To feel hurt when a friend suddenly cuts off communication without explanation?

I stopped seeing a friend once (had been friends for about 7 or 8 years) because I suddenly realised there were loads of things I didn't like about her and that she irritated me hugely. There's no way I could have sat her down and told her all this so I just left it. I assume she was ok with it. There were a few attempts at meetups but I jdidn't put any effort in and took her off Facebook. Then all went quiet. I can say hello quite cheerily when we bump into each other on the street now, I just didn't want to be her close friend any more.

I don't understand your point. Why are you saying sorry? Do you think my choice to quietly distance myself encapsulates everything that's wrong with society? You need to spell it out to me 😅

Yes really hurtful. I was close to my cousin same thing as op. Last text was hope you well too (from her) xx no info. I def feel op people pure flaky now. My dd went drinks last night for friend going abroad. Loads pulled out at last minute. Lousy

She has a reason for doing what she's done🤷‍♀️
If you are positive that you haven't done or said anything to upset her, then it's about her, not you, if that helps.

On the other hand, some people have no self awareness and don't listen or 'hear' no matter how much someone might try and raise concerns or issues. Those people will never understand why someone might withdraw.

This happened to me a couple of years ago too. Randomly cut me off and blocked me on SM. I rarely even use SM so didn't realise until a while later. I thought her interactions went cold but didn't know if I was just being paranoid, but seeing I had been blocked confirmed it. I was definitely upset for a while, as it's a horrible thing to do to a close friend. I had always been a good friend to her and was a listening ear as she was going through some problems with her DH not long before she blocked me. (I am married to one of her family members, so I'm not sure if she thought she spilled too much tea on her circumstance, and it may get around the family if I told my Dh?) But we had been close for years, so I'm sure she wouldn't have told me if she didn't think she could trust me, as likewise I had also confided in her. I could be wrong and i have unintentionally upset her, but it's really cold to not just be able to tell someone what they've done to upset you and just brutally cut them off.

Some people can only live in the present and feel alive when dumping the dead wood, sort of like clearing out the junk in your room that you once needed but now don't anymore and it drags you down. But it seems we are rubbish at breaking off a friendship in an 'uncoupling' sort of way, maybe some also enjoy the sense of leaving someone dangling, the feeling of control - leaving someone wanting more. Some like to leave debts in this fashion perhaps, they depart feeling that someone still wants something from them.

It can be argued that if people don't have a reason to be friends any more - as in a shared project, then why bother? As a teenager one always has a reason - a sort of shared resentment of authority and also trying to figure out the world. As you get older, that is no longer there.

I suppose a way to deal with it is to decide you will also end the relationship - go through the process of doing that via some kind of ritual, to avoid the feeling that you are dangling.

Sometimes it’s not one specific thing that makes someone ghost another person but a build up of someone continually overstepping and not respecting boundaries, being all take take take and you know having a conversation with them about it is pointless because they will just DARVO the hell out of you and by that time you won’t even care anyway so ghosting can be easier than that. Death by a thousand paper cuts.

Do you pick wax out of your ears and flick it? Pick scabs out of your hair and drop them on her carpet?

Happening to me now OP. Friendship of 20 years. It's very hurtful.

I’ve ghosted a friend after she told me she was having a long standing affair. She’s also extremely draining and negative as a person. I couldn’t deal with her any more or give her any more of my time.
I know that if I gave her the reasons why I stopped, she would twist it and add it to her story of being one of life’s victims. In fact she probably has created something like that already! The fact that she’s never asked why I don’t contact her any more speaks volumes.

Yes but sometimes that reason is about themselves not the other person.

People don’t cut other people off for no reason. There will be a reason, are you sure you can’t think of a single thing?

Yes, true ghosting, which looks like it is in your case is hurtful, however there will be a reason why this has happened and you are not necessarily the main character in that reason.

You need to accept that for whatever reason, your ex friend has decided that communicating this, is either not worth their while, or that they consider it more hurtful to you or embarrassing for them than staying silent. The decision to cut off the friendship has already been made by them because friendship is 2 sided.

I've had this done to me countless times over the years. In my case it's when I stop being useful to someone.

@TerracottaWorrier has this been going on a long time? I’m just asking because people seem really quick to ghost and so on. Sometimes people frame your experience in terms of themselves as they think they are being empathetic.

you could say the thread is full of examples.

Sorry but to me, everything about your post sums up the current trends that are going on, especially your last line.

