First for those reading this looking for advice or tips let me say I am sorry that you have to go through this. As most things in life though they tend to happen. We have friends, we make friends, we grow they don't, they grow we don't there are so many reasons that friendships end that they would go on forever. It is never easy though and the closer you were with the person in the past and the longer the relationship has been the harder the split will be. I will break down different scenerios here since everyone is different I am sure I won't hit near all of them so others please feel free to add on!

1. Your request mentioned a "toxic" friendship. This implies that it is damaging. At this point there is a simple solution though our own guilt tends to get in the way. There is no real way to ween yourself off a toxic situation. You stop cold turkey. If you feel it is toxic it is hurting you and there is no reason to contact this person again period.

As people (and espically women) we are taught to feel bad for others and try to help everyone. This creates us being good people, but it can go too far to the other extreme where we get walked on. This starts very young and I have actually read quite a bit on it recently due to having a young daughter. The Psychology reports I have read made it pretty clear that it starts at sharing. I do try to have my daughter share with other children, but if they are not sharing back I do allow her to stand up for herself (espically if it is her toy they are playing with).

2. If you can't bring yourself to just stop returning calls etc the next best thing you can do for a toxic relationship is to honestly tell that person how you feel. When I got married I had to deal with a very similar situation. One of the girls who was to be a bridesmaid had just become so toxic that to have her there would have been miserable for the rest of us. She had become abusive towards my friends and family which is where I drew the line. I could handle it with me, but to do it to people I cared about as well was too much.

I had to finally end up un-inviting her to the wedding. She insisted that she was going to be there and that she was a "good" friend, and would be a "better" person than "those other people" I called friends. I had to tell her nicely, but forcefully that I did not want her there nor did I really want her in my life anymore.

This was difficult to do and just not returning calls would have been easier but I am the type who needs closure. As I have gotten older I have realized that these "toxic" friendships are not going to get better. The other person is not going to change, so why should I waste the time waiting on that? The key with this option is to let them talk all they want, the final say is yours, that you don't want to see them anymore. You are sorry if this hurts their feelings (generally they will say it does but in reality they will just feed off someone else once you make your stand they have no use for you anymore) but you have made your decision.

3. You can try making excuses if you just feel too gulity for the above steps, but this will catch up with you. It will take a toll on you mentally and physically due to the fact that you are going to be constantly worried about it. The other person isn't, or they would not treat you the way they were. Pulling back or making excuses will only delay steps one or two above.

Again I am sorry that you have to go through this, but in life that seems to happen. I found it happened quite a bit when children came into the picture. My mother had a friend (she is still friends with this woman) who is very toxic. The woman would put me down all the time growing up and to this day my mother jokes about it because "I was strong enough to handle it, and this woman's child needed the attention and positive words that I didn't."

I made the choice early that I would not do that to my child. If you have children then you have absolutely no choice but to do one or two, espically if your child is the same sex as you (father/son or mother/daughter). If you don't you are teaching your children that this is how friends are supposed to treat eachother and while I know our children will more than likely have a friend or two that is a bad influence or allow themselves to be walked on a couple of times, as a parent we want to show them what real friendships are. Not toxic ones. Children do what they see, not what you tell them.

Hopefully this helps some and I am sorry if it sounded cold towards the "toxic" friend, but toxic is not a word that has really any good connotations. Just remember that if anyone is treating you poorly you have absoluetly no reason to feel guilty for not wanting to be with that person anymore.