To ask if you’ve ever suddenly stopped talking to a friend?

Yes. They posted incredibly homophobic comments on my business social media pages - over multiple platforms. Where my gay clients could see it. I’m a wedding vendor and it was on a post celebrating a couples wedding, where the couple had already commented thanking me for my hard work, so would clearly see it.

I have no interest in being friends with someone as hateful as that. It was totally out of the blue - we’d been good friends for a while, drifted a bit, but I blocked them on everything after that. Never talked to them since.

I blocked an old school friend who was posting triumphalist crap like "We won, get over it". I never really thought that I ghosted him, though - what he did was the friendship equivalent of constructive dismissal!

Another friend I stopped contacting because he would make all these little bitter snippy remarks and it got too much to ignore. He was also into conspiracy theories, both anti-semitic ones and some niche ones relating to a hobby of his. Oddly, it was the latter that finally got him in trouble with the law. This was someone I had cut far too much slack because he was uneducated: since Brexit, I've just instantly blocked all gammons and I don't care about their sob stories. We've all got problems, doesn't mean we have to become trolls or racists.

Yes. We had been best friends since school, but she always seemed jealous of my life even though she had a lovely life (I was a single parent) and a hell of a lot more income than me. She drained me and dragged me down for years. There seemed to be one unnecessary drama after another with her. I don't miss her, infact I feel like there's a weight been lifted off my shoulders. Sometimes you need to be selfish for self preservation.

I did it to someone once. They'd always been a bit flaky but it got ridiculous. They lied and lied about why they were cancelling last minute on plans. (We know they were lying because they told different stories to different people). Turned up 2 hours late to a meal I'd cooked for them. Asked "Who else is going?" when I invited them out and sounded v disappointed and unsure when I said they were the first person I asked. Cancelled last minute on attending the hotel stay a friend had booked for all her bridesmaids the night before friend's wedding (crap reason, had previously accepted the invite).

So I figured they didn't really want to be my friend. I'm v conflict averse so decided I would just wait for them to contact me, and if they did I'd go see them. But they never did.

Years later bumped into them while shopping. They asked wide eyed why they'd been "chucked out" of the group. I waffled but agreed we would meet up. Never heard from her again, obvs.

If a friend you're trying to reduce contact with asks to meet up how do you respond? Do you say "sure!" And then not reply with dates and follow up?

Yeah definitely, the harsh truth is that often people don’t mean it when they talk about meeting up or staying in touch no matter how enthusiastic they may seem! And you soon figure that out when you stop taking sole responsibility for maintaining the friendship. It can be so confusing though especially if you’re ND!

In April I contacted a friend in I’d not heard back from in 18 months. She replied and said she’ll be in touch in the next few weeks for a phone call and that she wants to visit me. Months later I’ve still not heard from her. This happens a lot.

For context she has mental health issues and is also ND, but still if I never hear from her again then so be it. My door is open - she’s not a bad person- but I won’t be the one reaching out again.

I did this twice as a teenager. I was very shy and made ‘best’ friends with much more confident people. I think I fell into a pattern of letting them call the shots and then expect me to bow to their every wish and when I didn’t they would blank me until I did as they said. I moved away but we would visit each other often until I grew a spine (well sort of!) and just stopped answering or returning calls. One responded by calling me from a blocked number repeatedly and just being silent if I answered. I only suspected it was her so one day I asked a male friend to answer and say that we knew it was her and she was to leave me alone. I didn’t get any calls after that!

Yes. I got friendly with a new member of staff at work, we were the same age (25ish) and lived close to each other. I was single, she was married with two kids. Things were good for a while but she started becoming a bit demanding of my time. I became her support when she went through a few medical/housing/relationship problems and was ultimately diagnosed with a personality disorder. Looking back I realise she was trauma dumping on me and it was very draining.

her husband left her and she started to lean on me even more. I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night with her crying, dealing with emotional breakdowns at work. I was her kids emergency contact at school!

