Have you ever ghosted a friend/friends?

CoughLaughFart · 10/05/2018 23:22

Yes. His behaviour had become worse and worse and, in the end, I had no other option. He was sending me bizarre rants about how vile I was being to him and I’d ‘snubbed’ him (I’d actually turned down an invite from him because I busy elsewhere), and he made oblique but very bitchy posts about me on social media. In the end he said ‘Don’t both talking to me if you’re going to treat me like this’ - so I decided I wouldn’t. Six months on I wish I’d ditched him years ago.

Mayhemmumma · 10/05/2018 23:23

As a teenager yes. A good friend in primary but our friendship was not as strong in secondary but we used to walk home together and go to each other's houses ...

She was cool, super slim and briefly went out with the boy I loved from afar!

We gradually had nothing in common, I was awkward and shy and I couldn't keep up with her.

So I just stopped talking to her, stopped going to her classroom to walk with her, just completely blanked her. Really mean of me.

I still felt intimidated by her coolness when I saw her years later.

UhOh4321 · 10/05/2018 23:27

I did about 8 years ago when I was in my early 20's and I feel horrible about it now. My friend had serious mental health issues and I was beginning to develop some and could not cope with her problems as well as my own (she put a lot on me). I wish I could go back in time and change how I was :(

NotUmbongoUnchained · 10/05/2018 23:29

Yes. I’m quite brutal when it comes to cutting people out if my life.

HughLauriesStubble · 10/05/2018 23:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

IvorHughJarrs · 10/05/2018 23:34

Yes and I still feel bad but it felt like my only option
This friend was always one who would say bitchy things to me about other friends and I always suspected she would say things about me to others. Over the years she has got worse and I feel like I'm walking on eggshells as I never know what she might say or have said so have just stopped contacting her and not responding
Logically I shouldn't feel guilty as she only contacts me when she wants something so there is always an ulterior motive but I do feel bad

greendale17 · 10/05/2018 23:36

No. I couldn’t ever be that rude

MadMags · 10/05/2018 23:36

Yes. It was a sort of reverse Wendy situation. She was friends with a group of women I only considered acquaintances.

When I grew closer to them I found out that she'd been lying through her teeth about all sorts of things to do with me.

She wasn't worth keeping a friendship with and would have thrived on the drama of a confrontation so I just stopped talking to her then moved away.

TrollTheRespawnJeremy · 10/05/2018 23:37

Yup. Fairly recently. I don't dislike her enough to want to upset her by having a confrontation, instead I am just quietly doing my own thing which she isn't invited to.

I don't feel bad. I was a great friend to have but it wasn't really returned so now I am extracting myself.

Prestonsflowers · 10/05/2018 23:38

Yes, I did. My story about her would be a whole thread on its own.
I do wonder sometimes how she is getting on in life, but not enough to get back in touch.

MadMags · 10/05/2018 23:39

Whydo you ask, OP?

starzig · 10/05/2018 23:40

Yes. She was alcoholic and very dependant and I couldn't be dealing with that any more.

fourandnomore · 10/05/2018 23:41

I've done it a few times, as a last straw and to protect my own mental health after getting sick of poor behaviour towards me.

QueenofWhisperz · 10/05/2018 23:43

yes, I had to. A woman I had befriended told people we knew in common that I was saying terrible things about them. They all started ignoring me and I had no clue as to why; I still don't know what she said--and then one day I caught her and I've never looked back.

I felt terrible; used and absolutely wounded for being as kind as I love being. I love to love people. It makes me happy, and I don't see when people start behaving treacherously. I don't see a purpose in harming people around me, and so I feel like no one would do it to me in the first place. I'm wrong, no one is perfect; I definitely am not.

thefairyfellersmasterstroke · 10/05/2018 23:46

Yes, I did in my late 20s. I'd known her since we were 2 years old, our mums were friends so I suppose it was expected we would be too. We played together, but she was always the jealous type, hated if I got a new toy she didn't have, and would become spiteful, the type to trample on your sandcastle if it was better than hers. She improved a little with age, but the mean streak was always there, then she moved away. We communicated for a while, sometimes phoned, but in one conversation she said something really horrible - not about me, but someone else - and I just thought, "Actually, you've always been a nasty piece of work and I don't want to talk to you ever again". So I didn't. I guess the distance helped.

polkadotwellies · 10/05/2018 23:47

OP are you wanting to ghost someone? Or are being ghosted?

Original poster

DrowningEveryDay · 10/05/2018 23:48

I want to ghost. I feel terrible because the friend did not do anything wrong to me. Just my own insecurity eating away at me.

OP posts:

TinkyWinky40 · 10/05/2018 23:48

Yes. To a whole group of women who actually weren’t friends at all, just a bunch of selfish bitches. They would only message me if I messaged them first, I stopped messaging and didn’t hear from them again so in a way they ghosted me too. Life is too short for such shit.

