, because it’s about to get even weirder. I am a fighter. I just am. For a long time when I felt threatened by a friend or deceived or hurt or anything, I got aggressive. I got in their face. I threatened to beat them up. I pulled their hair. I was a lunatic. I’m not that girl anymore. But I made an honest list about ways I ended friendships, so that’s one.

 

[19:40] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Two: cutting off cold turkey, or ghosting, as the Gen-Z says. I ghosted. I am still very good at this one and I’m working hard to not do it because it’s not fair and it’s emotional warfare and it really hurts people. Three: ending the friendship over text. Come on, Jaime, you got to be better than that. I have done this. I have texted people and said, you’re an asshole. I’m out. That is immature. And another way that I have ended a friendship, and I am really not proud of, is I have enlisted mutual friends to do the dirty work with me, and alienate specific people from the group. And while I am not proud of this, I am proud of the fact that years have passed since I have done anything like that and no longer feel the need to do that. I see the error of my ways. I know how hurtful that was. I have apologized for that. I’m grateful that I got the opportunity to apologize. But these are some very unhealthy ways Jaime has ended friendships. There are healthy ways to end friendships. What are they, Jaime? I’m so glad you asked, because right now I want you to think in your mind of a friendship you have that may need to end. If you don’t have one, consider yourself lucky and share this podcast anyway because you love me. If you do have one, I want you to bring that friendship up fresh to your mind right now. Bring it up and let’s think of healthy ways we can end it. The first one is what we in Hollywood call the fade-out. That is where you just gradually let the friendship end over time. You create scenarios where you allow the friendship to come to a natural close. 

 

[21:57] Jaime Primak Sullivan: You just gradually reduce social interaction with this person. You don’t comment on their social media as much anymore. You wait days before you text back. And you stay busy and it kind of just allows the friendship to naturally come to a close. So that’s really good for the friendships that we were talking about earlier, like, our kids are on different soccer teams now or our kids go to different schools. It’s not that you don’t like each other anymore. It’s just it begins to feel more like maintenance than it does an actual friendship, and a healthy way is to just kind of let it come to a natural close.

 

[22:43] Jaime Primak Sullivan: If you are closer with someone and you need to end the friendship, then you can have what us mature folks call “the talk.” And that is when you ask them to meet on neutral ground. Hey, you want to go for a walk? You want to have a cocktail in the cul de sac. Whatever it is, maybe you even Zoom or FaceTime if it’s long-distance or if that’s the safest way to do it. And you say, listen, I love you and I’ve loved you for a long time. I think that our core values are very different now. And I know they say we shouldn’t let politics get in the way of friendships or we shouldn’t let X, Y and Z or whatever it is, get in the way of friendship. But the truth is, it isn’t the politics getting in the way, it is fundamentally who we are now. We just have fundamental differences. And I am doing the best I can to protect my peace and surround myself with people — it’s not to say that everyone has to agree with me or I have to agree with everyone. But right now, this friendship is not mentally healthy for me. And having that talk is hard. It feels confrontational. It shouldn’t be. It’s honest. It’s important. It’s better for you because emotional warfare sucks, and that can lead to ghosting. The next thing you can do, if a talk feels too aggressive — and I just did this with a friend in January and it actually saved us, I believe. Because old Jaime would have just ghosted and disappeared. But when you love someone and you value them so much and you believe that at the core of who you both are, you want the same things for the friendship, but it’s become so convoluted and so heavy that you don’t know where to set it down. You don’t know how to set it down.

[24:33] Jaime Primak Sullivan: You take a break. You don’t quit. You just rest. And you text that person and you say, I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with this right now, but I love you and I am circling back. I just need a break. And if they respect you and they love you and they value you, they will give you that break. If they don’t, and they say, talk to me now or I’m not talking to you again, then that’s a choice you have to make. But I was very lucky that this friend said, I understand. Let’s both take a break and regroup when we can, when it feels right, when we’re able to talk in a way that won’t be hurtful, that it’ll actually be helpful to the friendship. And I think we’ll be stronger for it. We came back together almost five months later, and we were able to talk and have honest discourse. And it came from a place of love and healing and not finger-pointing and defensiveness. And it saved us. It absolutely saved us. You know, and the last option certainly is just ending the friendship. Is just saying this is what you did. And I know why you did it. But I can’t forgive it, so it needs to end. 

[26:08] Jaime Primak Sullivan: And that’s what I did in February with a different friend. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean you don’t miss them or love them. It doesn’t mean you don’t look back at the good times and that you’re not grateful for the friendship. It just means that you’re in different spaces. Your values are different. Your wants and needs are different. And that’s OK. It is OK to end friendships without shame, if you’re doing it in a healthy way. The shame comes when you do it in the ways that I gave you five minutes ago, the ways that I am not proud of. The things that I did that I regret and wish I could go back and do differently. 

