Have you ever ghosted a friend?

[Lemonllama]

I have seen a few threads where people have been ghosted by a friend. It got me thinking, have you ever ghosted a friend and why? What spurs the act of ghosting?

Because she used to comment on everything I posted and her responses were things like "who? I don't watch TV" when I posted something about a TV show & "I have no issues with that company. I don't get your issue?" Well considering she's dealing with the people who are based in Reading / London and I'm dealing with the one based in south west.

Two who were drama llamas, at different times.

I was close to them at one time, but then began to notice unpleasant facets of their personality (endless one upmanship/ gossiping about private info about people I knew/ trying to create drama in the friend group by saying different things to people) and it just made me think what do they say about me when I'm not there? And I didn't feel the same about them after that, stopped making the effort. And they clearly only really wanted an audience - I was obviously out of sight out of mind because after I stopped getting in touch I heard nothing from either of them.

Maybe not much self awareness or consideration to how they are really behaving 🤷‍♀️

Two friends. I got advice on here for one, I just had no idea how to do it. All she talked about was her ex from our uni days and how she wished she hadn’t married her Dh (and had two beautiful dd). I didn’t have the headspace to deal with her phoning for hours, whispering down the phone so her Dh wouldn’t hear!

Another, I just had nothing in common with her anymore, saw her maybe once a year and was dreading it, so I just messaged her to say I think we’d come to an end, otherwise she’d have turned up on my doorstep, from another country!

Yes. She became increasingly mentally ill and while I supported her through three residential stays at a psychiatric hospital she became more and more obsessive and would lie and I just couldn't tell what was real if not. She'd show up at my house stinking and drunk. She eventually moved a couple hundred miles away nearer family. But then she started to call and it would be the exact conversation we had the week before, the month before, the previous two years before! So I just stopped answering. If I picked up the phone as 'no caller ID' and it was her I'd just hang up.

Many years ago now, I had a friend made at baby classes. We were never in each other's pockets but I regarded her as a friend. Her parenting style was very different from mine; I refrained from commenting on this, she felt quite at liberty to pass comment in the other direction! The years went by, various life things happened for her and I felt her choices were questionable, but again, not my business, although it did make me question her moral compass.
I gradually realised that I was the one making most of the running, she was seldom available but wanted me to keep trying. The final straw came when I shared some positive life-changing news by email, and she made a bitchy remark.
I didn't know how to reply, so I didn't. And that was the last contact I had with her. She never called me, she sent me one card at Christmas one year which I didn't reciprocate,and that was it. I don't miss her.

I knew a lady from work (she was a customer) a few years ago

I'm a trained hairdresser so she invited herself round for a haircut

For 5 bloody hours,she sat and talked at me about people I don't know,slagging them off and how she'd got conned yet again but it didn't matter as she's loaded (no idea if she is or not)

The next time-same thing happened

Third time (i know!) same happened but she told my dp to check her car as something had gone wrong with it

She was told he knows nothing about cars,but she went on and on about it so he had a quick look and told her to take it to a garage as he didn't know what was wrong as he wasn't a mechanic

I'd had enough at that point so didn't answer my phone or answer her texts-I thought that would be the end of that

A few weeks rolled past and it was christmas-our first with darling mil as we'd lost fil earlier in the year

My mil is very straight laced-we stay off certain subjects,which is fair enough

We'd just settled down to watch a film and the door went

Thinking it was our takeaway,I answered it-only for her to push past me,and she shot upstairs to the bathroom screaming 'I need a piss!' as she went

We where too bloody polite (now id just tell her too fuck off) and she sat down started barking orders at my mil,and just as I was about to tell her to get out,she turned to me and said 'am I safe to sit here Sharon?'

Me-'what do you mean?'

Her-'well have you ever given dp a blow job while sat here?'

