How do you get over cutting people off?

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For me I am way too forgiving, and I have let a lot of people take advantage of that,
and spent way too long in sh***y relationships.

But now i have a lot of internal pain from cutting people off.
I think its because I still think about them and questions we thought about.
I guess I worry that they are hurt?
I suppose I need to understand who they are better. Like if they were just using me, they don't care.
Also, there are a lot of people in the world, so they can find new friends.

I guess its also because I have a poor understanding of my social needs and a relatively
poor ability to form new relationships, especially now. Coupled with a low ability to re-negotiate
the terms of the relationship in a way that is taken seriously.

These days I don't often cut friends off, not deliberately anyway. I might row back on the frequency of meetings, or stop meeting them at all, but I rarely slam doors in the process. It's usually conceptually possible for us to contact each other again. But if they did something really nasty I might cut them off. I'm quite a perfectionist so I'm prone to decide this or that person isn't good enough for me, but if so then I usually find that out before we've established much of a regular connection.

I've cut ties very completely with several partners, but I think that's a bit different. When a very close relationship goes bad and can't be fixed, sticking around hurts (me) a lot more than it does with friends. When I've tried to keep ex-lovers as friends, it hasn't worked. We've just held each other back from finding new partners and moving on. The friendship is never quite the same when there's been a sexual relationship, very often it's only one partner decides on ending it, and things can get messy. A new partner can have a hard time dealing with the presence of an ex. I see jealousy as somewhat natural. So I prefer to make a complete break.

Getting over it - sometimes I wonder whether complete closure ever happens. I think we just gradually get more used to it, and if we manage to replace the one we lost, that can be very helpful, though I doubt it's ever possible to completely replace one individual with another.

Thanks, that's a nice perspective. I suppose you have calibrated yourself pretty well and can filter
people earlier on. I agree with you about closure. People are too complicated to replace.

Well, I don't view my filter as being very accurate. I compensate for that by simply being picky about people and (probably) not giving them a very fair chance. It's a bit like my way of dealing with risk - I can't assess risk very accurately, so I behave in a very risk-averse way, and very likely I miss out on a lot of good opportunities that way, but I don't get hurt much. Though it's been a bit different with partners, where I've tended to be more gung-ho about taking them on. But even there, I've often not pursued what looked like potential romantic encounters, out of fear of getting hurt.

The other thing is that I think even the best filter can only work on what an individual is expressing under the circumstances existing at the time. As circumstances change, different traits can come out. Good or bad qualities that nobody - not even the person in question - expected can emerge. So in the end I don't think anybody's filter can be anything like perfect. I think there's always an element of risk involved. But people can turn out better than expected as well as worse.

Don't attach too much importance to yourself. They can easily find new friends / victims.

Not sure if this is helpful but I have this problem with dwelling on the past myself, along with sticking with things too long. Friends I've had in my 44 years of life, I can count on all my fingers.

I've cut off on a couple of people, because I figured out that I wasn't really a priority in their lives. One was particularly unreliable, flaky, and I was the one he went to when he was down, but other than that he never made time for me, so I thought f--k him. I knew he would never change, and I had held onto that "so called" friendship for way too long.

There was a major one where I got cut off, from a friendship of over 20 years. To be fair, things had not been going well, at least in my eyes. Over time, the friend got more selfish, self-centered, and honestly all along was an as*hole as I look back.

Over the years, many things went over my head, like snide comments, put downs, gas lighting, and having my feelings dismissed. The turning point was one time we went on a weekend trip, and everything seemed to go wrong. The motel turned out to be not that good and the weather was bad, all he did was b***h and moan the whole time. I couldn't wait to go home.

After that things were never the same again or I think my eyes were opened. About 4 years passed and I was dealing with a broken arm. He seemed to be oblivious to the fact I couldn't do some things due to my injury. There were other things I won't get into but I had not heard from him in about 2 weeks, come to find he blocked me online. No warning, no asking me anything. Poof gone!

I was relived but at the same time, a bit devastated as strange as it sounds, maybe because I didn't did get to tell him off or cut it off myself. 10 years later, I still think about it all the time, I think it's because no one has come along to replace him.

Since then, I've learned a lot about ASD and discovered I am on spectrum, which has made things in my life make more sense. Also, while I cannot prove this, I believe this ex-friend is very possibly on the spectrum as well, discovering things about myself and then getting deeper into, make me suspect the ex-friend is on the spectrum as well. Which sheds light onto some of the things he did, said, and way he acted.

To wrap this up, I know he's found another person(s) to make miserable. Happy I'm not the one anymore but being thrown away like a bag of trash still hurts a lot, even after all these years.

I got cut off by an online friend who I had close conversations with for a few months. I didn’t do anything to hurt or annoy her (or at least I think I didn’t…..), I think she just moved on to a different phase of her life.

I was ok with it, even though she was a valuable person my life, I respected her decision to move on. I think most people are like that about being cut off, they might feel a little bit hurt and/or sad for a time, but ultimately they just forget and move on with their lives.