Dear Prudence,
I’ve realized I have next to nothing in common with my friend of nearly a decade anymore. I don’t dislike her, but we have no shared interests aside from the most shallow things (gourmet pizza, fun cocktails, manicures). However, she has also been consistently hinting that “though there’s competition,” she hopes to be made my maid of honor when I marry my partner. I’ve been laughing this off with a “haha we’ll see” for a while since I wasn’t engaged and saw no good way to crush her hopes that early. Well, my partner proposed over the holidays! While this is very exciting and joyful for us, I know it’s finally going to come to a head.
I need to tell her that she’s not going to be a bridesmaid, let alone a maid of honor. I don’t want her in my bridal party. She considers me “like a sister” to her, and has projected an idea of me and my interests onto, well, the real me who doesn’t care about and frankly, kind of disdains these things. She made me her maid of honor a few years ago, much to my surprise—and I should have said no then, but I didn’t in hopes that it would deepen the friendship. Instead of learning things that I hoped would make me like her more, I ended up stuck through some self-centered behavior that ended up really hurting me and learning about behaviors of hers that I actively disliked (temper tantrums with stomped feet at staff that didn’t deserve it while her other bridesmaids and I tried to do damage control, for example). Since her wedding, I’ve been taking a break from the friendship and trying to create distance, which has kind of worked. I know this will hurt her. But how do I tell her?
—Wincing in Wisconsin