Would you have hung up on me

Yes, and I’m beginning to see what that might be!
You really need to let this go, but most of all, it’s clear you need help yourself. You need to see your GP, explain this to him/her and perhaps you will be referred for psychiatric help. Coming on here is no help to you at all. We can’t help you!

I remember your previous numerous threads about this woman. I’m sorry but you were too demanding and she told you this.

Many people across numerous threads have gently tried to tell you to leave this woman alone. She’s married with children. She’s obviously decided you are too intense and she can’t cope with it anymore.

Please try and work on yourself and try building new friendships locally. This woman doesn’t even live in the same country as you now. You seem obsessed with her and it’s not healthy.

What exactly is your question?

???

I'm sure she did care at the time. Don't beat yourself up. People change. Just because she has changed doesn't mean she didn't care about you in the past. Friendships don't always last forever. Remember your time with her fondly and move on

I think the OP is old enough to have children at university, so not that young...

I think withholding the number probably angered her. It is a bit divisive. The thing is you already knew she wouldn’t answer if she saw it was you calling, so purposely withholding your number could easily be construed as tricking her into talking to you. After all she only answered the call because she didn’t know it was you, so you sort of removed her choice of whether she wanted to talk to you by doing that. It’s painful being ghosted and not knowing why. Some of us have been the ghoster and some the ghostee ourselves and not having closure can make it hard to let go but when the signals are all loud and clear we have to try to let go. I would say that if things had already broken down the way they had, then to call out of the blue because you felt unwell would be enough of a stretch, but to actually withhold the number and effectively force her to talk to you is taking it a little too far.

Hi, I don't know your age but guess you're pretty young. I've been there, I'm 50 now and me and all my friends have had at least one experience like this-ok maybe not as brutal - but maybe she is being brutal as you are not getting the message.

What I've learned over the years is that friendships change over time and they end. Often the 'ender' doesn't tell the 'endee' WHY they want to end the friendship, like you might do in a BF/GF scenario. It just fizzles out and there are no answers.

You are not going to get answers here, she has made her position clear. You really need to accept this and move on. Your behaviour is verging on harassment - maybe she felt you were too needy and clingy in the first place Idk. Please chalk it up to experience and don't contact her again

You withheld her number because you know she doesn’t want to talk to you. The line crossing is glaring and you know it. What on earth did you think would happen??

A friend once pulled away without a reason. One day we were planning her birthday bash, next day when I texted to confirm the plans she just left me on read for months. It's not great, I still don't know what happend but what I don't do is agonise over it. If anything I was mildly pissed off and disengaged. If someone isn't adult enough to articulate what happend, then I don't need them as a friend or even an acquaintance.
I certainly would never call her when I'm sick of lonely.

I've never ghosted/blocked anyone, but yes I would feel tricked if I had done so and they called me and withheld their number - dependig on what had happened I may or may not have heard them out.
You could try writing a letter- I did this to my old school best friend when she stopped talking to me as in those days it was phone or letter (and her mum kept on saying she was busy), but we were teenagers! I got a not very nice letter back but at least I knew what had happened etc. About 8 years later she got back in contact and we resumed a friendship for a couple of years, although in the end I let it slide because we just didn't have much in common anymore.
I was propely ghosted by a long-term close friend in my early 30s and I never found out why. At the time I did try to phone/text and was genuinely worried that something had happened to her (we didn't have mutuals although we both knew each others' friends we wouldn't have contacted them directly). It's the only friendship where I genuinely don't know what I did wrong. It was very frustrating at the time but I just had to let it go. Thankfully I did, and still do, have some great friends, but if she had been my only one it would've been even more gutting.

Crikey, I feel exhausted just reading that and apparently there’s even more before that one.

I don’t know your background OP but it sounds like, for whatever reasons, your emotional maturity stalled somewhere. If readers on here feel irritated just reading your pa responses, I can only imagine how draining it must have been for your former friend. That’s not to be unkind but to try to make you aware that an emotionally mature person would struggle to maintain this type of dynamic.

Why should she have explained?

It likely didn't come out of nowhere & Op knows why the friend asked for space.

Unfortunately Op couldn't/wouldn't do that.

