Think I've blown it with friend

I’m sorry you’ve gone through this @spanieleyes22 but you’ve had 3 threads about this situation, all villainising your friend when you didn’t get your own way.

You seem to have a pattern of obsessing about things, building yourself into an anxious knot, catastrophising and making things worse which then leads you to be defensive and huffy and a bit poor me.

I’m not saying any of that to be awful as I used to behave this way myself and it was a symptom of an unmanaged anxiety disorder and undiagnosed ADHD. I was completely unable to regulate my emotions when it came to rejection and would pick at people and situations to try to gain control back. It never worked.

And it’s only since I have been on the other side of it from a friend with the same issues that I realise how exhausting it is to be the object of someone’s else’s anxiety. I am mortified for the way I behaved in the past and how I made bad guys of people I had exhausted with my own issues to the point they had no choice but to cut me off.

All of your threads are about you being the victim in a crisis caused by someone else’s actions when the likelihood of that is slim. Some yes. All? Probably not.

You have to learn that people are not obliged to respond to us in the way we need them to to feel safe.
You have to learn to stop taking things on this deeply to the point of losing sleep for days.

I manage mine through therapy and now habit. If I feel the need to pick at anything or anyone to make myself feel better that’s my sign to walk away and get control of my feelings myself rather than trying to force someone else to. Beating myself up and being poor me I am a horrible person isn’t the answer either.

Life isn’t fair. Sometimes people are shits. Not everyone we want wants us. Sometimes we fuck up. Sometimes other people do. That’s life.

OP you are beating yourself up for being annoyed at her for not getting back to you, and expressing it rather than keeping it to yourself. You seem to think this has caused the demise of the friendship. I have to say I think she's bloody rude not to respond to you and it's a sign the friendship was already on the rocks.

I had a friend who stopped responding to texts recently, I sent a few friendly ones and eventually I thought I'd be honest and said something a bit similar to how you responded. Difference is, she immediately apologised and said she'd been 'a bit in her own head' and was so sorry and wanted to stay friends and could we meet for coffee next week. I had been prepared to walk away had she not have said this, but thought fair dos she has indicated she values the friendship and so we are back friends again now (and she is much better at replying)

Sorry to say but it sounds to me like for whatever reason your friend no longer valued the friendship as she had once done, or it would not have ended up like it has done. So please don't blame yourself, what you did (in responding to her as you did) was a symptom not a cause.

Don’t message her now and don’t show her you need her in your life. They feed off it

It would have been better had she been open and honest like that, yes, and saved you a lot of upset and heartache.

But the reality is that in this country we aren’t great at being direct with people. Culturally the Americans, Spanish, others are better. So, so many posts on MN by people who can’t communicate the truth, saying ‘I hate confrontation’, when it isn’t confrontation just honest (if difficult ) communication.

And in this case I think you have been a victim of that.

I hope things work out well for you.

I understand. Some people are so afraid of confrontation they think they are being kinder by not being upfront but it just makes things worse in the long run. I have had these experiences of being close with someone and it suddenly either dropping or blowing up, and I found the best thing to do in those circumstances was just to focus on myself, be kind to myself, and just try to do the best to feel ok and not think about the other person too much. Work on my emotional independence and see if there are any signs I could have seen for next time - without being too hard on myself.

I often find people will bond with me over being treated a certain way by other people in their life and then go on to treat me the same way - like your friend with 'silent treatment'. I guess most people are hypocrites though they probably don't intend to be, when they find themselves in that position suddenly it becomes much harder to do the 'right thing' when it actually comes to it.

I wish you all the best in getting through this and I hope you are able to work things out with her and have better communication

But during Covid she wouldn’t have had other RL contact with other friends. everyone was communicating by Zoom and digital means. Lots of people really wanted to focus on face to face after that.

The thing is… moving countries changed things.

You are more fragile than she is because you have yet to settle and develop new meaningful friends and so are depending on someone many miles away who, presumably, you now see rarely in RL?

Meanwhile, despite her longstanding friendship with you, she probably has grown old friendships and found new friends to fill her everyday life.

Friendship can still be strong without daily swapping of minutiae . I have friends that I have known since NCT days, we message occasionally, visit each other from opposite ends of the UK, and pick up where we left off.

But I would feel exhausted and obligated if I felt needed for daily messages with people, almost any people! Constantly being on my phone, constantly pinged, the expectation that WhatsApp gives and demands instant replies…. It’s exhausting. But you simply don’t believe her reply.

I am sorry you are struggling atm. Who knows what might be going on with her, but honestly I think it is unrealistic to move away and expect friendships to maintain the same dynamic.

Which doesn’t have to mean you aren’t still friends.

Apologies OP: I posted that having somehow missed your last update. You do sound stronger… and the likelihood is that she also feels better having been honest. You can reflect (and I think my post here is relevantly) and who knows: maybe your friendship can reset with a different dynamic.

I used to be a little like the OP in that I was over dependent and a bit needy of old friends. Since the pandemic I've both lost and made friends and some of those old friends are no longer in my life which felt devastating at the time but now I'm fine with, they became like a pair of shoes which no longer fitted me.

