This is well written and quite understanding on your part. It's not possible for a friendship to end without someone getting hurt. It's like believing you can fall in love, it ends, and no one gets hurt. The only way a friendship can end without anyone getting hurt is if you weren't really friends to begin with. In other words, it can end without hurt if neither one of you really cared all that much about the other. But then that's not friendship is it? The other way it might end without hurt is if it merely fades away and you move on without each other. The MOST painful way for it to end is with an announcement.

I'm saying it's going to hurt no matter what. Trying to find a way to make it not hurt is futile. I requested of my friend that we stop talking about our problems all the time, mostly because I didn't have any problems to talk about, as I solve my problems rather than live with them. It's exhausting having that negative talk all the time for hours on end. I also got tired of her talking about her latest deadbeat boyfriend. And she merely moved from one deadbeat boyfriend to the next. I'm sure she's on her fourth since the last time I talked to her.

She silently agreed (didn't oppose it). Then the next time we talked on the phone she announced "we can talk about our problems." And she proceeded to speak about her current deadbeat boyfriend. This gets old really fast. I'm not a therapist. The most painful way to end a friendship is to "talk" about it, because you can end up in a long argument over it. And you don't have to end up in that argument, you've chosen to end up in that argument.

Friendships run their course and end, that's all there is to it. Announcing an end to a friendship is the worst way to end it.