This thread is making me so sad and yet I can’t stop reading it. I had a rough friend break-up a few years back and at the time I thought it was bizarre how there is so much help and support and experience available when you have a relationship break-up, but not for a friendship.
First ghosting experience was a very dear and close best friend of many, many years. I am pleased to say we eventually had it out. She had been depressed, she had found herself in a controlling relationship and took a while to get out, but the catalyst had been that she felt we were just so similar, we did everything the same, had everything the same, and that she had needed a break to become her own person. I was so sad for many years, but now we are friends again after that catch-up. Not as close as before, though distance and families play the largest role in that. But we can definitely now always pick up where we left off again and we definitely care for each other and their families and bear zero grudges. That was the happy story.
The second experience was the rough one mentioned above. A dear uni friend that I remained very close with for many years never really liked my DP from the get-go. He felt it from her right from the beginning but we are all adults and they muddled on through for my sake. One holiday it all came to a shouty head between them and she ghosted me after. Some of the things she said were really, really below the line and some left her sitting on a precariously high horse. We don’t talk about her much at home but when we do (we still have joint friends so sometimes it’s unavoidable) she’s called “she-who-shall-not-be-named”. I try my best not to ever feel smug but I must admit I did think of that high horse she had shouted down to me from when I heard that both she and her husband had had affairs and ripped their family apart. I am really not a jealous person but I will admit to feeling left out when I see her and our joint fabulous friend (who would never have met if it weren’t for me!) off on a nice trip somewhere and think, I should have been there too. Though who knows, maybe that works both ways. Joint friend is truly a star, she’s both very emotionally intelligent and intelligent and manages to tread carefully for everyone’s sakes.
Final one is actually DP’s former best friend of many many years. When DP was off travelling his bestie and then new-ish girlfriend looked after me so well. Over the years she has picked so many big arguments with his friends. We were first - she misunderstood a joke in a birthday card and they went silent on us for nearly a year. Turns out she had forgotten something funny that had happened (she had apparently been too drunk to remember thoughwe did not notice) and therefore the card was misconstrued. But instead of clarifying she instead persuaded him to ghost his very best friend of many years for that long. Eventually we went out for dinner and had it out, or figured it out, rather, as we were all so confused and for no good reason. It all felt a bit engineered, like she wanted rid of us. She’s insecure. She wants control of him, we, his friends, are some kind of an imagined threat. We tried for a few more years but the damage had been done. The poor guy sees none of his original friend group anymore. Apparently he doesn’t even speak to his direct family any more at her insistence/brainwashing/gaslighting. she planted so many seeds of doubt, cracks appeared everywhere. At their wedding she had a full-blown screaming match with another friend of ours (again, a drunken misunderstanding) and the whole friendship circle never repaired after that. It’s so, so very sad that he doesn’t see it. But he seems genuinely happy and I hope she is too. Sometimes we bump into them or just I into her and it’s always excruuuuuuciatingly awkward. I think next time I will just own it instead of being polite. Life’s too short for keeping up appearances. (I feel like we need to leave him a lifeline though, just incase it all comes crashing down! Poor sod. )
I am blessed with a very great number of very good friends and acquaintances. I have lived in a few different places over the years, if anything I feel guilty I cannot possibly keep up with everyone I want to, though I do try. I wish I could say my two complete losses go unnoticed but they still left a mark that opens up a bit wider every so often. My thoughts are with those of you still grieving a raw friendship loss or a loss of any friendship/companionship completely. I hope it passes. I hope time is kind. Just keep doing the things that you love to do or find new things to enjoy doing and hopefully, through that, interesting, interested and kind people will wind up being a part of your life.