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

I haven’t ghosted a friend no, more of a slow fade because I can’t deal with how difficult it is to try and get together. Makes everything seem like she’s going to the ends of the earth just to see you

My best friend of 11 years did this, it was absolutely brutal, went from mostly daily chat, tons of play dates and holidays to complete silence.

It been a year now and it's less sad but very awkward, I know we'll bump into each other at some stage. My children who considered her family have been very curious about it and it's been hard to explain.

Basically she got drunk and revealed something she regretted or is embarrassed about, I'd have happily pretended it was never said but there we go.

And just to add, I’m ND so since being a young girl I’ve always had to work a bit more at friendships and figuring out social norms.

I think overall I try hard and will happily be the person trying to maintain friendships and arrange calls or in person meet ups. I’m a bit slow in realising when a friendship has gone bad or lost its shine.

However as soon I realise a friendship is too one-sided or lacking in mutual respect and goodwill I’ll quickly exit. The penny just drops one day and then I’ll notice there has been a pattern leading up to the final trigger.

Yes I cut off completely from my longest best friend almost 3 years ago. Too complex and too long a story to explain but essentially I was forever trying to help her rid the toxic people from her life then I realised she was the toxic in mine. My life has been so much less drama without her

There was this old friend who kept taking months to reply to me, she ignored me completely when I’d send a text to see how she was doing. I logged back onto Facebook about a year later and saw she was completely fine and had even got married. I deleted her from FB and she texted me the following week to say hi so I reckon she noticed. I never replied to her. I don’t have anything against her and she’s still on my LinkedIn but I realise she was probably over the friendship and after that - so was I, and it was best we both just moved on from each other.

Another old friend - I messaged her at the start of the pandemic/lock down in March 2020 to see how she was. I’d spoken to her last a few months earlier. She was doing fine and just came back from a walk. I ended up sharing some really happy news with her, it was basically a lifelong dream that had been achieved in my creative career. She had asked for an update on it at regular intervals over the past year or so, but increasingly I’d felt wary she was checking up on me to make sure I hadn’t achieved it.

So I was a bit nervous to tell her my news in case my fears were confirmed. As half- expected, she wasn’t happy for me but I was shocked at how obvious she was. She just abruptly stopped replying to me mid conversation and I could see the WhatsApp blue tick showing that she’d read it.

She eventually messaged me in June and about something else (the BLM movement going on at the time!) . And kind of tagged on at the end “oh yeah hope [lifelong dream opportunity] is going ok.”

Ugh, such casual disrespect and downplaying of what I’d achieved. No mention of “congrats” or “I’m happy for you” or “sorry I took 3 months to reply!!” I completely ignored that text and then the one after that she sent a few weeks later. I didn’t hear from her again and haven’t reached out. She must’ve got the message because I’m someone who is usually very good at replying to texts.

I think in both instances my now former friends know why I stopped talking to them. IMO there was nothing to discuss in either situation as they had both showed me what they thought of me really. I can’t talk them into valuing or caring about me more 🤷‍♀️

I had a friend for a good fifteen years we were really close. The last few years I started to struggle with her some of her views around immigration (this was more than ten years ago) I disagreed with and she made some homophobic comments. At first I told my self I misunderstood but it became clear I hadn't. She was also massively unsupportive when my son was born with additional needs . It came to a crux when our dds fell out and she got in the middle of it. I had invited her to my wedding, by that point we were down to occasional texts but she came to the wedding and then we never spoke again. (It seemed to be mutual on both sides)

I have only once. The friend was quite difficult and demanding anyway and seemed to delight in putting me down. I kept passing this off as her 'humour'. But then we would arrange to meet up at the pub say and she would invite other people I were not expecting and then sort of 'show off' to them by putting me down and making fun of me. Once she suggested we meet at 1 pm and i got there just before 1 and she was there with others, they had already ordered and got their food and were eating and she started berating me for 'always being late'. I checked the texts she had sent and it was definitely 1 so a set up.

There was a final straw moment (although the above was almost the final straw) but it's too outing as i was talking about it this week to some friends who I know are on MN. But another incident happened and I just stood up, walked out and never spoke to her again. Nor did she ever try and contact me.

The 'friendship' was over a period of only about 2 years but I'm amazed i lasted that long tbh.

Having been a friend who was ghosted

Many years ago now by my best friend completely out of the blue. To this day I have no idea why- it still hurts, there was no sign- please don't do this, honesty and communication gives closure

I have. This “friend” used me. Took money, never paid her way, left me on nights out if she pulled a bloke for sex, had abortions as a form of contraception. When I needed support she was never around but I dropped everything for her when she needed me (for money or childcare).
I had a life changing experience which left me disabled and she kept moaning because I couldn’t continue what I was doing for her. I ended up just stopping contact which was hard as we went to school together and I loved her kids but realised I couldn’t continue this way.
its been several years now but no regrets.

No but I had it the other way around where a friend 'dumped' me.

She'd been behaving strangely for a while such as out of the blue saying she was splitting up with her husband saying he was abusive when she'd never mentioned it before. Her description of 'abuse' seemed really minor to me. But then she still expected him to behave like a husband like asking him around to do jobs in the house for her, deciding about where he should live and expected to be fully financially supported by him.

Then she started talking about cutting her parents off as she was sick of their attitude towards her.

Then she cut a friend of 30 years off over something really minor, like they didn't phone back on the day they said they would.

Then all of a sudden cut me off. I tried to reach out as I was concerned about this behaviour but got grey rocked.

She'd been having counselling and it seemed to me like this counselling had given her some very strange ideas.

To be honest though I wasn't upset about being cut off as she always wanted more from me than what I could give. It was a relief to be free from the friendship.

