Have you disowned or deliberately ceased your relationship with a friend or relative?

Yes. On many occasions. It was necessary.

then she died a month later...

I've been disowned by a snotty dogy friend. ha ha and i "disowned" my sister once but that was only for a few days.

"Blah because blah" options are a bad idea unless you really need that because. I have not done it, not because there has been no reason but for other reasons.

I have distanced myself from many emotional vampires. You can only give so much before you collapse. I am not the kind of person who can enter a friendship and remain distanced. I get drawn in, I care, I support and help those I am friends with, if it becomes one sided, it really starts to take a lot out of me and I feel resentful. It is then that I back away. I can count four people I have had to do this with in the last year. A friend I have had since high school, the mother of one of my child's playmates, a former co-worker, and a friend/lover from some years back. All these folks had one thing in common. When they talked...and talked and talked about themselves, I listened...cared and supported them but when I needed to talk or needed a shoulder(which was never very often compared to their crises , incessant gossip and chatter), they were NEVER there for me.

I have also emotionally distanced myself from my dying father.

I haven't intentionally disowned my father but neither have I spoken to him in over five years. Our paths just don't cross.

I've put lots of emotional distance between me and several of my friends. Never with a family member, though.

If you count ex's as friends (and I do), then yes. In a few cases maintaining friendships was/has been extremely difficult and the friendships are/were on hiatus for a time.

Yes, a friend. At one stage I got sick and tired of her breaking promise after promise. I cut her out of my life, but after a long conversation we became friends again. But pretty soon after she started again, so I definitely cut her out. She came to my house, apologizing again and crying her heart out, but it was definite for me.

No, but in a sense I do this to almost everyone in my life. I have this notion that I should just let my life happen. This includes friendships and who I end up hanging out with. I don't intentionally try to be friends with anyone, I just try to be myself (the hardest part) and see what turns up. Sometimes this means that I spend a lot of time with some people. Sometimes it means I don't even talk to someone I really like for a long time.
What dab said about his father is similar to how I feel. Who I cross paths with isn't an intentional thing for me. I just do what I want to do, who I do it with is often secondary. I hope the people I'm with are there because they want to be, not because it's their obligation as my friend.

There are friends who I didn't speak with for long periods of time, who are now very close to me, and other friends who were once very close, but with whom, right now, I cannot seem to share anything at all. My relatives, for the most part, don't seem to rise to the challenge of meaningful human relations. Every once in a while I try to open up with them and to them and try to make connection, and then, when it doesn't work, I back away for a while. I won't "disown" them, or write them out of my life entirely, but it would not be very healthy for me (or for them) for me to pour constant energy into attempting relationships with them. They seem to want a kind of surface, insincere kind of relationship which makes me very uncomfortable to be in for more than an hour or two at a time.

I was in a long-term friendship that I finally realized had some patterns that were very damaging to me. After trying to talk to the person about them over and over and failing to get through, I finally told him I could no longer be friends with him.
We've recently started talking again -- trying to figure out what happened and why and see if we can someday be friends again, but I still feel like that's a long way off.
It hurt a lot to do let him go, but it also felt good to be strong enough to do it. It's nice to know that I don't need anyone enough to put up with an unhealthy relationship anymore; that hasn't always been the case.

My brother turned against the family and rejected it. For a while we tried to win him back, but I am really not interested in forgiving him any more, not that he has asked or is likely to.

But I have friends I never see and miss a lot and don't know how to reconnect with them. My former best friend and I have reached the point where there is no profit in the relationship for either of us.

drdt, I promise I'll try to play Go with you again soon. Don't give up on me!

Absolutely not. I love my siblings, parents, and best friends unconditionally. I'm not the type of person to disown anyone. I had many major disagreements with my parents in my teen and early adult years when they actually threatened to take me out of their wills (what a lame threat!) but everything was eventually resolved. There have been friendships that I haven't pursued further for one reason or another, but I've never actually told anyone I don't want to be their friend anymore.

bill: you know, after I wrote that, it occurred to me that you might think I was talking to you. I wasn't, but thank you anyway.

D16.

:)