When I was offered a job and moved away so that I could be closer to my family and my long term boyfriend she didn’t take it well. She visited a few times for my hen do, wedding etc but others noticed her erratic behaviour and how demanding she was of my attention. In the year after our wedding I had 3 miscarriages, one of which was complicated and traumatic. She was constantly pestering me about when was I going to have kids, working it into every conversation, even into Facebook comments about buying a house, moving jobs etc. She didn’t know about the miscarriages. I reduced contact.

the final straw came when, out of the blue, I received a long rambling message about how she had seen I had shared a post about baby loss awareness week months earlier and she realised I must’ve been affected. She had just suffered a miscarriage and was finding it hard because someone close to her had just had a baby so she knew how hard it was (at this point she had 3 kids and I had none). My husband read it and pointed out that she didn’t get in touch when she realised I’d had losses, only when it had affected her. The messages got longer and needier and I finally realised what an emotional drain it was being her ‘friend’. I was going through such a hard time with infertility and complications from the last miscarriage that I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with her. I dropped the rope.

Yes. She had been having issues with her family and I had supported her a lot. She often came round at short notice to chat about it.
She came round one day and told me she was having a party for her birthday but she was limited with numbers so couldn't invite me. I felt hurt but understood:
Then posted photos on Facebook of said party. Loads of people there who were far less friendly with her than I was.
I just couldn't bothered after that.
Saw her at a party of mutual friends and she came towards me and I just turned away and blanked her. She's never reached out and neither have I.

I’ve posted this before. But my oldest friend lives abroad. Her and her new husband were coming for 10 days over Christmas.
She never came/called. On day 9 she rang, was rude, wanting to pop by to pick up something (which wasn’t convenient) and to get some info for next part of their trip. Made a big deal about being busy on day 10, never mentioned she was meant to be staying. I suspect now it had something to do with new husband, however it was a trip that had been organised for 2 years.

She did occasionally writes things on Facebook about wishing she could meet up etc. she had contacted me twice directly.
Once to basically pay for her and husbands accommodation on next trip. Ignored.
Another time her son was going to do some course in the U.K. and she was looking for contributions to pay for it and to host/entertain him when travelling. Also ignored.

Ive seen on her Facebook she’s become a conspiracist and super religious, it’s very far removed from what she was 30 years ago.

Same.

I've neve ghosted someone but I have reduced contact, sometimes until it stops altogether.

The most recent one was a local friend.DH and I noticed it was a very one sided relationship with me asking her to meet, doing favours etc. We just stopped organising meet ups and they never picked it up. They clearly weren't fussed about seeing us. I see her in town sometimes and she makes a big thing of hugging me and saying 'we must' meet up.

I've had to learn that what she says is not what she means!

Yes.

She'd always been quite negative but I put that down to a very difficult childhood. I helped and supported her through to adulthood. We had a laugh. She supported me and was a good friend too. But gradually she just gave less and less and had an increased cynicism and criticism of my life (which was going well).

I put up with it but the last straw was when I got the opportunity to do something quite remarkable and very special. She was so dismissive and rude about it. I didn't expect everyone to be in awe or fawning but I did expect her to acknowledge that it was a biggie for me and that I was really proud of it. But she just scowled. And was rude.

I went home knowing that there was no give and take in our relationship anymore. That I was putting up with shit, still making an effort and getting nothing back.

I stopped making contact. A cowards way out but glad I did it.

I dropped a friend silently a few months ago. We had been very close during university, but then after 7/10, she started posting Instagram stories called Hamas ‘resistance fighters’ and justifying their atrocities on that horrible day.

I am Jewish and have friends and family in Israel, so this was a huge line in the sand for me. I stopped replying to her messages. I presume she has an inkling as to why.

Another friend I went very low contact with to the point of ghosting was a uni friend. During our time at uni she had one boyfriend, he was very sweet and loving to her, basically became part of our friendship group. Then after uni she came to visit me for a weekend and gleefully told me about an affair she had been having. She spent the entire weekend talking about the new fella. I was just disgusted that she would treat her partner that way, so grew distant with her.

she did notice and asked if that was the reason and I told her yes and that she should just break up with her boyfriend and let the poor guy find happiness with someone who respects him. She did, but the damage was done for us,

we basically stopped contacting each other until a major horrific life event happened to her and I offered her support so we spoke a little after that and then drifted again

I would never stop talking to someone altogether, as in ghost them/ignore them in the street, because I'm an adult.

There's one friend who's been causing a lot of drama with our friendship group though, and I've stopped contacting her because I don't want to spend time with her. I would always speak to her if I saw her and be polite.

Yes.

We’d been friends through our partners when much younger, both teen mums with children a similar age. She left that partner because he was abusive and moved away. We also moved away.

