Friend coming down hard on me for lack of communication

Just tell her you're busy when you are busy, but take the time to actually write that, keep it light. Doesn't take long, just a moment or two. I've friends up and down the country and abroad too and we catch up once or twice a week, just to say hi.

But then when you get some downtime, spend a little longer and have a whatsapp chat? Make her feel more connected. She clearly thinks a lot of your friendship and if you value it and her, just try and be a little more what she needs if she's feeling wobbly. That's what friends do isn't it? If you truly feel put out, then perhaps friendship isn't even and it's time to take a step back. Then she won't expect anything anymore.

It takes two seconds to respond to a message . We live in a world where where everyone is busy doing NOTHING

Nah she sounds jealous of you having a life by what you're saying after showing your WhatsApp conversation..you enjoy your life fgs and say to her if she says it again..no need to feel like that I was having few days with such and such why would you be neglected ..I'm replying now when I have time..do not let anyone dictate how your friendship should be..xx

I had a similar situation with a friend of mine who, like you, I had known for ages.

I got married, had kids, divorced, remarried and took on SDCs.

She remained in the same job, with the same semi-attached partner, all this time - as in, no major life changes.

Our pattern of getting together (we lived in different cities and she travelled a lot for work) was one that suited us well to start with, then got difficult, and then very onerous as my life circumstances changed. I kept trying to explain it to her, but she just didn't hear. Or didn't want the arrangement to change (it was one that massively benefitted her) .

In the end, it was her inability to hear what I was telling her, and modifying her behaviour in response, that meant the friendship ended.

If you've been trying to explain to your friend for years that you don't have the bandwidth for this intense style of communication and want it to change, and she is not hearing this.... 😩

As you put it earlier, why should her 'want' trump yours.

In the end, you either keep doing what you've been doing, and go with her want.
Or you go with your own want - put boundaries in place, enforce them, and absorb the consequent scoldings. But it sounds like you're gonna lose the friend anyway if she doesn't rein it in.

You can speed them up to 2 x and give the sender chipmunk voice.

But yes, voicenotes are the work of the devil.

I sort of understand where you're coming from, but they don't take seconds. They take as long as the update takes.

You could always do a voice message. They take seconds. I expect you find her a drag and don't feel you don't have a lot uncommon and therefore not able to understand your busy life. I am madly busy and have madly busy friends and they always make time to chat so I guess I am very lucky

Bit harsh.

That is a lot of attention you're giving her.

She is very needy, and very unrealistic in expecting you to be available for her to interrupt your life whenever she needs conversation.

We teach children not to interrupt. If you - like me, on a typical day - have a list of stuff you need to get on with, no-one should expect you to drop it all and get on their timetable.

You really need to set her expectations for the future.

I understand OP on this one to be honest. I'm not one for regular communication, never have been, and I find people who insist on it make me feel uncomfortable. We all have the right to live our lives the way we want to live them, and some people like privacy. I get that, I don't need to share everything with everyone all the time. I can understand too the comments about owning it, sure, but at the same time she doesn't have to give a life update every 3 days if she doesn't want to, and her friend needs to find someone who can match her energy and build her own support network separately. Nothing wrong with that.

OP, if it helps, I have a couple of very close friends I regularly send voice notes to once a week to update them on life and they respond on return. We call it the Tuesday Catch-up, and we take it in turns to give one another our updates on life, family, work, etc via a voice note and we are all clear it is a once a week thing so we still catch up, but in a way that suits everyone. Could you suggest that? She gets the communication, you get the distance and release the pressure, everyone is happy?

Do one life update and forward to several people, if you find it all too time consuming. Otherwise explain that daily updates is too much for you due to your busy household and that you will catch up once or twice a week.
Anyway, how did you end up at opposite ends of the country? If she'd moved away, she may be lonely and if you moved away she may feel a bit abandoned.

A person who can’t manage to infer that their friend who doesn’t reply swiftly to chatty, inconsequential messages is likely busy and/or not up for that level of contact, is going to need a hell of a lot explained to them.

And not everyone wants to take on that level of explaining.

Not least because someone who’s reached adulthood with a limited ability to read social cues or imagine what other people’s perspectives or experiences might possibly be - or indeed to understand that other people might have different experiences or expectations to their own - is likely to have some innate difficulties with social learning, IME.

Simply explaining your own perspective doesn’t work with such people, who will be puzzled by the idea of different perspectives altogether, or will simply conclude your perspective is wrong and set about correcting it.

If I took time to patiently explain everything about how social relationships work to everyone I encounter who finds them hard to understand, I wouldn’t have time for anything else.

Did you explain the problem?

I say this as someone who’s best mate ‘drops of the radar’ for weeks/ a month at a time. She’s just reached critical mass and that’s fine with me.

