to ask why you stopped talking to a friend.

[Chromolithograph]

I stopped talking to a friend because my DS really did n't like playing with her DS, meetings with the kids were stressful. No major drama with the grown ups, just gradually decreased our contact. Friends for a season.

Why have your friendships fallen apart?

Because I supported my friend through thick and thin but after my miscarriage, she was awful. Everything had to be about her dramas but I really needed some support. I was very low but thankfully all my real friends helped me through.

Friend 1. The most bitchy but popular and funny girl but soooooo self centered and thoughtless. Used to harp on and on for ages about people on the phone to me but if I dared to speak about my life she would go and ring her doorbell and say "gotta go". Was inconsiderate when I was going through infertility and constantly spoke about her pregnancy/baby/christening.

Friend 2. My old school friend. Met aged 13 but she met her now dh aged 17 and ditched me. We have remained on off friends into our 30s but not without huge effort on my part. Her dh is jealous of our old funny stories and she lets him control her. Fed up of it after chasing and being let down so many times.

Friend 3. Crazy insecure paranoid control freak. Texted me daily and expected an instant reply otherwise it must mean I'm not talking to her etc. used to phone the house phone incessantly until I answered. Bye bye.

I prefer my own company. Shrugs.

I am glad I am not mad, I felt so sick after witnessing that and 'friend' saying it, that I decided not to meet them anymore. I felt like crying after seeing her making her DD cry.

She said 'I am not careful with DD like you are with your DS' when her DD was near the top very steep stairs in the restaurant and she didn't want to move her near her in a safe place.

I do think there is something wrong, I thought maybe because she did not want to have children, she had her DD because it was expected of her.

It makes me sad, but the fact she kept making comments about my parenting made me decide to not see her anymore.

I can completely understand why you made that decision MrsRickyMartin. There is something wrong with your former friend. Nothing that you could report her to authorities to really (I don't think?). But I truly feel so sad (and a worried) for that little girl.

I couldn't be friends with somebody like that either nor would I know what I could do to help, the little girl not the mother.

She took me for granted. xx

I generally just sort of drift away if I'm fed up with someone ...

One was a huge liar and very right wing/ racist ( we used to go clubbing together and were always too boxed for me to notice what her views were! )

The other's still around but whenever I see her she always tells me something awful about someone I like so she's pretty depressing company ( plus I'm starting to wonder what she says about me ... ) and she's very judgemental about people which is a bit tedious, so I'm leaving things to settle for a while.

Because she was jealous of my relationship with my mum, wanted my mum to be hers( my mum=not that great) and the final straw was when I pulled out of going to a concert with her, she said I was just using my FILs illness as an excuse not to go. Concert was on Friday, FIL died on the Sunday. Bitch still hangs about my mother. They are a good team.

Because when my relationship broke down I became sick with sadness and couldn't speak to anyone. When I came to she didn't want to know me any more. Now she does but I am not sure why. She will never kick me again.

One of these made my stomach lurch because I was absolutely sure it was about me.

I searched the poster and realise it wasn't, but have just seen things from my friend's POV after a heartbreaking year of not speaking.

Feel totally shit and don't know how to put it right. Think it may be too late.

Because she went flatting with the man who had sexually assaulted me. We had been friends for five years, and had known him about six months. She also said that she didn't want to only believe one side of the story (ie mine) even though he never disputed it - to the authorities anyway, he may well have spun it differently behind my back - and that it was a pity I couldn't just get over it, as he and I had been really good friends. We hadn't, he'd been harassing me for months. She still tries to contact me, I ignore her.

I hope they rot in hell together.

She betrayed (in my mind) both another friend and I while depressed. It was awful.

She has since made a good apology and we are working at our friendship slowly, with new boundaries. Other friend has no interest.

We will never have quite the same close friendship but were very close for 5 years and I do understand that situation she was in. I am not the type to abandon.

These stories are really interesting...

Because the effort put in no longer equalled the pleasure received from the friendship. And because after I moved away, the gossip about the other playground mums simply wasn't interesting. Wish it wasn't so, because I am awfully lonely now.

