How to Purge Those Unwanted Friends

I typically blog about politics, social justice, or other weighty subjects. Today I'd like to take up a weighty subject that perhaps is even more important, as it involves our daily lives directly and intimately. What I'm talking about is our friendships. How do we end the friendships we no longer have use for?

You may recall my trademarked method, the "The Eady Method: How to Purge a Friend." (Okay, I didn't trademark it, but if you've known me for more than 15 years, you've probably heard me talk about it. No?)

My method provides three types of friend purges:

• Hard purge
• Soft purge
• Graduated-hard purge

Let's review. The hard purge is when you tell the friend not to contact you anymore. Direct, confrontational, clear. (Example: "I don't like you. We're no longer friends. I never want to hear from you again.")

The soft purge is good for a more delicate situation, where you may want to avoid the confrontation. To implement the soft purge, you simply don't return the problematic friend's calls, emails, or texts. Eventually, the soon-to-be-ex friend gets the message that you no longer wish to be in contact with him or her. It's a bit of a softer hit, which may be kinder, but the downside is that if the friend is a bit dense, he or she never gets a completely clear indication that you're finished with him or her.

(I should note that I created my before we were online to the degree that we are today. I've adapted the method to change with the times, as you will see when I explain the expansion of my method.)

The graduated-hard purge  (also known as the semi-hard purge) is when your target friend calls you, and you say, "Don't call me at work." When later the friend calls you at home, you say, "Don't call me at home." Likewise, when the friend calls on your mobile, you say, "Don't call me on my mobile. You see what happens here, right? The friend has no where to call you, and you have effected a hard purge, though a bit less efficiently than the regular hard purge.

Well pupils, after many years of successfully using my method, I have come up with a new way to purge those pesky unwanted friends. I call it the hostile soft purge. Allow me to explain.

We now live in a digital age, where we communicate not only on telephones or in e-mails. Yes, today we function in a society with an online component where we allow or invite friends, family, and acquaintances to participate in our digital lives. Now we've got Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Pinterist and lord knows what else where people follow our lives and exist in our cyber circles. 

I recently wanted to purge a friend, and I quickly realized that in this case a normal soft purge wouldn't do. I wanted to quietly disappear from the friend's life, but I wanted that friend to know about it. What did I do? 

Obviously, the first step was to unfriend him on Facebook. Let me tell you, it was a good feeling. Next, I blocked him on Skype. That was followed by a rigorous cleansing of all traces of him in my computer's address book, my google address book, and my mobile phone address book, and I deleted all e-mails and text messages. Let me tell you friends, it was a true catharsis. I managed to be hostile without having to deal with the mess of a confrontation.

And now friends, I invite you to use my new purge method, as well as the old of course -- completely free of charge. Please tell your friends. With my new and improved Eady Method, we can indeed heal the world through relieving ourselves of unwanted friends.

Enjoy!