Tell me why your long term friendships ended

[Dragonfire282]

I have a friend who I've known since I was 16. 25 years of friendship is rapidly going down the pan. She's become very distant, im trying to keep things going but it's a 2 way street and I'm getting very little back. I'm upset, confused. I need to accept that friendships drift and maybe it's just time to move on. If you've lost a close, long term friend why did it end? Particularly if you've just drifted apart. Was there an argument, conversation or did it just slowly change to nothing?

I had a best friend from my teens. We did everything together, knew all each other's secrets, were bridesmaids for each other etc. I thought we'd be friends forever - real soulmates. But then we both had children around the same time and much to my surprise it turned out that we had very different views on parenting which made getting together with the children quite tense. She offered a lot of unsolicited advice but was very prickly if I reciprocated. We didn't have a row or anything, just stopped seeing each other so much and drifted apart - it must be over a decade since we last spoke now. I sometimes wonder about making contact again. Now our children are older maybe we'd get along again, who knows? But DH is still quite friendly with her ex so I think it would be very awkward.

I got kicked out of a decade old friendship group for breaking up with one of the men in it :(. It was painful, they just gradually cut me out of stuff until the last person ghosted me.

I also lost a friend because he married a Trump supporting anti-vaxxer. Had to gradually distance myself from both of them. I miss him, but I can't deal with his husband.

Best friend of 30+ years, since we were 12. Her partner cheated on her with multiple other women for several years, keeping it hidden by claiming he was supporting an old friend who had cancer. At the time, I had cancer, so he obviously saw it as an opportunity to tug at her heartstrings so she wouldn't be suspicious.

When it all came out, my husband and I supported her through the break-up, helped her move house, paid for utilities to be set up etc etc, and I spent a lot of time working through the trauma of the break-up with her two teenage kids.

Then she reconciled with him. I just couldn't continue to be friends with her, it was just too much - drama, effort, time, and pain.

She ended up marrying him and far moving away, so it's not been as hard as it would have been if she still lived in the same town. But it has been hard, and I do think of her and hope she's happy.

Two because they found themselves in downward life spirals whereby they ended up feeling marginalised from the real world as being part of if wasn’t working for them, so turned to alternative lifestyles which generally involved hating anyone and everything that had any kind of conventional success in their life. Nothing against their choices, but they’ve surrounded themselves with similar people and generally there is lots of time spent in India, crystals, veganism, yoga, and conversations about the universe type. I wasn’t welcome as I’ve have a very conventionally successful life and they think anyone who has done well looks down on them because deep down they’re still desperately unhappy with some of the choices they’ve made. They’ve surrounded themselves with people who have ended up in the same place for the same reasons and cut everyone else out. I have to say, from the outside, it’s been for the best.

I would drive 6 hours to visit family in precious weekends off (4/year) and arrange to meet friend as they lived in the same area. She kept cancelling on me for rubbish reasons. The straw that broke the camels back was turning up 40 minutes late (when I’d left a family dinner early to meet her), pissed, with other friends who I had never liked, and left under an hour later making it clear they were going clubbing and I wasn’t invited (5 of them going off in a car so no space).
I’ve never spoken to her since and she has never tried to apologise or get in touch after that day when I made it clear how upset I was.

I let things drop with one friend because she was so self centred. It was always about her and her life. She never asked about me, she would start a text conversation with 'soooo... update!' And go on about a running topic that just wasn't that interesting. It was like living in her own little show and I was just an audience. The final straw was when she snapped at me for repeating some advice I'd already given her, saying I'd said that already and I was being repetitive I didnt fall out with her, I just stopped getting into conversations about her dramas.

My childhood 'friend' ditched me when I needed her most - my child died and she couldn't deal with it!

@NettleMania

My childhood 'friend' ditched me when I needed her most - my child died and she couldn't deal with it!

That's terrible, so sorry for your loss and for your friend's shitty behaviour!

I don't know what gets into some people when others suffer losses. It's always hard to know what to say to a grieving person, but that's never an excuse to ditch them or fail to acknowledge the loss. I heard quite a lot of 'I didn't know what to say' after my dad passed, which is a pathetic excuse imo, making it all about one's own comfort instead of what will help the bereaved person.

24 years. She:
Decided my daughter's father wasn't my partner and wouldn't stop asking what I "wasn't telling her"
Told me my emergency c section after 3 days of labour, sepsis, pre eclampsia and daughter being in NICU for a week was the Easy Way
Didn't believe I was in hospital and had a police welfare check to my house, where they didn't find me because I was in hospital
Gave me a bottle of gin for my birthday knowing I'm a recovering alcoholic

Plenty more. She'd been a bitch to other people all the time I'd known her but I'd always thought (stupidly) that she wouldn't do anything like that to me. I shouldn't have held on half as long as I did.

Got pregnant. She's against having children which is fine for her own reasons and lifestyle, but started becoming distant, wasn't interested in my pregnancy or me and was more interested in moaning about being single...