She was a flaky friend that kept letting me down. Tried cutting contact several times, and de facebooking. Then she rang me out of the blue crying on the phone begging for money. I refused as I never lend friends money, and she knows this. She really put me in a position.

She was a complete psycho. I trained with her in my job, and she couldn't stand the fact that I was more popular with men than she was as she was the blonde skinny one, and I was the brunette with big boobs. Every time we were out and I'd meet a guy shed go ape shit at me, but when she met someone when we were out, that was fine. Complete fucking nutter that I'm glad I'm not friends with.

We met when our DC's were tiny and were friends for 30 years. Well we still send Christmas and birthday cards.

We went through so much together, my divorce and the death of her husband when I dropped everything to drive across the country to literally hold her hand while we arranged his funeral etc.

I maintained contact by going to stay with her as she moved around the country even when we were very poor. I listened to her moaning about how hard up she was, the husband left her very well provided for, and then receiving postcards from foreign parts. Told me I could afford a holiday if I lived on baked beans for a month and just didn't get how hard it is bringing a family up on benefits.

After several years of mourning, I mean only wearing black, she found a boyfriend and 8 years later I have still never been introduced to him. Is she ashamed of me or him?

The last straw was when I wasn't invited to her daughter's wedding. She has no other friends and has nothing to do with her late husband's family so it wasn't a question of their side of the church being full up. It was because her family is very dressy and they thought I would not come up to their standard. They are all slim and have a low opinion of plump people and I am one of that ilk.

Feel better for that but it makes me sad still.

Drifted away from a group of friends after several years (we'd been friends since joining an nct group) it just dawned on me that we actually had nothing in common apart from having babies at the same time. I couldn't take anymore bragging about who sent their child to the best school, had the best holidays, house, cleaner, gardener....it was like being a "Stepford Wife"! I didn't have a gardener, cleaner etc and the comment "Oh but chocciebickie you have a nice little house"... time to walk away I though
I have also just stopped talking to a friend who has asked one too many favours and then left me with a massive bill to pay...but thats another story!

Just another viewpoint,I have stopped talking to people over the years not because of any thing they have done but because of my cyclical depression. I can be fine for years often life and soul of the party,then it hits I have to retreat I can work(just) care for my kids (just) but nothing else.

I probably should tell friends what is happening but I don't ,when I am in this mode Auto-pilot is all that I can maintain. I have been great for a long time again,I think I now have got into the habit of not forging close bonds-make coffee friends easily enough but anything else I tend not to get involved with.

So sometimes you may have done nothing,it is me !

Like another poster said cos she made me feel inferior. She was married and planning children and kept asking me and my other unmarried friends 'when are you getting a ring on your finger?' Then asking my friend who had recently had a miscarriage if she was planning on having children. I had told her in confidence and she deliberately brought that subject up. That was the last straw.

Because spending time with her was draining and stressful, she demanded a lot and had no consideration for my life or feelings. I cut her a lot of slack wrt to all that as she had problems but the final straw was when another, more trusted friend told me to "watch out, so-and-so's really jealous of you." It felt weird and ominous so I distanced myself immediately.

I still like my friend but I have stopped emailing her, she moved schools and so I don't see her.

It isn't that I don't think about her and miss her. It's that I am exhausted with my new baby and barely any help from anyone and I just can't do it - if we met up I'd be a mess, I'd have nothing to say, my brain doesn't work at the moment.

She just had a new baby too but she has a lot more support - a partner and so on. I feel like I have sunk into a sort of big muddy field and can't get out.

I hope she doesn't think I hate her or something. We never were very good at meeting up at the best of times.

feelingdizzy, I have a friend who has depression with anxiety, and countless physical problems. She hasn't contacted me for some months. I would be happy with just a chat on the phone if that's all she can manage. I have made the difficult decision not to contact her as it has always been me doing this for the last few years, and initiating meeting up. I can't do it any more, and I certainly can't have it out with her because she may well overdose, as she did the last time she and her carer friend had a row.

