With Facebook it's so easy, simply click "Unfriend" and you won't have to see that person's updates any more, but in real life, not so much. In our day-to-day lives, if we want to cut out someone who has been our friend for a while it can be difficult, but sometimes it's necessary; maybe that person has fucked you over in an unforgivable manner, or maybe you just feel you've grown so far apart that you have nothing in common anymore. Unfriending someone is trickier than just breaking up with someone because let's face it, it'd be pretty weird and hurtful to arrange to meet someone to declare you are no longer friends with them. Here's our advice for unfriending in real life;
Stop answering calls and replying to messages.
This is the first stage in cutting them off. After a while of no responding, a person will eventually lose interest in contacting you. They might not see this as a sign that you want them out of your life though, they may just assume you're shit at replying.
Slowly distance yourself.
Of course, you will still probably bump into them in public, this is where you'll need to keep your physical distance. It may seem like a shitty move but like I said before, it's harsh to straight-up tell someone that you no longer want their friendship, it's much crueler than breaking up with someone because you're basically saying that you find them so uninteresting and disagreeable that you don't even want to be loosely affiliated with them socially and that's like being broken up with and fired at the same time. The message is, "I think you're a shit person, leave me alone forever." But if you slowly distance yourself from them, they can at least convince themselves that you just grew apart, leaving no hard feelings. It also has the added benefit of not making things weird with your mutual friends.
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Give it to 'em straight
A last resort when all else has failed. There will always be people who will not get it, who won't take a hint, who are totally lacking in self-awareness and this is where you'll have to be direct and tell them to their faces that you do not want to be their friend anymore and that they need to back off. The message can't get much clearer than that, folks. F off.
Feel bad
Of course, there's always the risk that afterward you'll feel like the bad guy because you just rejected somebody who only wanted to be your friend. So, before you ditch someone because you might think they're an asshole, maybe reconsider who the real asshole in this situation might be (oooh, plot twist). You asshole.
