Burn your bridges.

Thank you Emily.

May 15, 2026

Emily gets it. *The Devil Wears Prada 2*

There was a time in my life where I really needed to cut complete ties off with a toxic friend who relentlessly drove me into a pit of misery. Friend breakups are a hundred times harder to go through and process in its aftermath than romantic breakups. There’s not enough Hollywood movies about friend breakups, it’s almost a taboo subject. But we choose our friends the same way we choose our lovers and partners. Initially we bonded because we were the same, but different. I was in a bad place when we met, but then came the point when I was finally coming up for air. I no longer wanted to drown and was ready to swim back to shore and ground myself.

That is what I did. I was talking with my work bestie about my friend problem and how I wanted to change my life, but having this friend in it would only make it emotionally difficult. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about this friend, but after serious introspection I came to the question if my friend cared about me at all. Work bestie already knew the majority of the friendship in question, she had even witnessed firsthand for herself the toxicity, she agreed with me that stepping away would be the healthiest thing for me. An annoying coworker invited herself into the conversation by dropping what she felt was her ball of wisdom. “Don’t burn your bridges.” Work bestie and I turned to look at her, but not in the ‘please advise me oh wise one’ manner. She continued on, “You can’t abandon a friend. Don’t burn your bridges.”

The phrase ‘don’t burn your bridges’ belongs to a different lifetime. An ancient sentiment that to me sounds and feels like gaslighting of the worst kind, insinuating that you should not leave or destroy a relationship in case you have to go back to it. So instead, appease the opponent. Play nice and maybe it’ll get better. Or maybe it won’t. I don’t think the phrase fits every scenario, for instance you could never advise a survivor of domestic abuse to not cut ties from harmful, toxic behavior.

Bridges need to be burned.

There is a psychology term, ‘hope trapping’, that the only reason you keep a “bridge” open to your past is the fear of the unknown. Layman terms, it’s false hope, passively keeping the connection mistaking it for optimism. And when you hope for something so much, even though it’s unfulfilling, it can become quite numbing to the brain and you rot.

You don’t burn bridges out of anger, you do it to earn your self-respect back.

When to burn your bridge:

It should be the easy part, but it’s not, depending if you have to factor in others ie; children. I can only speak from my own experience, I knew it was time when I would cry myself to sleep at night. I would pray that a good dream would send me a sign that things weren’t as bad as it seemed. But aren’t the red flags a sign enough? Being with my friend was mentally exhausting. I had friends telling me to my face of what a bad friend this person was to me. I wasn’t going to be that girl in a Netflix documentary who lists out all the red flags and expects people to understand or extend sympathy.

How to burn it down:

I didn’t block this person out of my life. I made it physically and emotionally impossible for me to return to that relationship. As corny as it is, there will always be two separate paths and you have to choose one. All you could do is weigh out the pros and cons, rip off the bandaid, let it bleed and pray that you chose the right path. And you remind yourself that you’re smart and caring to those who don’t want to hurt you. The first move is to turn your back and remember that things can only change if you change. I told myself that this friendship is no longer for me and it’s only up to me to close the chapter if I want to stop crying myself to sleep. And the more you tell yourself what you want, the faster the bridge burns.

But why:

The guilt factor. First of all, feeling guilty is congratulatory since it only proves that you’re not a sociopath. It’s common to not be okay at first, especially when you know that there is no going back, you can only go forward. You don’t burn bridges out of anger, you do it to earn your self-respect back. You do it to make room to build new bridges.

This important life lesson then enabled me to burn a bigger bridge, with the person responsible for childhood to adult trauma. Even though this will never be an easy feat, it’s manageable because I learned what my nervous system deserves. Peace, kindness, soft lighting, soy scented candles, no doors slamming, nothing that makes me feel small again. Honestly, when you can realize that your nervous system is everything — everything — you’ll know to say when enough is enough.