Years later, I bumped into her by chance in my local supermarket. We got chatting, met up with all our children (we’d both since had more, her with her new husband) and spent time together. We even did a college course together. She’s a lovely girl, and it was really hard to break the friendship, but her new husband gave me the creeps. The way he treated her and her children (but not THEIR) children, in front of us, was awful so I hate to think how he behaved without us. He put her down, called her fat (she wasn’t, not that it makes any difference) and constantly referenced how he had ‘saved’ them from her ex. He hadn’t, she left long before meeting him.

My own ex partner was extremely abusive and I found him very triggering. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I do miss her and our friendship, and the children’s friendships too. Sometimes you have to protect yourself though.

Yes. Someone I had known since my uni days and for a while considered one of my closer friends. Over an 18 month period she just became increasingly........a bit twatish, not just to me but to others in the friendship group. She crossed the line with me when she made up some outright bullshit about me that was quite damaging and I called her out on it. I was going through a tricky patch in life and the last thing I needed was people making my life harder then it needed to be so I just ended the friendship. She reached out a few times years down the line and I was tempted to reconcile things but to he honest I was in a pretty good place by that stage and just did not need the drama so did not respond.

Yes I have. I've ghosted the same person three times over 30 years which sounds awful. I want to be her friend but she has absolutely no boundaries. Calling every day wanting hours long conversations, wanting to meet up most days , sending multiple text messages which are just relentless. Ive sit here down , explain that it's too much and I'm feeling overwhelmed but she never listens . In the end I go no contact . It's a shame really . I met her at work and we worked alongside each other for 8 hours a day , it wasn't until I left the job that i realised how intense she was .

I haven't ghosted someone but I've stopped making time for someone who repeatedly lied, someone who didn't turn up to planned meet ups and more recently I have a mum friend I feel like I'm avoiding as I find her hard work (not sure how else to put it).

There's an also someone at work I am avoiding as we were friendly but he is a bit overbearing (I actually posted a thread). I wouldn't stop talking to him as he's a colleague and we have to work together but his behaviour really annoys me.

I had a friend of several years who got very drunk one night and told me that I was a cunt. Always thought I was a cunt. Still thinks I'm a cunt. Very specific about the choice of word.

Called me the next day, hungover and rather fuzzy about what had happened.

I related the conversation, put the phone down, and we never spoke again.

I'm finding that many friendships I've made particularly as an adult have been transient! So when the class / work / hobby or whatever comes to an end it seems to be hard work keeping things going. Also so many people seem to have lots of drama / divorce atm it means the chats are very skewed one way. I have become a lot less social as I've got older and much happier to let things go. Also echo what pp said about micro aggressions and dropping the rope, I definitely do this these days. I want to be a friendly person with friends but I also want these friendships to be even and balanced as much as possible.

A very close friend who I'd spent years with suddenly ghosted me during my most horrendous divorce to someone I really loved.
She disappeared for almost a year.
Then popped back after it was all over expecting us to resume the friendship as though nothing had happened.
Needless to say I wasn't interested.

Yes, when I realised she was totally self-involved and full of drama. I'd always tolerated it but the final straw was when she wouldn't even bother meeting me, despite being happy to vent to me for literally hours per week. Good riddance.

My best friend did this to me shortly after I got married-I was pregnant with my first. We had lived together for many years, she suddenly started dating someone from my office (a not so nice man).. she knew he wasn't and kept it secret. Then suddenly she moved miles away to live with him and I never heard from her again. I tried several times to reach out - I so wanted her to meet my first born and be part of our lives! Slightly hormonal and sleep deprived I admit to sending a few text messages saying how disappointed I was she'd just vanished like that. We'd been through so much together I just couldn't fathom why she'd done it. Anyway, I eventually deleted her number and moved on with my life. Had a second child and mum friends so was keeping busy! On my 40th birthday I received a message (years later) from a random number wishing me happy birthday! Only after I replied and said 'thank you but who is this' did I realise it was her.. she never replied and I never bothered to send another message. Gone from my life pfft! Interestingly I've never had a best friend since, in fact I've had issues around friendships ever since. Does she care? Probably not! Sad but true.

I kind of phased someone out this year. It was an old friend I had reconnected with. Hadn't seen her since our teens and she hadn't really changed , still had a life full of self created drama and was really clingy. The nail in the coffin was a night out where she had to go home early due to childcare issues and she expected me to go home as well. She got very odd that I stayed on with the group and enjoyed my night. I'm too old for that kind of behaviour now. There was no massive falling out but I've just been quite and a bit busy. It's far easier this way