Just Call Me The Ice Queen

Have you ever had to freeze someone?

I do not mean like Mr. Freeze from Batman, I mean freezing someone out of your life.

I sometimes joke with my friends to just “call me Elsa, because I am the ice queen!”, to which they will all laugh and tell me I am hilarious. (If you live under a rock and don’t know who Elsa is, she is the queen of Arendelle from the wildly popular animated Disney movie, Frozen. She has a knack for freezing things and sometimes people.) While I joke in good fun, there is some seriousness and truth to my statement. I chose to ice out people for very good reasons. Remember my post about boundaries? It’s usually because they violate them.

I am curious though…have you been frozen out by a friend yourself? I have been. What I have found is that sometimes the answer why it happens isn’t so clear. Guess what? That is ok, no one owes you an explanation.

Having friends as an adult is vastly different from when we were kids. Watching my little girl with her friends reminds me that kids are so forgiving, even when they probably shouldn’t be. She will tell me about a “fight” her and another friend would get in, which is usually over who will be the mom when they are playing house or what show they’re going to watch that afternoon. If only adult friendships were so simple, we are not always so forgiving. Adult friendships are so complicated. You may have friends from high school. You more than likely become friends with people you work with since you see each other all day everyday. (Maybe not in covid times…but you understand where I am coming from.) You may have mom friends, gym friends, neighborhood friends, etc. I am a person that choses to be friendly with most people but have a very tight friend circle. Over the years I have learned that it is more important to have a few very good friends than a lot of so so fair weather friends.

Some friendships naturally fade and generally nothing bad causes this to happen. You could grow apart as individuals or even physically move apart. Having kids can vastly change friend dynamics, especially if your friend doesn’t have or chooses not to have kids. Things such as different schedules, living in other cities, changing jobs or careers, marriages or divorce can all change a friendship and cause it to fade. But sometimes there is an event or a series of events that will cause a friend breakup. Friend breakups can be as hurtful, confusing and complicated as ending a romantic relationship. There’s blame and hurt feelings that come with this, but I truly believe that sometimes it’s completely necessary to freeze out a friend and end a friendship.

My first experience with choosing to freeze someone happened in my twenties. This was before I became aware of what building boundaries meant and when I still let people walk all over me. We had a friend couple that we saw on a pretty regular basis. Every weekend we would get together at our house or theirs. It became so routine that there was just an expectation that we would all be together one evening of the weekend. But something to know about me is that I get overwhelmed and taxed out very easily. As much as we hung out I felt like our quality time with them was becoming not so quality as time went on. We began to peel back on our regular weekends and even started to hang out more with some of our other friends. Well…they took notice and didn’t like it. I came to learn that their friendship was toxic and borderline obsession. It was not a healthy friendship at all, they couldn’t stand the fact we had other friends and this became a problem for them.

The final straw was the weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. We had discussed the possibility of going out but had not finalized any plans. This time of year is my husbands absolute favorite so I always defer to what he wants to do and I will tag along. Our soon to be ex friends had assumed that we would be going across town to a bar with them. We ultimately decided to stay home and keep the evening quiet. A thing to note here is that I am not a big drinker, I chose not to as I just am not a fan. People around me drink and that is ok. It’s not that I don’t drink for religious or health reasons, I just simply don’t like to. I know my limits and I don’t like the feeling of being out of control. (Hello anxiety.) Have a partook in drinking in my lifetime? Absolutely. But if I have the option, I don’t drink. To some, that automatically means I am the designated driver. I am happy to be that person, if I offer and we are out. However, I don’t like the assumption that I will automatically chauffeur people around because I am the one person who won’t drink. Enter in our friends…they were so mad that we weren’t going to go to this bar with them because that meant one of them would have to remain sober. Sounds like a them problem and not an Emm problem.

Was this someone I wanted to continue to be friends with? Someone that gets mad at me because they assumed I would drive them? I received a few messages berating me for “what I did to them”. For a second I thought, did I cause this? Is this my fault? No. I did not do anything wrong and nothing was my fault. I started to reevaluate past events and relook at every conversation I had had with this couple. I was totally being taken advantage of for the entirety of our friendship. I tried very civilly to address the hateful messages I received but ultimately decided that it wasn’t worth it. I tried to explain my side of it but it was met with accusations and hurtful, untrue statements. In that moment I knew that I no longer wanted to be friends with these people. I stopped responding to texts, calls and emails. It was no longer worth my time and energy to fight with someone who didn’t respect me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was my first experience with freezing out friends.

When I freeze someone it means that I cut off all communication; everything. My mental health is more important than feeling the anxiety and dread of having to put up with people simply because we have been friends. Enter in boundaries. It is so very important to know what you are willing to put up with and what you are willing to accept. I know that in this instance I was no longer going to put up with being taken advantage of. Over the course of our friendship we had bought and made them many dinners, helped with moves, helped with kids, helped with houses. Not that we expected anything in return, but most of the time it wasn’t even met with a thank you. I decided enough was enough. I will not settle for friends to treat me like I don’t matter or don’t value my time or effort. Freezing was absolutely unavoidable and would play a vital part of my life going forward. These friends were the first, but they undoubtedly will not be the last that get frozen.

While I have got quite good at freezing friends and even my own family (we will get into that topic on another post), I have managed to be the one getting frozen. I was recently ghosted by a friend and to this day I am not really sure why. Now that I have experienced it on my own and I am usually the one doing the freezing, I know this friend probably had their reasons. Over the course of our friendship this friend would sort of pop in and out of our friend circle but we always accepted them back. This time around I think it may be for good. As much as I try to wrap my head around why this person chose to do this, I have to accept the fact that it’s probably for the best. Just like I chose to freeze people out, I have accepted that this choice was one that was made in their best interest. Even though we may feel like we don’t deserve to be frozen or ghosted, it sometimes is really for the best. As I have said before in previous posts, sometimes we are the toxic ones and need to reevaluate ourselves. But in contrast, sometimes the reasons for getting ghosted may conflict with reality and are not a reflection of you.

I am so thankful for the friends I have. I have friends that I talk to all day everyday. I also have friends that I don’t talk to on a regular basis but we always pick right up where we left off. Mutual respect and understanding has played a large part into how my friendships thrive. I also know what I will not accept or settle for either. There is no manual or rule book for friendships and relationships, but I am very aware of what it takes to keep myself mentally healthy. Sometimes it means I have to cut you off. Sometimes you just are no longer meant to be in the story of my life.

In the end I think it’s important to remember this: Some friends are meant to be a part of your story, some friends are meant to be there for its entirety, but some friends are present for only a few chapters. They usually help you through a season of your life or to teach you a valuable lesson or two.

Remember to build your boundaries and keep them.

Remember that no is a complete sentence.

Remember you owe no one an explanation and no one owes you one in return.

Remember that you have to do what is best for you. Always.

Keep on freezing.

XO
Emm