advice

Me and my closest friend have grown apart and I need distance but can’t seem to let myself let her go fully. What do I do?

I have to start by saying the reason why It’s so hard to accept myself letting her go is because it doesn’t feel right to do that to such a close friend who I have adored and been with for so long.. It just feels so wrong.

So me and my close friend of 8 years have started to drift apart. We really have nothing in common and our interests and life stages are so different that when we talk about stuff, nothing really turns into a conversation. If I start talking about stuff that isn't that interesting to her the talk usually ends quickly either by some silence and then trying to change the topic or her just totally shutting me off when it comes to stuff she doesn’t care about or just her not really paying attention. If she talks about her stuff I try to get into it as much as I can but if it’s about something I don’t know anything about it doesn’t go anywhere and she usually gets upset by me not knowing everything and me having to ask her often “What’s that?” or “I haven’t heard nor know about it tell me more” makes her not wanna talk about it anymore since It’s not really a conversation if she has to explain everything to me (Well it could be a conversation In my opinion but it’s not really fun to her when she has to explain stuff that I don't know about that much, but thats okay since It prolly gets tiring at some point) and I can’t engage to it as much since It’s a new thing to me.

And since we are in different life stages and I would also love to talk about stuff I wanna do or ask her about stuff like that and more simple stuff sometimes since we can’t get into our interests without awkwardness and sometimes even getting into a disagreement or just going straight into a dissention makes it hard to connect in any way.

I feel so drained after we hangout or talk and often even anxious and feel bad about myself after seeing her and that makes it really hard to want to hangout with her. I feel like now everything is forced with her and it makes me so upset. She has been my closest friend since forever and I know there are ups and downs in a friendship but now that we have gotten older and I have started to respect myself as well I started to accept that some stuff she does isn’t okay towards me, and it’s not because she's a bad person or a bad friend I just don’t think she’s the right person to me.

But the thing is she asked me if I wanted to hangout on the weekend and I said okay I think I can and we talked a bit on a call after a long time and tried to plan a bit but after the call I just felt anxious.

We have changed and become different people with different interests and opinions and even our personalities have changed a bit and our dynamic just doesn’t work out.

Mostly the reason why we are drifting apart is because we have changed as people and we just don't have the same spark anymore and haven’t had it in a year i’d say but now it’s bugging me because I wanna just let it go and let it flow in a natural way by taking distance (which I/we have been doing) but I have come to the point that I wanna just let it go and stop forcing myself since it’s doing more bad to me and to the little connection we have left.

But I'm scared to do that, especially because she has been having so many problems with her other friends at her school. At first her new friends dropped her and now her much closer

friend of like half a year started to hangout with a new friend and also kind of pushed her aside so the idea of the friend of 8 years also drifting apart sounds horrible. But also the idea of hanging out next weekend or just in general right now makes me feel so anxious still even after I accepted the fact that we have drifted apart.

But also taking the distance right after we hang out also feels shitty since it’s like she's having a hard time with her other friends, we hangout, and then right after hanging out we start drifting apart more since I need more distance sounds SO HORRIBLE! I’m not even fully sure what’s going on with her and her friend but I know the friend said to her something about how she doesn’t like when my friend acts rude and they had a little fight over it since my friend didn’t get it and got upset about it but apparently they made up face to face and everything was good with them but still now they have drifted apart a bit and my friend is so upset about it and also about how so many people in her school and other people in her recent life have been friends with her and then dropping her or coming and going or just taking distance all of a sudden after love bombing her.

She tells me this stuff and I'm so upset for her and I try to cheer her up but I don’t know what to do since we are also drifting apart and I want more space and when we hang out it never works out.

During this year we’ve been a lot more distance naturally like both of us just having our own things and seeing once a week or once every two weeks and I thought that was enough and us seeing a bit less and then seeing each other every in a while would make our hangouts still fun or even more fun since then we can catch up and talk about new stuff to each other but even when we haven’t seen each other in a long time we don’t get on too well and can’t seem to have any type of spark in any conversation or just by enjoying each others company silently.

What should I do, should I just go on with our weekend plans or not? And also what should I do in general?

I might have written something wrong or explained stuff badly since english isn’t my first language so hopefully people get this even a little bit!

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