To ask: have you ever had someone just stop speaking to you for no reason?

Yes I think that's basically what "ghosting" is and it's probably not for no reason, not that this makes it okay. A good friend stopped talking to me after we had been best friends for years.

I did it to someone because she started dealing cocaine and went strange - I am far too old for that shit and would never want that kind of crap in my life thanks. I didn't feel guilty at all and it's been years now.

Yes, a few times.

One because she didn’t think I was grateful enough for my hen. It wasn’t what I wanted but I definitely said thank you. I didn’t want the traditional boozy affair because I was 6 months postpartum and not drinking due to BF but that’s what I got! I played along as far as possible but she was so furious that I wanted to leave by 11 that she just stopped speaking to me about 6 months later.

Another who stopped speaking to me after she started dating (now married to) a friend of mine from work. I think that may have been more him, though. He’d been a bit of a lad and I think he didn’t want me telling her about some of his antics!

I also lost a lot of couple friends post-divorce for no real reason other than the fact I was then single, but apparently that’s common.

Yes. Very good friend of mine, we would chat almost daily on messenger and meet up etc. She just disappeared. Deleted her Facebook, stopped answering texts - literally disappeared. I sent her a birthday card through the post - no response.

It was so weird and sudden I actually started thinking something might have happened to her! A few months of silence and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened so I messaged her daughter. The daughter replied saying everything was fine. That was it. No idea why, there was no fall out, in fact days before she disappeared we’d had a lovely day drinking coffee in the sunshine laughing and joking. I’ll never understand it. It’s been 4 years now, never heard from her again.

No. Not on the receiving end.
I have done it, sadly, I do feel awful, however the visceral reaction I felt around them wasn't good for a long-time.
It is my problem that I clamped down contact.

Yes,.my best friend since university. She was engaged to a lovely guy, but was cheating on him with our boss's son. She used me for cover and I told her I wasn't comfortable with that. I then advised her to postpone the wedding if she wasn't sure about committing. She promised to stop cheating. I was her bridesmaid but told her I couldn't stand next to her if she lied in her vows. She promised she'd stopped. Then during the wedding reception she called and spoke to the boss's son and arranged to meet up with him.
I left the wedding and never spoke to her again. She didn't try and speak to me so I guess she realised why.

Yes, a very long term, close friend. We lived in different towns. I am godmother to her three DC’s, and she is to mine. Bridesmaids to each other.

Met up/stayed every school holiday.

Then nothing.

I have absolutely no idea what happened?

I tried to contact her, nothing. A few years later she joined FB and I tried again. I am in touch with my god DC’s ( her DC”s) but she isn't with my DC’s.

I've had recent bereavement which her DC’s are aware of, again nothing.

There isn't anything I can do. I can't apologise as I don't know why I would be apologising.

No contact now for 10 years.

I had two very good mum friends that I met as all our children were at the same pre-school for 2 years. We all met a lot with the kids after school and at weekends, and all went to each others houses and even went out for drinks in the evening. Fast forward primary school enrolment time and my DD didn’t get into the school attached to the pre-school (we were out of catchment) and from then on they avoided me and avoided all contact. I saw them at the library one day with their kids and I had my daughter with me and they chatted to me like nothing was wrong but left the library as soon as they could. It was sad more for my daughter who asked why their children didn’t play with her any more. One positive is that one of their kids was a total nightmare and pushed my daughter a lot and hit her a few times on play dates and the mum never did anything - so at least we didn’t have to cope with that situation any more.

I’ve been the guilty ghoster once.

It was a friend I had been very close to at school and we were in loose touch after, seeing each other very occasionally. She was a Christian and I’m an atheist but that never bothered either of us.

She is intelligent and has had advantages in life in terms of family, background and education, as have I. I know it sounds a small thing but she shared a report on Facebook about a child of 15 having a hand or hands chopped off for theft (obviously abhorrent) in somewhere like Saudi Arabia, this must be around 2008, and she added the comment that “this is what Muslims do to children”. I just couldn’t think of a way to make it alright and didn’t want a row about it so I just dropped contact. It wasn’t as if we met up regularly.

I hope she is well and happy and I don’t wish her ill but she’s not dim or sheltered enough for me to find excuses for her and I just found it and would still find it immediately alienating.

I’m not usually so reactive, I have acquaintances who occasionally share those posts that crop up around Remembrance Sunday about Our Heroes living on the streets while immigrants get given houses and driving lessons 🙄 and I haven’t ghosted them. I suppose we all draw the line at different points.

Yes, unfortunately, someone who I've known for decades but only met up with a few times a year now due to distance. I chased her for a while and worried something was wrong, but she seems fine on Facebook.

I later heard from mutual friends that she decided to cut off all friends with children (she is child free by choice and has always been vocally anti kids). Apparently says it's boring to listen to anything child related and will be back when they are grown up?!?!!

She hasn't come back yet. I've accepted the friendship has ended but I'm really gutted about it tbh. Even if she did come back in the future I can't see it being the same.

I still don’t agree. It’s fine to have boundaries but communicate it. Communication is so incredibly necessary. I can no longer continue in this relationship because of x y z. I don’t see why that’s so difficult. I find an unwillingness to communicate and ghost unhealthy and toxic

Yes, then she told me why and it was the most ridiculous reason, I apologised straight away for inadvertently upsetting her but she just flipped and wanted me to agree with her narrative that I deliberately set out to insult and belittle her, all her own issues she was projecting on me so I ended the friendship and she had no interest in repairing things.

