This one isn't a travel story. The source article is an entry from The Washington Post's advice column Say More, republished by the NZ Herald, in which a reader weighing up whether to confront an old friend gets a firmly worded reality check.
The reader, signing off as Kiddo, wrote in about a friendship that fizzled more than two decades ago. Now the former friend has reached out to reconnect, and Kiddo wants to do more than decline the catch-up. She wants to explain, in detail, exactly why she thinks poorly of the woman — citing long-held grievances about her being opinionated and bossy, and resenting how she handled Christmas cards and birthday messages over the years.
Columnist Emily Morman's response is blunt. She tells Kiddo that while ghosting is usually cruel and immature, in this particular case staying silent is the kinder option — because the confrontation Kiddo is planning would amount to an unprovoked emotional hit on someone who, as far as the letter suggests, has no idea any of this resentment exists and believes she's simply reconnecting with an old friend.
Morman also points out something telling in the timing: Kiddo's tally of grievances only surfaced after the friend's husband began divorce proceedings. She suggests Kiddo may be blaming the friend for the collapse of the marriage — and for how that unravelled their couples' friendship — and that a divorce is hardly the moment someone shows their best side. A little grace, the column argues, might have been in order. On the cards-and-birthdays complaint, the answer is simple: if you didn't want to reply, you didn't have to; any guilt there was self-generated.
The column closes with the kind of rule you'd offer a toddler, which is exactly how Morman frames it: you can't control how you feel, but you don't get to take it out on other people. If Kiddo can't be civil, she has nothing constructive to offer the conversation — and confronting her old friend would only reveal who Kiddo has been all along. Her advice: let it go.
Why are we telling you this? Partly as a heads-up: this source URL circulates under a travel label, but there's no destination, deal or trip-planning angle here — it's a relationships piece, and it isn't something a holidaymaker needs to act on. If you clicked through expecting travel advice, that's the whole story. If you clicked through because the headline hooked you, the takeaway is equally short: not every old wound needs a confrontation, and sometimes the most mature move is a polite no thanks — or nothing at all.