Toxic Friendship Doesn’t Always Look Toxic

When I was younger, the adults around me would say, almost casually, “You lose people as you grow up,  and that’s okay.” I remember rejecting the idea outright. Why would I ever lose anyone? Friendship, to me, felt fixed and unquestionable.

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Growing older complicates that certainty. Not because friendships stop mattering, but because your understanding of them sharpens. You begin to ask the same questions of friendship that you ask of romantic relationships: Does this make me feel seen? Does it allow me to grow? Do I feel like myself here?

And sometimes, the answer is no.

Breaking up with a toxic friend rarely happens because someone is overtly cruel or dramatic. Often, it’s subtler. It’s the slow realization that the dynamic only works when you shrink. That you’re funnier, quieter, softer, less ambitious; anything that makes the other person more comfortable. You start editing yourself in group settings. You notice how they speak over you, or how their kindness is reserved for private moments but disappears in public. You begin to feel like a supporting character in your own life.

Toxicity in friendships isn’t always loud; sometimes it’s structural. It lives in imbalance, in competition disguised as banter, in the quiet pressure to stay the same person you were years ago.

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And then comes the uncomfortable question: are you friends because you truly choose each other, or because history, proximity, and mutual circles have made it convenient?

Ending a friendship carries a peculiar grief. There’s no script for it, no cultural shorthand like romantic breakups. You don’t always get closure, and you rarely get validation. But there is clarity. Choosing distance can feel less like rejection and more like alignment, a decision to protect the person you’re becoming.

Outgrowing someone doesn’t make you ungrateful. It means you’re paying attention.

Some friendships are meant to last. Others are meant to shape you, then release you. And learning to tell the difference might be one of the most adult things we ever do.

Also Read:

Mentally, We’re All That Nihilist Penguin In Our Own Way

Romanticising My Life Didn’t Fix It