 

[26:57] Jaime Primak Sullivan: All right. My favorite part of this show is the question and answer. I absolutely love this part. And thank you to everybody who calls in and e-mails in. We’ve got so many great questions this week. So let’s get to it. Our first voice mail is from a woman in California, Anonymous in California. 

 

[27:19] Caller: Hi, Jaime. So two and a half years ago, I walked away from a childhood friendship, decades long. We were friends since nine years old. But as I grew — and honestly, after listening to your podcast for five years and reading your book, what stood out to me is when you said God created us to be outstanding. And I realized when I was with her, even though I was growing, I wouldn’t let that light shine, because she didn’t want to see that. And I didn’t want to outshine her. So I got the courage, thanks to you — it came to a head two and a half years ago when a mutual friend lost her battle with cancer. And my girlfriend just looked at me and when I was just crying and so upset, she couldn’t even find the compassion. She looked at me and she said, “well, you knew what the outcome would be,” because it was terminal cancer. My question to you is, here we are two and half years later. How do I get past this? How do I fully heal and know that I did the right thing for me and my family? Tell Me What To Do, Jaime, thank you. 

 

[28:48] Jaime Primak Sullivan: I could have literally left myself this voicemail. And I want you guys to know that this question came from a lot of you. How do I move on? I know it was the right decision for me, but six months, one year, five years, 10 years later, it still hurts and I still miss that person. How do I move on? My goodness, when I tell you I could have left this voicemail, I could have left this voicemail.

 

[29:20] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Whenever I hear about friendships like this, where there is one person and they tend to be more of the taker, and they kind of want to dominate the space, and they don’t really love when you have other friends. What I find is that the people like me and the people like you who are in those friendships, we assume the role of the caretaker. We want to be the one that does everything. We carry the load of the weight of the friendship. The other person typically, in my experience, suffers from abandonment issues. If you think back to your friend, and you think back to her core issues, my guess is that she has abandonment issues from somewhere, either as a child with a parent or a bad first relationship. And you have naturally filled in that gap for her. And the friendship becomes more of a using subconsciously. And so other people see the imbalance. And we don’t see it because we are comfortable in our role in it. And so we are willing participants in these unbalanced, unhealthy friendships. And because we are getting bare minimums and we do have some really good times and they are there for us at times. And we do have fun conversation or, you know, drunk nights or whatever. We accept so much less in the friendship, because in a way, like I said, we’re seated comfortably in that role. We have value. We are doing so much for them. We are the role of the caretaker, the doer, the hero, the sweep in and make it all better. And other people see it, but we can’t. And it isn’t until we do, that saying I once was blind, but now I see, it’s hard to unsee how imbalanced the friendship was. And I want you to hear something. I ended a friendship in 2015. And it was a friendship that I had had for 20-plus years, and it devastated me. 

 

[31:44] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Other people in my life felt that the relationship was very imbalanced and that I was doing a lot more and I was carrying all the weight. And even in my acknowledgment of that, I felt the need to defend her. Because she had abandonment issues and I was the stable thing in her life. And I felt a lot of guilt about “abandoning” her, even though it was justified, even though I was hurt by the friendship, even though other people were like, yeah, you should have ended the friendship years ago. I still carried guilt because when, you know, you play that role in someone’s life and you realize they have abandonment issues, you are in a sense, the abandoner. And we know that’s not a good role to have. So there’s a guilt that comes with it. 

 

[32:44] Jaime Primak Sullivan: How do you move on? I don’t know, because I still haven’t fully moved on. I still look at the good and long for that. And we tried to come back together a couple of times, but the truth is, she can’t get over the fact that she believes I abandoned her. And I can’t really get over the fact that she allowed the friendship to be so imbalanced for so long. And so I think there’s a part of us that never fully gets over it. So I think we just have to accept that instead of fighting it or trying to get over it. I think the healthiest thing is to just accept that there’s a part of us that will always long for what we had. And that just means it was meaningful to us. And that’s OK. That’s great. We need meaningful relationships, even when they end. So just so you know, I’m right there with you. 

 

[35:59] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Question two. Let’s give a listen. 

 

[36:03] Caller: Hi, Jaime. My name is Sarah. My best friend for the past 20 years and I are growing apart. She has a new boyfriend and we barely see each other anymore. I’m married and I’m expecting my first child. And honestly, I’m hurt that she doesn’t make more of an effort to engage in my life and hang out. It seems that whenever she’s single, she’s always around. But as soon as she’s in a relationship, she ghosts everyone and is super distant. Honestly I’ve gotten used to it. But once my baby comes, if she doesn’t make an effort to be in its life, I’m thinking of ending the friendship. Am I being irrational or dramatic? Tell Me What To Do. 