Or a healthy set of boundaries and unwillingness to put up with toxic behaviour just because it comes from a long term friend or family member

Yes after 15 years of friendship! Just completely ghosted one day. Another of her friends reached out to me as she’d done exactly the same thing to him. We couldn’t figure out why at all. 3 years later and I’m still sad she never got to meet my baby or my partner. I doubt I’ll ever hear from her again. It was very strange but I’m glad it wasn’t just me in a way as I know for sure it was nothing I ‘did’. I think she has done it to others in the past too as there were people she spoke of often then suddenly she stopped talking about them.

Yes! I think it’s cruel. Leaves the one that’s left with so many questions and self doubts. Apparently those that ghost are more likely to be narcissistic or have narcissistic traits

Yes, someone I was quite good pals with. We worked together too. I helped her move, supported her with something tough and work and also provided her somewhere to live for quite a while. I asked her to look after some of my outdoor potted plants when I moved house and she wouldn't answer her front door to me. Then she stopped speaking to me. Baffling.

My DS1s godmother dropped me like a stone after calling me a Tory shill after we decided on a private school with excellent SEN provision for Ds1 at the age of 5 when he was still non-verbal and we had been 'unofficially' rejected from the local primary school, (They could not officially turn us down of course but made it very clear that they could not accommodate his needs which amounted to the same thing. ) She said our values clearly did not align.

So i considered it 'no reason'. She considered it a reason. I won't go on to explain the very elaborate shenanigans she then undertook to get her own NT child into her preferred school. Yes -it seemed that ultimately our values did not align.

She recently tried to make contact again - 10 years later- as her gifted and talented DD is about to enter into Year 9 and she wanted advice on our private school because her DD's needs are no longer being met. Not interested love. Figure it out for yourself quite frankly.

Not for no reason, no.

Someone I thought was a good friend, to the point I pet-sat during her honeymoon with very little thanks. After I split with my then fiance, everything seemed fine until one night at a pubquiz she suddenly went cold on me. We had joint friends, who would meet for a game every week, until suddenly all our joint friends dropped me too as she had made them choose between me or her and her husband - her husband was the one they wanted to be friends with so I lost them all. I saw her husband in HMV once, and he said she was distancing herself as she felt I had too many issues and she didnt want to help fix them.

Years later I met one of the joint friends in a nightclub, who told me the real reason this had all happened. Another joint friend had made a pass at me, but I wasnt interested and made a joke about it in front of her at the pub quiz. This was the start of it because she was so upset as she was having an affair with him until she got married, and he had stopped then as he didnt want to come between her and her husband and she was upset as he was free to hook up with someone else but I had turned him down and then joked about it.

Yes, I have been ghosted. She was my bridesmaid at my wedding. I suspect I held her in higher regard than she did of me. We remained friends from uni until DC1 turned 4yo. Then she just didn't respond to any text messages after that. 14 years ago. I do still wonder what happened as I had not said or done anything wrong AFAIK. A mutual friend at the time said she didn't know why either and to just move on. Very strange.

The last thing she did say though was that her mum had had a scare with breast cancer so perhaps she felt I wasn't really on board with it all as I was busy with two small DC at the time she ghosted me. Who knows. DH never liked her.
Edited due to typo.

It's entirely possible my childhood friend currently thinks about this me, but the truth is I'm not well and simply don't have the capacity to be sociable or travel on my own. She lives the other side of the country and because we have to meet in the middle and my husband has to be with me it's a cross between I can't be bothered and I don't want to bother her.

Me too. I’d come home feeling drained from spending time with her. She’d make little comments that by themselves meant nothing but collectively made me feel like shit. She’s very manipulative. I didn’t straight up ghost her, but I made no effort in the relationship.

I had a friend, she was my son’s god mother. There were loads of people in her life she’d fallen out with, sisters , mum and a couple of other friends. She’d stayed with us at Christmas and I was happy she’d accepted my offer as god mother. Yes there were times that I’d kept my mouth shut when she was difficult but she was quite lonely as she had fallen out with family and friends.
She moved away but we kept in contact and she invited us to stay for a couple of days around my son’s 7 th birthday. We had ( or maybe I thought we’d had) a lovely time and I’d sent her a bouquet of flowers to say thank you for having us. I’d also treated her to dinner on my son’s bday at the restaurant we’d gone to and I’d stripped the bed before we left.
I didn’t hear from her after the flowers had been delivered so I checked they’d been received with the company. A month later I posted her bday present to her .
A week after that I received a letter from her. I assumed before opening it that it was to thank me for her present but no, she’d written to say she no longer wanted to be in contact with us. I did reply to say I didn’t understand why she had done this and what had we done to upset her as she had given no reason at all and what did she want me to tell my son about his godmother no longer wanting contact. She never replied and that was the last time I ever heard from her. My son is mid 30’s now. I have never fallen out with anyone else and have friends going back 50 years.

When I was at uni a very close friend dropped me like stone ver suddenly for no (to me) apparent reason.

Years later I found out that it was because I spoke about people all the time. I admit this was the case but I did it because my mother did so I thought that was acceptable.

I would agree with others that have said there will always be a reason, even if it is one you are not aware of.
I’ve had it done to me several times, on some occasions I think know why, but obviously haven’t had it confirmed.

I have also done it to someone - actually very recently. We were work friends and started meeting up for coffee after we both left the role. We were friendly but not massively close. The last time we met up I was talking about an experience I had that was very emotionally painful for me. She laughed. It instantly changed how I saw her and my interest in continuing a friendship. I didn’t confront her or explain - I just mentioned casually that I needed to leave as I was running late for something and then stopped replying to her messages. I’m sure she hasn’t the faintest idea why. I was too hurt and didn’t want to waste energy explaining how I felt to her.