MadisonAvenue · 10/05/2018 23:51

I had a friend who I used to regularly go to gigs with, due to timings that tickets went on sale I'd always buy them and she'd pay me back, eventually. She'd agree to pay me when she next got paid and then wouldn't have the money because she'd spent it on clothes and expensive make up. It was when she booked a holiday to The Maldives that I realised that she was taking the piss and I was helping to fund her fun lifestyle. I gave her an ultimatum of when I wanted the remaining money she owed me and once I had it I ignored all of her attempts to get I'm touch.

Jezebel101 · 10/05/2018 23:56

Yes. A friend I supported through a divorce and serious illness basically went radio silent when she met a new man. I expect it to some extent but at the time I was going through a terrible time of my own, which she knew.

Then when we got together I realized she wasn't as nice as I had thought, she was passive aggressively manipulating the new man into a situation where she took over raising his kids (he was a widower) to the extent that her own kids moved to their grans because she'd no time for them, and then she exaggerated an illness to frighten him into proposing (after admitting scaring his kids into pressuring him into getting engaged because they thought she'd leave them).

She also launched into a tirade of how selfish a relative of mine was for committing suicide, on the day he committed suicide. I don't care if someone thinks it, your need to express your opinion to traumatized relatives is not more important than their grief.

Then I learned she'd repeated every single confidence I ever told her to her mother and sister, who gossiped all over the place.

No, I don't regret ghosting her, just being gullible enough to think she was decent to begin with.

...and breathe!

AjasLipstick · 11/05/2018 00:14

I did it in secondary school with a friend with whom I had a very unhealthy dynamic.

I was 13 and she was so controlling.

The summer before I turned 14, I failed to turn up faithfully at her house every day over the holidays and just didn't go....she never used to make any effort to call for me but expected me to go to hers daily to hang out.

I took up with another girl and had a great summer...then when school began, I just completely ignored her.

It was the only way I could break free....I was accused of being a bitch by some other girls but they soon got over themselves and my ex friend did have some other minions.

Blessedbethefruitloops · 11/05/2018 00:17

Yes, for my own mental health, she was utterly draining, angry lots and started making up lies, just a very draining relationship.

SheGotBetteDavisEyes · 11/05/2018 00:17

Yes. Someone who I thought was a friend but I gradually learned was a bit of a frenemy. I steer clear of confrontation but her behaviour was starting to upset me.

We're civil, even 'friendly' when we see each other now, but there's no way back to a 'real' friendship.

ShadyLady53 · 11/05/2018 00:20

Yes. Several times.

Once with my best friend because I couldn’t handle her rage and jealousy at everyone around her and then I discovered she was secretly a racist, religion phobic, holocaust denying, anti-feminist, proBrexit Trump supporter who liked and made hateful comments online...I’m a Christian mixed race daughter of a Muslim immigrant so unsurprisingly I struggled to accept her neo-nazism.

Another was a girl who had latched on to me and started being very demanding, expecting lifts and day trips and demanding I do four hour round trips to see her in her new city on my one day off a week. She would constantly vent at me, fly off in temper tantrums at people if she didn’t get her own way, keep referring to how she was on the gifted and talented register at school and so everyone was/is jealous of how she is of such higher intelligence and talent than everyone else (she was in her mid twenties by this point). I was also G&T at school but never felt the need to mention it lol. She never asked me how I was or wished me a Merry Christmas or showed interest in me as a person, it was always all long ranty texts all about her. She would always flake on me or make me late for things. She’d demand I call her on my 20 minute breaks at work and then when I called say “sorry, I’ve just sat down with a cup of tea, you’ll have to call me back when I’ve finished.” She didn’t work but made it seem like I was the one inconveniencing her, She flaked on me over Christmas putting me at great inconvenience (I was working over the festivities and had lots family staying with me) and I was absolutely sick of her neediness and entitlement so I didn’t reply to her texts. After 5 or 6 she didn’t contact me again but in those texts she never once asked how I was or referred to me. They always just writen monologue style.

Another was a very close friend who told me when I was very ill/housebound/told at 27 I’d never be able to work again and one parent had a heart attack at the same time as my grandparent (who lived with me) was dying - “hun, the reason all this is happening to you is because you are such a negative person and you are attracting negative things into your life. If you use The Secret and call upon your angels for help and visualise things being better, they will be.”

She has no idea why I ghosted her and thinks I’m a terrible person.

Twunk · 11/05/2018 00:24

Yes. Only the once and for very good reasons.

To be fair, she did tell me she was very insecure, which I took to mean she needed reassurance... I was wrong, it meant her machinations and manipulation were almost Machiavellian. She put me through hell - and as I’d just moved country and just become a mother, it was a particularly shitty thing to do. So one day I realised I didn’t have to put up with her craziness and I stopped dealing with her. It was an immense weight off my shoulders.