 

[36:47] Jaime Primak Sullivan: OK, Sarah, I hope this doesn’t come across as passive aggressive, but as your elder — truly, as someone who is, you know, in my 40s now and my children are elementary and middle-school age — I remember this stage. I remember having friends who didn’t have children when I was having Olivia, and then literally in like a fart’s wind, Max, and feeling like they didn’t look to me anymore to like, hang out and do things with because they were dating, they were whatever, and I was pregnant or nursing or dealing with mastitis or things that were foreign to them. They kind of like couldn’t get it. And if you think about it, Sarah, the truth is every stage of our life, we run into these kind of what I call healthy, normal, natural resolutions of friendships. You’re looking at it as something that feels dramatic. And the truth is, it’s actually very natural. You know, we just talked a few minutes ago in the podcast about letting friendships phase out natural, the natural phase out, this is one of those times. That you should do is feel blessed about the phase and stage your life is in, and look at your sweet friend and understand she’s not there yet. And the things that she needs to do to find the things that you have, if that’s what she wants, like a husband and all of that, she needs to be going out, she needs to be on dating apps. She needs to have, you know, the new boyfriend of the week. 

 

[38:24] Jaime Primak Sullivan: She needs to be doing all of those things. And it is OK that that is not where your life is right now. And I don’t think you should close the door on her. If she has value and adds to your life, then you should just re-configure the friendship and change your expectation. She can’t be your day-to-day friend anymore, and that’s OK. Let her be your fun single friend. Look to her when you need that one get-away, that one night out. I’m going to call so-and-so because she’s single and so much fun and I can get out and have, you know, a night that we used to have. And look fondly at it. Don’t look at it like she’s rejecting where you are. Just look at it as like it’s naturally the time for you guys to grow apart. It doesn’t have to be dramatic or unhealthy. Listen, she’s not going to be the friend who gets it all the time about the new baby and understands what you need. You know, motherhood is a thing that until you’ve experienced it, you cannot understand it. It’s why our parents say things to us all the time, like, you’ll understand one day when you’re a mother. Same thing. She’s not going to get it. And she’s not expected to let her live and be happy in the phase of her life that she lives, compartmentalize her as your fun single friend, until she is married and is starting a family, then you’ll be in a different phase and your children will be older and she’ll look to you like the older, more experienced friend. And you know what you’ll be thinking? Fuck you. I don’t want to talk about your leaky tits and your fucking baby that won’t sleep! Oh, she rolled over? Big fucking deal! My kids are in fourth and fifth and sixth grade and we’re dealing with training bras and fucking pubic hair. So, like, guess what? I don’t care that you accidentally spilled your breast milk. I’m so far away from that stage of my life that, like, yeah, I want to talk about it once in a blue moon. But no, I don’t want to be the friend you call every single day trying to figure out how to sleep train your newborn, because I’m not there anymore. And that is the beautiful thing about being friends in stages. Let it happen naturally and it’s awesome. 

 

[40:40] Jaime Primak Sullivan: OK, question number three. E-mail requests to be anonymous. OK, anonymous. “How do you keep in touch with friends? I have one friend who just recently started reaching out to me, so I honestly have no idea how often is too much, too little, etc.. I used to message my friends all the time and they would respond, but no one would message me. Then eventually it became that they didn’t even respond when I would message them. Maybe we just lost touch because they were college friends and that’s what happens. But it seems like it happens to just me. I have no crazy fun, interesting stories to tell, so I feel like there’s no purpose to me reaching out every week, just being on repeat. Like, hey, how are you? It doesn’t feel like a friendship. How do I get past this? Change my friendships for the better, keep in better touch, have better interesting conversations and have fun. I want to get back to the personality I had 10 years ago when I loved to laugh and have fun. I feel stuck in my anxiety and depression. I feel stuck in people’s opinions they’ve developed of me over the past eight years, and I feel like I can’t move past it. My friends used to tell me I was the nicest person they knew. Now I feel like nobody even likes me in this new town I live in, and I don’t even have a chance to be there for people or show my genuine, helpful side.”