Op, at the very least she could have explained, it says more about her than you. I’d let her go, yes, because it’s a shabby way to treat a friend - just to ghost them.

LEAVE
HER
ALONE

OP you should read your previous threads including the one in the post at 14:19. You know why you’re blocked and what triggered being blocked. You didn’t take her gentler hints not to contact her any more but you did anyway and called her mean for doing it.

Yanbu to miss her but you need to accept that it’s over. You can’t fix it and she doesn’t have any interest in hearing why you sent the text. The people in previous threads told you to leave her alone but you’ve caused yourself more pain by not taking that advice.

Her rejection of you doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. It just means that you’ve grown apart and aren’t compatible as friends anymore.

This is generalising.

She blocked you on all platforms. You ringing her from a witheld number was a breach of her clear boundary.

"should have kept my big gob shut at all times"

We definitely haven't said this.

"Say nothing. Accept everything. Question nothing."

And we also didn't say this. Of course you should communicate about difficulties, misunderstandings and feelings with your friends. Just do it in an appropriate manner, with people who are actually your friends. Somebody who has blocked you is no longer your friend.

"Respect boundaries"

Yes, you should do this all the time with everybody. We all should.

Dawn right I would. Withholding your number on purpose to ring her is extremely manipulative and almost sinister.

For this woman's sake and actually your own OP, please delete her number.

OP you need to do some work to reset what your expectations are around friendship and the way you behave in friendships.

Friendship has to enhance your life or there's no point to it. There's no "right and wrong" about this: it's not a contract, it's a feeling: its irrational and can't be explained.

You can't build a friendship on obligation or pity. Friendships are entered into by choice and if both parties aren't actively choosing, there's no friendship. No one remains friends with someone because they feel sorry for them or because they feel guilty or because the other person "did nothing wrong". And people can choose to end a friendship (or a romantic relationship) for any reason they like with our without explanation. You aren't owed anything.

You seem to be viewing this from the lens that there is some obligation to you: to be your friend, to respond to your text messages or calls and to "explain". It doesn't work like that, there probably is nothing to explain, it just wasn't working for her, and the more you push for "answers" the more you will push someone away.

Your tone is very martyred and self-pitying and at a guess I would say that's what pushed your friend away. If you can learn to reframe the narrative you can learn to build healthy friendships. But you're going to need therapy or counselling because what you're describing here isn't friendship.

You can really like someone but also recognise that the friend cannot change their behaviour and that it has a negative impact on you. I wonder if she knew there was no point in trying to work this out with you, so just went down the best route for her which was blocking you. It doesn't devalue the friendship you had or you as a person, but maybe does suggest there are things you could work on for future friendships.
I would find your actions harassment and would be now finding it stressful every time my phone rings.

Agree with PP, it depends why the friendship broke down.

I disagree. The fact is that it DID break down and OP’s former friend decided she didn’t want to hear from her again. I’m not passing any judgement on the OP’s behaviour, as I don’t know enough about it to do so. But regardless of who was right or wrong, or to what degree, the decision has been made.

OP - I don’t say this to be cruel. In fact I say it as someone who once tried the same thing. Looking back now I feel embarrassed and wish I’d been able to accept it, but at the time I thought exactly the same as you; that if I could just have a couple of minutes we could start talking and sort everything out. But ultimately you just can’t force these things. You can, however, stop punishing yourself.

I have had occasion to block people on my phone before now for various private reasons. If someone has blocked you it’s pretty obvious. If someone I had blocked then tried to ring me from a withheld number I would be furious.

You need to let this go. Erase her number and email from your phone and unfollow her on social media. Otherwise you’re going to do it again. Leave her in peace, move on, it will get easier with time and distance.

As someone who was on the other side of this (cutting ties after a very long friendship) I can assure you that whilst it may have been completely out the blue for you, it won't have been for her.

Yes. As per my previous post I’d had about 15 years of listening to the same problems over and over. Constant texting. Ringing. This person knew nothing about me. I was a free counselling service to an energy vampire. It left me drained but mainly it left me fucking angry that I had allowed it to happen. She had apparently done it to others in the past and they’d one by one disappeared from her life. People like to be asked about themselves, two-way conversations, space, boundaries to be respected.