Slow Fade

[Anonymous]

Has anyone actually successfully slow faded a friend to a point where you can bump into them and have a conversation and it’s still good and it’s not awkward?

I’m in a situation where I don’t want to cut someone off and I think the only thing is too slow fade. But I slow faded someone once before just by saying that I was busy all the time and it ended up being awful. I would still bump into her occasionally and at one point when I bumped into her, she asked me what she had done wrong and I just kept saying she hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was just busy. The last two times I saw her, she saw me first and pretended she hadn’t seen me.
 

So I basically want to transition my existing friendship with a friend back to acquaintance level. I personally think, this is an extremely hard thing to do if even possible. So prove me wrong with your experiences of slow fading good friends but still being able to have a good conversation  when bumping into each other.