What I have done is to expand my social network so I'm now a member of a local womens' group, this is open to everyone the only requirement is living (fairly) locally although even that is not a biggie if people from out of town want to travel! It means I don't put all my eggs in one basket friendship speaking and I have a number of casual aquaintanceships to do things with which suits me fine. I also have some older/closer friends but I'm not so dependent on them for my social life which helps with the ole neediness I have to say.

Not really; I've done it and friends have done it. Particularly when we're having a bad time with our mental health, or feel we want/need to control our technology usage.
It's just saying I'm having a break from my phone, but it's okay to message if you want; but I'll only be checking it once or twice a day for messages so please don't be offended if I don't answer immediately. It also allows people to know to call for emergencies and important stuff.
It can be 2/3 days sometimes before me and my friends reply to each other anyway because we have housework, kids, jobs etc that take precident in our lives, none of us cry our selves to sleep because of it.

I think people are being too harsh on you OP. First they say all kinds of things that misrepresent the reality of the friendship, tell you to self reflect, then you get criticised for being obsessive by looking back through the evidence to see if it's true.

Apparently if you don't agree with the perceptions of people who don't know the friendship and don't know you, and try to correct them, then you are criticised for 'not taking things on board', even if they are not factually accurate.

When you try to show people that this was a close and meaningful friendship with a lot of mutual support (and not as one-sided as other people are suggesting), you are accused of holding debts over the other person or basing the whole friendship on doing everything for her, neither of which seems accurate from what you've said.

It's obvious that this was a close and meaningful friendship, I mean 17 years is a lot, 4 years of contact since moving away, that is a strong friendship. Everything you've said suggests a strong friendship. Not everyone understands that long distance friendships can be close and meaningful. If you were texting every day for years and you both enjoyed that and were fulfilled by it, that is the kind of friendship it was. Just because other people rarely text their friends or don't bother with people who aren't there in person, doesn't mean that everyone is like that or that this is how all friendships should be.

I think anyone would be very upset at a sudden dropping off of contact with no explanation. Ghosting or fading out when you have been close like that is definitely a reason to be upset, cause for concern. I don't think it's a nice away to treat your close friends. People seem to be comparing this to a much more casual friendship, but imagine if someone you spend time with every day and seemed to be a pillar of support in your life suddenly just started avoiding you with no explanation - how would you feel? It does not make a difference that it's long distance, if this is how they sustained things for a long time.

And it seems you were right in your intuition that she was lying about the real reasons. It's good that she has now told you the truth and you can work towards something more sustainable in the future. I know how hard it can be when something like this happens, I hope that you are able to find some other friends so that it is not all so much on one person. I know that this has caused you to spiral emotionally, I hope you are able to get on an even keel soon. I don't normally comment but I felt like you were being very much misunderstood on this thread and I feel like I needed to offer some understanding and support.

I do sympathise because I have had a similar situation where I feel that I have been given the "slow fade" by an old friend. I know that I did something that she thought morally objectionable and she did not want to confront me about it, so she just faded away - stopped emailing/engaging on social media/texting etc - and it hurt like hell. But I decided that confronting her about it was not going to change her mind if she has decided the friendship is over. It will only push her away more. Perhaps in the future she will come around to forgiving me (what I did was wrong and I am not proud of it but life is complicated plus it did not involve her in any way); anyway, I think you might have already burned your bridges by challenging her. Since you live so far away, maybe it is best to make extra efforts to make new friends where you are. Not all friendships are designed to last a lifetime and distance makes it hard to maintain. One thing you might do is make a date for an actual visit with her sometime in the future so that you have that to look forward to, then put it aside and focus on improving your own social life so you are not dependent on her.

Sounds like a shite friendship to me.

It means "I'm not going to be on my phone every night, but you can still text I just might not reply straight away"
It's really not that difficult to understand.

I'm glad you're feeling better.

Life is a learning process and we all fuck up sometimes. No one is perfect.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

That's good to hear. I agree it's the silence that's awful.

Just reading your updates, you don't think your ex giving you the silent treatment and her giving you the silent treatment is connected in any way? Are they in contact at all?

I very much doubt you have offended her, a lot of people find keeping up with WhatsApp and texts quite draining generally. I don't text anyone (apart from family) every day or every couple of days - I would find this too much. It isn't personal. Most friends I would text every couple of weeks on average - a flurry of texts about something and then fade off.

Otherwise if can feel like you are constantly on your phone - replying to people. I totally get why she may want to detox from that.

I totally understand other people are different to this - I know a lot of people who seem to be constantly having WhatsApp conversations. I just couldn't mentally cope with this.

If I was you I would leave it a couple of weeks and then text to say that you were checking in and that you were sorry for your previous message, you were having a difficult time yourself and regretted it. You hope she is well and totally understand but would like to keep in touch as you value her friendship. Then leave it at that.

It's okay to be upset, she was a big part of your life. I'd bear in mind for the future that you need to build up a group of friends, and not become over reliant on one best friend.

Said with love OP but I agree with the poster who is saying that you’re coming across a little self centred. We all are from time to time - especially when we are going through a hard time, but wallowing will not make you feel better. Trust me, I know from experience. You need to find a way to turn your thoughts outwards, rather than inwards

I hear you and don’t judge you. Stop beating yourself up OP. You’re a good friend and deserving of others.