The last time we met up I did leave the ball in her court and she said she would call me. I feel sad that I can't do more, but for years an army of doctors, counsellors, psychiatrists and so on have been trying to sort her out, and seem to be failing spectacularly. I can't tell how much she is co-operating with their advice and treatments, but I know she has previously just stopped taking medication because she thought they weren't helping or made her feel worse (without consulting the DR first) and then had psychotic episodes as a result. I am denied the opportunity to be a support when she has various crises with health or family, because she just won't let me. So I have to let it go now as I don't think there is much of a friendship left.

I dropped a whole family because of one toxic member last year. After breaking up with my toxic ex and discovering that he had a harem of women in various stages of seduction (bear in mind that my ex and I lived together), all she could say was " well he probably looked at you and thought that you never had nothing. Anyway, you need to lose weight". Nobody called her out. This is a forty eight year old woman who has two sets of boys for two different men ( not judging her, but it does indicate that her love life has not been all positive for her) and she has NEVER left home. Scales fell off of my eyes and I remembered other times over a thirty odd year period where she has gone behind my back and referred to me and my sister as "ugly" to OUR friends. She is very good looking in a contrived way and sees her only duty (after looking after her "boys") as attracting men. A wiser person than me did say to me that she has noticed that for all her beauty regime, my ex friend doesn't appear to attract decent men more than me. When I declared that I will no longer entertain any Jamaican man that has the whiff of "yardie" about them, I was accused of being a snob! My life has changed since I have sorted the wheat from the chaff! Mumsnet has helped me stick to my guns and has shown me that we as women do not have maintain an image to suit the outside world. Thank You!

Sometimes I've just drifted apart from people because it wasn't going anywhere, or perhaps because I'm just too busy to contact people regularly so only the friends who are OK with that survive!

I ditched one friend who was becoming incredibly demanding ad talking over my life. I had a new baby and for the first time in my life I stood up to neediness as I had to put my baby first - it was harsh for her, but I've never looked back.

And another friend who I had for years split up with her partner who was also our friend, and married an incredibly boring man, and she was always quite selfish and me-me-me, and a bit woo which I couldn't be doing with, and it turns out I just can't be arsed. But I think she'd had enough of me too, to be fair.

Been wondering for a while about posting a 'WWYD?' about my ex-friendship situation, so this thread is well-timed :-)
Sorry if this is a thread hijack.

About this time last year she made some comments I thought were a bit off (not about me - about her work customers basically), I disagreed with her (but didn't say how unprofessional it made her sound), thought no more of it. After a while I realised I hadn't heard from her since (we've always been in sporadic contact, not loads all the time but there when each other needs us for over a decade now). When i enquired about her wellbeing to a mutual (new-ish) friend, she told me my friend was upset about our conversation, which troubled me. So I got in touch, asked how she was doing, etc etc. Got a massive email rant in reply - she was still v upset, I was totally out of order, etc. so I sent a several-paragraph email apologising at length and hoping we can move on, saying how much she means to me, etc. In return she sent several paragraphs of bitter unpleasant character assassination - this is so like me, nobody likes me, listing all my flaws and bad personality traits etc.

I didn't reply but was deeply hurt and upset that she thought so little of me and didn't value our friendship.

Since then (that was last autumn) I keep wanting to get back in touch but not sure whether to or how to or if it would do any good. I miss her and think about her a lot but maybe I just have to accept that this one has gone for good - ? Our mutual friend says 'leave it, it's irrecoverable'. It makes me v sad to think that. Feels a bit like a relationship break-up tbh.

All of the above, incompatible lifestyles, behaviours, etc. Mostly because she always ducks out of meeting up (once a year) and she does have a mobile but she won't give me her number (make up excuses why she hasn't got one eg. child put it in bin!!). I hate ringing her house because her husband is an arsehole and he knows I don't like him.

I have given up.

one of my closest friends found religion.....

she then proceeded to tell me that my children would spend the whole of eternity in limbo and not go to heaven because I would not have them Christened... she said this IN FRONT of my children... she is no longer in my life.