Dp lost it-he threw her out,poor mil is mortified and I'm beetroot-her number was blocked within seconds

Looking back I should have just told her that I was angry and didn't want to speak to her again

But she then showed up at my work,having a go at my managers for not promoting me to 'top dog' and that they are all 'useless fuckers' (all that happened was she got banned so she sat in her car,just off the grounds,watching me until she got bored)

I didn't hear another thing from her until the other day

I'd just got in from work,I was shattered and had just sat down

Door went-dp went to answer it and there she was,demanding to speak to me and wanting to know if a Beverly lived in our street

She told her he didn't know (which is true,neither of us knows our neighbours) ,i wasnt in (lie) and to fuck off as she's not welcome after what she did

Last I heard,she was going round slagging me off-i dont care

Bloody loon doesn't see anything wrong with what she's done

Yes, a close friend was upset she wasn’t bridesmaid. Never came to my hen do or wedding. Tried to meet up a few times after the wedding and I gave up. Deleted them and moved on. It was too much drama.

Omg I also ghosted one of these. Did her full name begin with R?

I’ve also just stopped contacting people who never reciprocated my effort and lo and behold I never heard from them again.

Only one. She is extremely immature. We're in out mid 30s and she is still at the stage of grabbing my arm and giggling in a very obvious way if any remotely attractive man walks by and wants to go to Harry Potter world for every birthday. We went to college together but I grew up and she just...didn't.

We had less and less in common as time went by and I started to feel like I was babysitting a teenager every time we made plans so I just started being busy more and we don't really speak now unless we meet in the street.

I have only purposefully ghosted one person - a woman I met at NCT. At first she seemed a bit odd and overly competitive but I thought maybe she was ND, but as the years went by I realised she was a toxic energy vampire, and I just kind of had an epiphany one day and realised my life would be so much better without her in it. Also her child was the class bully and she blamed everyone but herself for his behaviour. I tried the gentle fade but that seemed to make her more determined to remain in my life so I had to block her. She seems to have alienated most of the other parents at school too by her strange behaviour so I knew it wasn’t just me.

Yes, although I'm not proud of it.

She was a bit of a user, invited herself for dinner, never reciprocated. Never absorbed things i told her, just wanted to dump her woes onto me. Seeing her felt like a bit of a chore and I didn't have the energy.

In the end she invited herself over and I said it wasn't a good time. After that she'd ask every couple of months. I replied first couple of times but eventually stopped, and just thought "take the hint". She tried again after a year, I couldn't think of a nice way to say "leave me alone" so just didnt reply.

I've had it done to me, and now I reflect on what might have prompted the times I was ghosted and can see those friendships came to a natural end. In those cases I continued to send birthday and Xmas greetings beyond being ghosted. But the above experience has made me realise its not welcomed so I've taken the hint and stopped any communication. I feel much better about it now, relationships end, sometimes without a big falling out, and that's OK.

Do you not wonder why?

@Shopper727 💐💐💐

Yes I did because this person made me feel not very good about myself. I felt so much better for breaking off the friendship.

Yes, and I had given chance after chance to prove herself to be a good friend. In the end I had enough with being let down and choosing actual randoms over me. She hasn’t changed much, and hasn’t had any proper friends since so I wasn’t the only one she did it to.

I have. She was rude and could be bigoted. I cut her some slack because she had MH issues. One day she was telling me about a long, intense, drawn out argument she was having with another friend. I thought, fuck that - not for me. So I ghosted her.

Yes. A woman I flatshared with when I was about 25. She used to say very jellyfishy things - like say to me loudly at a pub gathering that she thought I was looking pretty, even though she knew I had been struggling with my weight (I was a very fit size 12, and ran 5 miles 3 times a week. I had never mentioned 'struggling"). She was, however, morbidly obese. She was self-congratulatory and did "nice" things for me to guilt trip me; she got very upset with me when I met and dated a super-cute local dj, pointing out any tiny flaw in him and getting cross when I wasn't home and stayed at his without telling her. It felt like an odd combination of parenting and a jealous partner.