 

[41:59] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Well, anonymous. I think that there is a bigger issue going on here. And that issue is you don’t like who you are right now. And that is coming across in the way you communicate with friends. And we live in a time right now where everything feels like we’re in some bad fucking Orson Welles movie. And when we do catch up with friends, we do want to hear positivity. We do want to hear good things. We want to hear that people are happy in the ways that they’re coping, and the ways they’re staying healthy and you know, how the kids are doing and things like that. And so a lot of your email says that you’re not happy with who you are. You say yourself, I want to get back to my personality I had 10 years ago. OK, well, what are you doing to get back to that person? What was that person grateful for? And is there a way that you can find ways to be grateful for those things again? Because if you can, then I think you can get back to that. Additionally, you don’t need to contact people every day. What you could do is reach out to a small group of friends and say, you know, it would be super fun? Let’s get dressed up, let’s put on lip gloss, let’s put on earrings, let’s pour a cocktail and have a Zoom. Let’s Zoom and catch up. I want to tell you guys all about this new thing I found, and this recipe I love, and how the kids are doing. I miss you. I love you. Let’s catch up. The check-in texts feel like maintenance. And to be honest with you, it’s exhausting. 

 

[43:41] Jaime Primak Sullivan: It feels like an anchor when you don’t have anything to say, just like so-and-so texted me again. And I know it’s just gonna be, hey, what are you doing? So I say to that, first thing is, you got to work on why you’ve been so disconnected with you. And understand that friendships are a two-way street. And look at what’s in the box of friendship that you’re bringing. What are you bringing in that box right now? If it’s negativity, if it’s blah, you know, I mean, yeah, friends should be there for you, but you’re not even asking for anything necessarily, so you’re not giving them a direction. You’re not asking for something. You’re just kind of blank. And people don’t know what to do with that right now because everybody’s treading water. So initiate something fun. Make it feel different for them. Hey, guys, outside Zoom. Rules are you got to be dressed, showered. You’ve got to have lip gloss on. You got to have hearings on. You’ve got to be outside and you have to have a cocktail. Who’s in? Because I only have spots for four people. Make it feel fun. Different.

 

[44:50] Jaime Primak Sullivan: I appreciate you guys having the conversation with me about friendships, and the pain and shame that go with ending them. Nobody talks about the heartache of an ended friendship. It feels like it goes on for decades. In fact, depending on the kind of friendship, sometimes it does. The things I want you to take away from this. One: take a good look at what kind of friend you are. We spend a lot of time analyzing the way people friend us, and a lot of the times they’re reacting to the way we friend them. And sometimes in friendship, it’s got to be what comes first, the chicken or the egg. So take a look at how you friend. What are you bringing to the table? What’s in your friend box? Two: I know that it’s easy to want to lean into the unhealthy ways to end friendships. Believe me, I know, I did it for decades. But I promise you’ll like yourself better, and you’ll be doing sisterhood a service if you take the time to practice healthy exits. Healthy exits like letting the relationship fade naturally, or having the talk, or asking nicely and honestly for a break. These are things that are really important. And three: remember that friendships go through stages. How you meet someone is not necessarily how you will friend them for the next however many years. 

 

[46:22] Jaime Primak Sullivan: I mean, we know not all friendships are meant to go the distance, but we’ve got to let them evolve as we go through stages of our life. It is unfair to expect that a friend who is not yet married or not yet a mother, that they will have the same enthusiasm for married life and parenthood that you have. And sure, you want your friends to be excited for you because you got married or adopted a dog or had a baby or bought a new house, but if they’re not there yet, if they haven’t experienced it yet, they don’t have the same understanding. We’ve got to stop taking everything in friendship so personally. We’ve got to allow for some distance, for some honesty. Like, look, I love that you’re having a baby, but I’m out here dating and having the time of my life. So, you know, let’s catch up when the baby learns how to sleep and you can get out of the house, OK? Great. Love you. 

 

[47:21] Jaime Primak Sullivan: You know, we’re so quick to discard people, and I know I struggle with that, and those of you that listen to Coffee Talk are going, oh, whatever, Jaime here, the cut-off queen. And in some ways I am. But I want to be better. And isn’t that the point of all of this is to have honest conversation so we can try to be better? 

 

[47:42] Jaime Primak Sullivan: So that’s my show for this week. I love you and I want what’s best for you, what’s healthiest for you and what’s healthiest for me. So this show only works if send us questions. We’ve been getting so many questions and we love it. Honestly, guys, I can’t do this without you. Thank you guys so much and happy listening.

[48:24] Jaime Primak Sullivan: Tell Me What To Do is a production of Lemonada Media. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease, and associate produced by Claire Jones. It’s edited by Ivan Kuraev. Music is by Dan Molad. Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jaime Primak Sullivan are executive producers. Rate and review us, and follow us @LemonadaMedia on all your favorite social platforms. Of course, you can follow me at Jaime Primak Sullivan on Facebook or at Jaime P. Sullivan on Instagram. If you have any questions for me that you want me to answer on the show, give me a call at 833-453-6662.