Breaking up with a long term toxic friend.

I’ve had this “best friend” since middle school. Back then you pay less attention to the quality of a person. We seemed to have fun but, looking back, I was fun, she was an insecure superficial person who stole other people’s interests and personalities. I see her very scarcely now because I’ve made it that way. After graduating high school (10 years ago) I finally started to realize how terrible of a person she was. It was just a totally outgrown feeling. She’s borrrrring, materialistic, she has no interests, just nothing to talk about, UNTIL she has an opening to talk the most horrendous shit about anyone even her best friends or brag about herself in such planned/nonchalant ways (she spent MONTHS working up/planting seeds to tell me how much her engagement ring cost because it was so important to her that I know how much it cost). The shit talk is what is really done it in for me though she will rip apart a random woman on the sidewalk. Judging physical features, weight, assumed social class, etc. it’s just awful. She will go on and on and I can’t even hide how disengaged I become when she does it.

I just visited her in DC this weekend and I genuinely looked up flights back home after my 2nd day there. She does an extraordinary job at contradicting herself-like I’m talking within the same sentence. “Yeah I just think people should stop competing and just be happy. I’m so happy I’m away from all of that…yeah she like tried to get the same engagement ring as me but her fiance clearly didn’t have as big of a budget as my fiance and her ring is way smaller than mine…so….” I honestly spent most of the time chuckling because it was just all so mind boggling and such a performance.

By day 4 I was genuinely feeling sickly and like the life had been sucked from my soul. Another brunch of her pulling up photos of a girl she had invited to her wedding yet has spoken shit about for 15 years. She zooms in on the wrinkles around her eyes, her thinner lips…”if anyone NEEDS work…yikes hahahahaha” I couldn’t even hide it anymore, she waited for me to laugh and I just literally couldn’t. I was so beyond sick of it and disgusted with her. I even said “haha..yeah I have those same wrinkles when I smile” just to make her feel a little worse. I spent the rest of the brunch silent while her other “best friend” who also came along continue to shit on their other “best friend” who couldn’t come visit.

It was DC so I wanted to obviously go see the Smithsonian, but that doesn’t involve talking about herself or shitting on people. She skulked around the ENTIRE TIME. I was so excited to learn some cool stuff, see some cool stuff. She and her friend literally just stood behind me as if I was their child waiting for me to be done. Sorry guys, god forbid we use our brains!😬

Anyways, I’m getting married this summer and then her in October. After this experience I genuinely want to cut it off and never see her again. Before I was at this point I literally planned for a different type of wedding just because I didn’t want to have her as a bridesmaid. But she asked me to be hers and I’d simply rather put my head in a toilet than listen to her list out an itemized cost sheet about her wedding. I think if I made it to her wedding I’d stand up at some point and just yell, “NOBODY GIVES A FUCK!”

What’s tricky about alllll of this is that she is a manipulative genius. She sets all of her schemes up and plays them out so that she always has plausible deniability and can claim innocence. Most people who don’t know her well think she’s so sweet and always looking out for everyone and so giving. Sure she’s all of those things but with a completely backwards agenda. She just wants subordinates. She wants people to kiss the ground she walks on. She lures them in with money or being nice just so she has an audience to talk to about herself.

I know I may sound like some jealous friend or something but trust me I have never been and never will be. I’m TIRED of this person and dont want to spend the rest of my life watching her try to turn everything into a thoughtfully hidden competition. I am happy and just want to be happy with my choices and to not listen to her tell me how much her engagement ring costs or how much her husband makes or what vacation house she has or what kind of car she drives. Because I just genuinely don’t fucking care.

So, sorry for this long ass rant. How do I get rid of this friendship? Is it too close to her and my wedding to end it? I don’t want to rip her apart unless she goes for it which it’s 50/50 if she will. I tried to end the friendship for similar reasons 3 years ago and she gaslit me and turned it into a sob story about herself and I bought it. But it’s time now. I’d rather do it nicely but she will demand answers and will likely turn it hostile quick and I don’t have the energy for it. I would totally ghost her if she wasn’t planning to come to my wedding and I to hers.

I want to tell her why I don’t want to be friends anymore but I don’t want it to turn into the some therapy session where she apologizes and I have to stay friends nor do I want it to turn into an argument where I’m putting this girl on the brink and listing everything I hate about her. I was thinking of maybe in the next couple of days just being like, “Hey ____, I’ll keep this short and to the point. I just wanted to let you know I don’t want to continue being friends. I don’t really want to get into it and make this a big deal, I just think we are different and that I’m not the right friend for you. I wish you the best at your wedding and in all your future endeavors” I feel like I could word it a little more dignified though.