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How to know when it's time to cut someone out of your life! |
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Written by Richard Smiraldi
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Most of us try to be a good friend, or a good person. We're there to help someone move, or pick up the pieces after a bad break up, or even to give them a dinner or a warm bed to sleep in with clean sheets and blankets during those "hard" times. We hold their hands through the worst of fears, and maybe we hold on too long. When is it time to let go to old friends, and lovers and just plain people in general?
Difficulty: Challenging
- Self-esteem
- Courage
- Determination
- Willingness to change
- a big friend
- check me out: www.richardsmiraldi.tv
Step One
Write a list of the things that are going on in your life concerning your friend. Does it seem that you are doing more of the giving and they more of the taking? Are you putting aside things that are important to you in order to facilitate their needs? How much abuse are you taking from them?
Step Two
Ask yourself honestly what this person "brings to the table?" Now you may feel like you are being selfish, but really ask yourself, what do they add to your life? Do you find yourself complaining about them for more than three hours after you've been with them?
Step Three
Realize that you may be of victim of needing to be needed. You may desperately feel the need to be putting out fires. Does it seem to you that you are always rescuing this person? You are the one to bail them out of jail, you are the one to pick them up from the supermarket when their car breaks down, you are the one to watch the kids or take their smelly Uncle to bingo..it's YOU YOU YOU YOU. How much do they ask of you?
Step Four
Do they borrow your things? How are they affecting who YOU are? Do they keep you from being your truer self? Do they bring you down? Do they criticize your every move, thought words or ideas? And when you suggest doing something without them, do they try to put you on a guilt trip?
Step Five
Ask yourself, what is the price you are willing to pay for this friendship? Recently I had a friend who was drunk and going through a divorce who countlessly ended up on my doorstep crying and the other night he came banging on my door asking me to drive him to see his wife, because they were getting back together and now they weren't and he asked me to drive him two hours to her house, knowing full well that I had a job to go to early in the morning and an important meeting. And I asked myself, as you do, "He says that he truly cares about me, but does he really? Or does he only care about what I can do for him or how I can be of service to him?" Let me ask you a question, who died and made this person the boss of you?
Step Six
At what point have you had enough? Remember that it isn't good for anyone if you first don't take care of yourself. Any of us can fall victim to those friends (and we all have them) who always seem to be in a bind for money or time or favors or food, or whatever. In this world there are givers and there are takers. Recognize who gives and who doesn't. Even Jesus said, "the poor will always be with you" looking for a handout. If they are starting to cost you time and health and money, or all of the above, or are just bringing you to a place where you just don't need to be......realize it's time to cut them out. And do it, in one fell swoop.
Step Seven
Make a clean cut once you've established that this person is really really bad for who you are, and more importantly who you want to be. We can't soar when we're being held down by turkeys, those folks who wish to shoot down our dreams and our lives. They are out to get what they can get, even if it's only emotionally. Stop taking phone calls, emails, stop seeing them, don't go where they go and avoid them as much as possible, and if they do get ahold of you...be doing something else, somewhere else..remember the life you save, will be your own.
- once you make the break, make it. don't double back.
- stop all calls. don't let them try and con you on the phone
- you don't owe them any explanation, people fall in and out of each others lives - if you do hear from them, by accident, tell them you just lost touch
- establish other interests to keep you away from them and they from you
- be with positive life affirming people not those who seek to hold you back and hold you down
- check me out: www.richardsmiraldi.tv
- beware, these "friends" will act like spoiled children
- expect nasty phone messages and emails, don't read them, don't answer them
- expect them to say bad things about you to people
- let it go and be free, don't be too hard on yourself, you may be your own worst enemy. But beware of the guilt trips.
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