@Silentfriend really sorry this is happening to you. I’ve had it happen and from what I can tell, it’s happening more and could be rooted in a bunch of stuff that might have nothing to do with you. Even if it is you, it’s unlikely you’ll get an explanation. So frustrating, I know. Especially when you’re ready to work on stuff.

I'm ghosting a friend at the moment pretty much. She's obsessed with herself. Anything that happens to me is only filtered through how it's the same or different to something that happened to her. Either she had an experience just as bad, worse, or in which she dealt with it better than I am.

I've spent hours being emotional support for her. I'm not doing it any more. I get nothing in return but it's not my place to let her know she's narcissistic.

It happens much more regularly than you think, OP. So many posts on here regarding it. I would move on – you don't need people in your life who think it's acceptable to ghost – it's cruel and immature. There are only very rare examples were it may be acceptable for ghost and it's unlikely to be one of those.

Like some PPs above done this to someone who I knew would react dramatically, sensationally, and unjustly to any explanation I gave (these tendencies were also why I needed to stop the friendship).

I knew she’d also react badly to sudden ceasing of comms but it was the lesser of two problems.

I have ghosted a close friend of 30 years after she once again threw herself into a relationship with a new man, putting aside me and others who supported her during a toxic marriage.

This time she picked a right-winger. I'm done.

I had to do this with two people. They both had poor self esteem (one in particular hides this with bravado) and were in hindsight jealous of me, this manifested in so many mean, rude, judgemental comments I got to the point where I just couldn't deal with it anymore.

I saw one of those Instagram reels with Oprah and Michelle Obama recently who were talking about the toxicity of jealousy and how it destroys friendships. This is exactly my experience.

No communication is communication and sadly, closure from someone else isn't something anyone's entitled to.

It's not easy to accept, I know.

Do you have any mutual friends who might be able to explain it to you, or to explain to her that you won’t contact her again if she doesn’t want you to but you just need to know why?

@Silentfriend
I obviously can't know what your circumstances are but as others have said, sometimes the reasons for the change in the friendship are based on a very wide range of characteristics of both friends, rather than one simple action. So no fallout.

I have stopped contacting and putting in the effort with 2 friends over the years. Neither of them had done anything wrong, but friendships evolve and sometimes a person's way of being, their priorities in life become clearer as they grow and you see that not only do they not align with your own, they also make you feel worse about yourself, even if that was never intentional.

I could never tell my friend for instance, that the way she is, both simultaneously irritates me and creates insecurities in me. It's not a small aspect of her character, but a fundamental part of it.

Even though I know that she is a loving person the way she is means that even when we do speak I will feel down and drained afterwards without her having said or done anything awful. I can't tell her that even listening to her every day life and the way she tells me leaves me stressed out.

I suppose the most important part is that she actually is a good person, but I can't be friends with her without feeling bad about myself, and she can't be friends with me because she decides to fill her life so very much with work and children's activities that she has no free time for a spontaneous chat.
We are not compatible, so aren't really friends anymore even though I still think she's a good person.

I have a friend who sends around an annual Christmas letter which basically is all about how perfect everything in her life is, how perfect her children are, how well they are doing. I've been through an extended sickness and hard time with one of my children and couldn't deal with it. I was pleased she was doing so well but I didn't need to hear it all the time. I also distanced myself from Christian friends who liked to regularly post about how great God was at the time, as I struggled with a God that would allow a child to suffer the way mine was, and those friends had never had anything comparable to go through. Sometimes it's hard to deal with perfection posting. However, you may be like me and only ever post positive stuff rather than about challenges.

I did this to someone who'd been a friend and a flat mate. As we grew she just stayed the same and I realised that we just didn't mesh anymore.

Over the few years I'd known her I realised that she never had anything to add to a conversation, she always just said 'yeah I agree'.

She never initiated any social activities, she just waited to be invited to things. She also never reached out to mutual friends, but would complain that others didn't message her.

What initially seemed as her being 'fun' on a night out due to being OTT after a few drinks became tiresome and embarrassing.

She was a horrendous flat mate, she didn't 'see' mess, and made a hell of a lot of it.

But to top it off, talking to her about anything resulted in her losing her shit and screaming at me. I once recorded an 8 minute rant she subjected me to because she fell asleep on the sofa and I went to bed and she'd woken up to the lights being all off (she was sleeping so I turned them off?).

I eventually moved out and ghosted her, and have no regrets. She simply could not see that she was doing anything wrong, and would probably write a similar post to you.