Then explain it to her. ‘Sorry you’re feeling abandoned, I don’t mean to do that but sometimes life becomes very overwhelming due to x and x and y and I just don’t have the mental space or the time, frankly, to be texting all the time. It’s not personal but i’m not going to burn myself out because you demand a response when I don’t have the time to give you one. I’m sure you can understand that. ’

I know logically this makes sense. But I sometimes (not all the time!) I feel my attentions is pulled around so much with the competing demands of work and family etc that responding to WhatsApps just feels overwhelming. Sometimes my social beans are entirely depleted.

The other thing that can happen is that if you don’t reply immediately (eg as with people so rude to be on phone), you then forget!

So I don’t agree that failure to respond (sometimes) necessarily = not caring about the relationship.

I read your post yesterday and by chance a mum friend who I’ve known for a few years did something similar to me. We ended a WhatsApp conversation on Tuesday afternoon about something. She then sent me a blanket. How are you? Sort of message on Thursday and when I hadn’t replied, she chased it up.

I probably sound like a petulant teenager, but I do not need to be chased to reply to someone. I’m trying to set boundaries and it’s becoming obvious that I need to. All of my others friends would accept if someone didn’t reply, it’s because they are busy. Mobile phones have made us like Doctors always on call.

I want to try and keep this friendship, but the petulant teenager with me now wants to call it a day because I don’t think I want a friend who chases replies.

I’m going to follow this thread - I would like to know how you get on with this friend.

I am audhd too, and everyone drains my energy to a greater or lesser degree. Hence it being a social communication issue.
You might not be drained by talking to your best friend, but what about if it was a different friend who wanted more from you than you could comfortably give and wanted it often ??

I don't have 3 different opinions on the subject, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Yes and eventually i had go block this person as they were draining the lifeblood out of me.it was relentless demands for attention.

To @FlyHighLikeABird ’s point about friends starting to feel like a burden, I think this is the thing.

It’s not a bad thing in and of itself to want more intensity from a friendship. But if someone starts demanding it, and constantly asking me if I’m mad at them, or wanting endless heart to heart chats about our communication, or getting the hump if they feel like I’m prioritising other things over them, or accusing me of being lazy or selfish or neglectful - that’s when it becomes a burden. And these days I will run for the hills at the first glimmer of this sort of behaviour.

The trouble with this type of person, though, is that even though they seem to think it is my actual job to be available to them however and whenever they want, they won’t sack me, or even put me on probation, and I’m not allowed to resign. The friendship becomes an endless series of disciplinary meetings where I’m constantly told all the ways in which I am disappointing them and how they deserve better and I’ll need to spend the rest of my life grovelling in atonement.

My sense is that this is fundamentally the relational need such people have - to refuse to let anyone leave their lives, and keep reprimanding them forever for not being their perfect obedient service animal.

If a man did this to a woman in an intimate partner relationship we’d instantly recognise it as a major red flag for coercive control.

See, this seems to me more typical for a far-away friend. I have many friends like this, and given they all have many friends as well, that level of contact works great for us, because we probably leave voice-messages and touch base with these friends in rotation. I have many friends at this level of friendship, so am pretty much doing this with someone at some time, but not the same person each time if that makes sense.

Friends who live locally, I love to see pretty frequently, once a week or whatever, but that's very dependent on people's schedules. I also call one of my local friends once a week or every two weeks if we don't get together in person.

I speak to my mum most days so perhaps that 'going on about what you had for dinner' is filled there (as well as by partner).

I don't think any style is wrong, but once a friend feels like burden or you start to not want to contact them, it's not good news for the friendship.

I don't know what to suggest, I just know I couldn't be pressured into more contact, as I don't have any more to give to any friendship than I am already giving, as I'm a pretty good friend!

I think the fact you don't miss her probably means that, as good a person she was, she didn't add to your life in the way a good friend does. It's not all on you x

I lost a good friend over this, I was the bad non replying friend. In my defence I was quite unwell and got myself in a bit of brain fog but I could've tried harder. When I realised I made several apologies but she cut me off.

Tbh I don't really miss her, bc if we went out I always seemed to be listening to her issues and rarely shared mine, but she was a good person and deserved better.

This is lovely and I know lots of people are like this. I have a few 'hands off' friends and I will mimic their comms. However, it's not my friendship style, i need a bit more and wonder what people are doing/if they're ok etc..

And since I've been single, more so tbh. I try not to act on it tho for fear of being annoying/too needy.

OP, it's possible your friend is a bit lonely or just has more free time than you? Does the former make you feel any differently?

"I have so many friends who I don't speak to for weeks (one is months and that's because on both sides we go a bit quiet) but when we pick up it's like no time has passed. Then we go quiet again. This works perfectly for me."

I have these kinds of friends, but I ALSO need one or two I see more regularly, once or twice a week when I'm single. These will be friends who live closer though. I think you do have to accept that if one person moves away, things won't be quite the same and you have to make a life for yourself in the new place (or the old place with your friend gone).