However it does concern me that she's cut out all the people closest to her and I occasionally wonder how she's getting on and if she has some kind of illness as the behaviour was a little bit bizarre.

But then she'd always had some strange ideas. My other half used to refer to her as 'Mad Susan'rather than just calling her Susan.

Yes, I have, once. For reasons I think everyone here would agree with. It was definitely to do with them. I made a decision to delete them from all contact lists and social media.

Five years later I have no regrets. I did consider whether I should talk to them first but they were a bit of a negative snarky person anyway, so I decided not to. If it bothered them, they could contact me, though it wouldn't take a genius to work out why I'd done it. At this point if they contacted me, I don't think I'd be interested at all.

I heard from a mutual connection that they had noticed and posted a rather woe is me post on social media about it.

Yes, friends since school and very close. I had my 30th, hen do and wedding in the same year and she sat with a face on her at all times like she wanted to ruin them (she was happy between these events and had nothing bad going on - we were very close and shared everything so I would have know if there was). After my wedding day she spent the next year planning her own wedding and would repeatedly list everything she hated about my wedding day. She then ignored my birthday and went to a bar in the next street to my house with other friends that day and didn’t invite me. I realised at this point she couldn’t be happy for me and she was very childish and competitive. I was due to be her bridesmaid and I text her a couple of months before the wedding and told her we’d drifted apart and I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to attend the wedding and that was the end of our friendship! I would never ghost someone

I did.

My mum had been rushed into hospital and was very seriously ill. Messaged a friend saying that and she never replied despite being online (and posting in a shared Discord). Not even an emoji.

We haven't spoken since.

I ghosted a friend who did the same hobby with me over blatantly racist comments. Really ugly language. No regrets.

Yes. Someone I met at baby group who was very intense and turned out to be pretty insufferable.

She had 2 children but still relied on everyone else for everything like a teenager. Didn’t work or drive so always asking for lifts or some sort of favour.

It’s hard to describe; but she made her problems other people’s to fix and took no responsibility for herself or her choices.

The final straw for me was when she didn’t see a problem in me doing a forty minute trip to collect her and her children so they could come to my son’s birthday party. I was unreasonable for not having the time to drop everything on the day to make sure she could get there.

Unhealthy boundries.
Over invested.

She must have very little friends if she goes on like that. A 3 month friend break, what the actual fuck.

Yes, I have.

I was planning my suicide at the time. Too much had happened for me to be able to cope. I cut myself off from as many people as possible. Sounds dramatic but it was easier to isolate myself.

A few years later and I'm still here but, as I still have periods where I don't think I can carry on, I won't reach out to anyone. It's too depressing to talk about and I lost the ability to pretend I'm happy for long. I can't maintain a friendship, every ounce of energy goes on surviving the day.

I would agree with a PP who said it's often not about the person who is ghosted, it's much more likely to be about the person who disappears.

@Frances0911 insta tells you when someone views your story, or occasionally she'd 'like' an fb photo or thumbs up a group chat message. But she would just never reply to my DMs or texts. Wish I knew why! Maybe she fundamentally disagreed with divorce in principle or something.

How did you know she was looking at your social media posts?

I have done the alow fade thing. Friends for 20 years. Every single conversation we ever had was her talking at me. I ended up feeling very stressed snd resentful every time I saw her. Final.straw was me trying to.tell her about a difficult situation I was going through. She clearly wasn't even listening and just carried on talking. I have since cut contact and I don't care. Feel better for writing it down.

I've grown apart from a few old friends in the last couple of years because I got a bit fed up with nearly always being the one to get in touch. One became very flaky as well ( I realise it's possible that I was slow faded myself) Two recently responded to happy birthday messages from me, saying about meeting up, and I replied saying I'd love to, suggesting dates to one and a let me know when you're free to the other. Neither responded and so I've just let it go. If any of them contacted me I'd be happy to chat, so I haven't ghosted them. I know I could contact them if I felt like it ( actually it's often after I read a thread like this on here that I do) but I have a busy and full enough life with people who do make equal effort.

I did have a falling out with one friend years ago, but it wasn't a ghosting from either side. We agreed to disagree and went our separate ways.
I wouldn't have a problem bumping into any of them and having a chat, and we'd probably have a bit of a laugh about how time flies.

Not in a deliberate way but sometimes forgot to contact them or decided I didn't particularly enjoy their company, then didn't see or hear from them again.

As for talking only about oneself....a few years back I was sorting some old photos and came across one of an ex colleague at a work fancy dress party. I sent it to her via WhatsApp and she asked me around. I went after work one day and for two hours she talked entirely about herself and never asked me one single thing about myself, our work place or mutual colleagues. I mean, I have a few friends who go on a bit sometimes, but this was unbelievable.

It happened to me twice I suppose. Once age 17 - my best friend stopped taking my calls (only landlines then, her mum said she was out - she wasn’t as barely went out). I wrote to her and she wrote back with ‘reasons’. She actually got back in touch about 8 years later and we socialised for a bit, but then lost touch again as we had nothing in common.
The worst one was a long-standing uni friend, I never knew why, she just stopped answering texts (no SM in those days but we are FB friends now).
I’ve never ghosted anyone although have lost touch, but that’s life. My very good friend has been ghosted or fallen out with countless people. She doesn’t understand why, but I can see why she can be annoying! We had a hiatus during covid times as she went a bit strange but is ok now.

There's a friend I haven't spoken to since she confirmed that the rumour I'd heard (that she'd been shagging the Husband of someone she knew) was true.

I haven't got respect for someone that can have coffee with a Woman on Tuesday and then shag that Woman's Husband on Wednesday.

In not friends with people I don't respect 🤷🏻‍♀️