At my 26th birthday party she made my best friend feel terrible because she had brought "only" a bottle of wine whereas toxic pal had given me an overly-lavish gift. It was a bit of an eye opener. She was just mean and nasty. I moved out as soon as I could after that party. It was the last straw. I never answered her messages after.

Yes 2 people.

One who was a friend I saw a couple of times a year maybe? We didn't have much in common but she was, on the surface, a good friend. Always arranging meet ups etc. But she was always getting pass out drunk at social gatherings (this was when we had kids and in our 40s). Before she passed out she'd basically tell me what she really thought of me. After a couple of times of that I thought "fuck that!" and ghosted her.

Another friend was probably someone I considered my closest friend, a real confidante. For years. She invited me to stay with her for a few days. On the surface she was a great hostess. Lovely food etc. But she told me that she was in the process of getting rid of some of her friends if they didn't pass some kind of test; how they reacted to her calling them out on various things. She then did a couple of things that made me realise she was going to do this to me. I made an excuse to leave early, drove home, wrote her a thank you card mentioning the lovely food etc but not the "test" bit. And never contacted her again. She did write me an email about ten years later pretty much apologising for her behaviour. I replied politely but somewhat stiltedly. And haven't heard since from her since. It had actually taken me months to work my way through the end of the friendship. But didn't want her to know it affected me at all. Overall, I feel like I ended the friendship before she got the chance.

Yes

She spent all her time putting me down

Bitched about

Slagged off my job in the end

So stopped speaking to her
Who needs someone like that

Oh you must know my one then. Same situation. Kept writing me letters as well, asking how I was and STILL telling me all about her problems in the letters. She's stopped now thank goodness!

@TedMullins It didn't.

I spent a year working up to it. She would text me endlessly long texts with further and new potential illnesses she'd apparently persuaded a "top consultant " to investigate. Amongst other more minor ailments.

I used to get ghosted quite a lot.

I'm autistic, and had somehow absorbed the message that a true friend should be there for you and provide a shoulder to cry on all the time. I was pretty emotionally dysregulated at the time, and just used to vent and vent at people endlessly- often friends with small children, while I was childless at that time.

Frankly, the me of today would probably have ghosted the me of 20 years ago. Happily, CBT and just generally realising that the world didn't revolve around me and that friendships involve give and take has sorted me out a lot.

Recently I've had to ghost someone. She gave me a free ticket to a festival, but I found it too much and had to leave early. She viewed this as a personal betrayal and went on and on and on about how I had let her down, and how I didn't care about her- including shouting and screaming at me in front of my kids. I guess she never learnt that lesson about the world not revolving around her ☹️

I had a very old friend who only ever wanted to talk about her ex (a colleague of mine). She was very bitter and angry he had moved on and she felt wronged. I enjoyed spending time with her but it always came round to him, in a negative way. We arranged to meet and she asked me to pay a deposit for the restaurant and she would pay me back on the day. The evening of the event she cancelled on me. I lost my deposit and there was no offer to pay me back. I decided then and there I wasnt enjoying our relationship and petered out the texts and stopped agreeing to meet-ups. She reappeared about 10 years later and, within 10 minutes, was gloating about how my colleagues wife had left him.

Yes. We were friends since we were about 3. I have social anxiety and struggle with friendships so for a lot of my childhood she was my only friend. I think this was why I put up with the way she treated me for so long. She had loads of friends herself but would get angry and jealous if I got close to anyone else. She constantly excluded me from everything. Would make plans with her other friends and never invite me, only spent time with me if she had nothing else to do. I think growing up around her is partly responsible for the severely low self esteem I developed growing up. I finally had enough when I met my amazing DH and she put pressure on me to break up with him for no reason. I think she just wanted me to always be available to spend time with her if she needed it, even though she ignored me most of the time. I stopped responding to her messages shortly after that and we haven’t spoken in 6 years now.