I always said I’d post this sometime.
This is a series with about 2 or 3 additional posts that I wrote when I was feeling disappointment over a recent ending of friendships. And yes, it was over politics. I’ll put up the other posts in time because some measure of positivity did come out of it.
April or May 2026
I wanted to write about this before but just thought to let things blow over. However, the situation came to a boiling point this afternoon and…well, I guess it had to at some point.
I’m referring to 2 friends I’ve known since high school who – for all intents and purposes – I, and the rest of my friend group, are now fully estranged from.
All of this stems from our differing politics.
Ever since 2016 ,I, as well as the rest of my friend group had to endure the constant snark of these two. Everything just became a reason to rant.
And for a while, us being taught to “respect different opinions” was what kept things together. And “respecting opinions” was what we did: throughout COVID, throughout the next presidency and now this one. I have tried to speak with both of them privately – as did my other friends – but it seemed like the more we “respected opinions”, the more vitriolic and nasty they got.
Last December, during one of our get togethers there was another “debate” which, for reasons I forget, ended up turning into a near scream fest. It was at that point that I had enough…and I also felt the shift with the rest of my friends. We all just sort of stayed quiet about it but a week after, one of my other friends messaged me on iMessage using a new group-chat window. I didn’t think anything of it until I realized who was conspicuously left out of the chat. That, to me, signaled the finality of our collective shift.
It was hard to do this. Alot of us have known each other through youth church groups, high school and with some – college. But my, and two other people’s relationship with these two go all the way back to high school. One of them was my teammate on the baseball team. This was the reason we all tried to just stick through it together. But in the end, I think all of us came to the realization that people simply change. Their circumstances – whether fair or not – largely dictate how they feel about the world and sometimes, the only thing we can do is let go.
One of the friends found out that we had our own chatgroup today and was upset at the exclusion. The oldest of our group had to tell her why we all did what we did.
There’s a part of me that is really sad. That is honestly how I feel.
But there’s also a part of me that’s finally relieved that we can be more open. That’s me being honester. 😂
It was a long time coming but, to be frank, they were really putting a strain on the entire group dynamic up to that December and I figured that if we maintained this farce for even one more year we all probably would have ended up not hanging out with each other anymore.
Of course, their kids are always going to be treated well. I just hope that they don’t or aren’t following their parents’ cues and going after the kids of my remaining friend group for their political values.
Yes, we actually had a get together at one of the houses where the parents explicitly had to discuss this topic with theirs and everyone else’s kids.
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