Have you ever ghosted a friend?

[Nessathewelsh]

So cut them off, stopped contacting them or replying to them.

Why did you do it? What was going through your head? Do you regret it?

Had it done to me a couple of times, never really understood why so just curious!

Thanks!

Not ghosted but distanced myself from a close friend whose company I'd stopped enjoying. Her life had headed down a different path to mine, she'd become boring, self centred and attention seeking and I felt the need to spend time with people I had more in common with and liked better.

I reduced contact, said I was busy etc in the hope that the friendship would naturally fade without her being hurt or even noticing. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out like that. She became very persistent which made me feel awkward and want to withdraw even more. Maybe I should've told her straight but that's not as easy as it sounds! Eventually, she got fed up and ghosted me - blocked me on all social media, blanks me if she sees me out and about. Sad as that's not what I wanted to happen and awkward as we share some mutual friends and acquaintances but what can you do?

I would only ghost someone if they'd done something heinous as I think to cut someone out without explanation is cruel otherwise.

Yes, I was good friends with a girl from Uni who got increasingly demanding of my time and finances (always wanting to go on holidays and trips-she earned a lot more then me). I tried to reason with her but she just kept offering me a loan and really couldn’t see what my problem was. It got to the point where I just gave up. I blocked her on social media and changed my number.

A couple of times, but I didn’t mean to. Both times I was going through a really difficult time and withdrew myself from everyone. These two friends gave up making contact and, by the time I was recovered, I was ashamed it had been so long and never got in touch with them again. It’s stupid, I know.

Yes...for different reasons.

The first time was about 10 years ago, a group of 'friends' from university who thought that spiking my drink and getting me to sleep with the only virgin male of the group was a good idea. I actually lived with them too and ended up sofa surfing and living in spare rooms of people from church. I do not regret it...they were not bad people but we were very different and by that point we were already splitting as I was less interested in drinking all night and getting wasted as was getting more into working with children and teens through the church I attended.

The second time was fairly recently...I have reconnected with 1, but feel ashamed and guilty to message any of then others I ghosted. I dont really have a full explanation of why, other than I was struggling with depression and anxiety and couldn't cope with talking to anyone but a very few close friends and family. Because of this I lost one of my oldest friends and only recently found out he's moved away and had a baby...but I don't know how to reach out and apologise because I'm not sure they will want to hear from me...

Yes. She's so completely absorbed in her own chaotic life and bad relationship that I have run out of things to say about them. She calls me and spends hours talking about herself and her bad choices, but only ever asks the most mundane, cursory questions about my life, and if I ever tell her about any issue I might be struggling with, she completely steamrollers me with weird, convoluted "solutions" that would never work, even though she had absolutely no experience or knowledge of the issue at hand. She will not accept any reasons why I can't follow her advice but accuses me of having the wrong attitude.

She also refuses to ever hang up, even when I tell her I have to go tend to my children, she just keeps on fucking talking.

Yes

I guess so. I had recently been diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. I mentioned to her that I couldn't drink because I was on antidepressants, and she told me that I didn't have "real" depression, hers was proper depression and mine was just pretend depression. During the same meet-up, she criticised all my food choices and told me I was going to get cancer because I had milk in my coffee. She also told me that it was my fault that my father was an abusive bully because I was a bad daughter. I made excuses to leave early and then I just kept chickening out of speaking to her again. I didn't mean to end the friendship as such, I was just plagued with suicidal thoughts and feelings of low self-worth and couldn't face her. It wasn't the best way to handle it, obviously.

On the other hand, I tried the slow fade on another friend who was being an absolute jerk to me when I was pregnant, and she just doubled down on her controlling behaviour. I then tried "I just need some space for a while because I'm having a bad pregnancy" and she went completely crazy and sent me loads of abuse, then told everyone we knew that I'd ghosted her. She ditched one of the friends we had in common because that friend refused to take sides, and sent that friend an abusive email saying that not taking her side against me was the same as victim-blaming a rape victim.

So you can't bloody win with some people.

I've just blocked someone on facebook, messenger and my phone. I wouldn't call him a friend as such but he really believed he was, he was messaging me up to three times a day, sometimes everyday. I told him it was too much so he stopped for four days then it started again.
He's autistic but independent, with a very good job. I was willing to be friends but he was getting too much. I do feel bad though.

Yes, it was a very one sided friendship where I helped her out loads and got no support in return. I did a job for her which she agreed to pay me £50 for but she never paid me & kept expecting me to do add on bits for about a year when she had never paid me for the original job.
When I moved house I just never gave her my new address and stopped responding to her messages

I have, she was a good friend for about 3 years but everything and i mean EVERYTHING was all about her, she split up with a LT boyfriend and i was there for her through it all, every single day, never got any sort of appreciation for it but i let it slide because it must have been quite traumatic, i then went on a 2 week holiday with my now exbf and she called me selfish for leaving her (this was 8 months after the break up and she'd found someone new) i was never allowed to leave her again because i was her BEST friend and how dare i do that, then because me and my exbf broke up a short while after she said 'what are you going to do now because you've got no mates because you left everyone for 2 weeks' (i did have friends she just though of herself as my only friend), let it slide yet again but the breaking point was it was her birthday and on the night of going out i came out in a horrific rash, throwing up and generally not feeling well and she called me selfish for not going, i ruined her birthday, i'm a shit mate, i've made her cry, i'm faking being ill because i can't have just started throwing up after being fine all day...... so i just never ever replied to her again! I found out i was 6 weeks pregnant maybe 2 days later so that explained my sudden sickness but i will never explain that to her... She was just so toxic and i did try to explain to her nicely that sometimes what she does and says isn't acceptable but she never listened! So i've been no contact since march and i've felt so much better for it!

Not to someone, but done to me.

A very close school friend. We'd been friends for 30 years, even during a time when she emigrated. When she returned to the uk, we'd telephone every few weeks and although we'd moved to different cities we would meet each school holiday. We were bridesmaids for each other, godmother to each other's children. Her DC's are older than mine, I sent them presents every birthday and for Christmas, graduations! Etc. When we'd meet we'd pick up as if we'd never been apart.
Last time she was in touch it was to let me know her dad had died. I sent a card but couldn't get time off work to attend his funeral. ( teacher; close family only). That was 5 years back.

Then nothing. She isn't in touch with me or my DC's ( her godchildren who have also now grown up, have graduated etc). It's her choice and I respect that but I have no idea why or what I've done, so it seems a bit pointless. I'm still in touch,through fb, with her DC's, my godchildren but have never felt I could put them in a position of explaining what has happened. I phoned her a couple of times and left a message and sent ( after a year or so an fb friends request - she'd just joined ) and nothing to that either.

I feel sad for her and for my DC's. I feel even more sad that she couldn't explain to me what I'd done. I can't apologize, I can't put it right. I can only assume it's because I didn't go to her dad's funeral, but it just wasn't an option in my school.

Yes.

I'm sad it came to it, but there was no alternative and they'd been given a heads up having let me down twice before. Third strike and they were out, as they say, and I felt no need to say yet again what a shit friend they were.

Yes. A really shit friend who had treated me badly over the years, wanted everything on her own terms, constantly mugged me off. I hadn't seen her for a while but invited her to my wedding, she accepted but then didn't turn up and posted on Facebook that she was off on holiday. I just deleted her number after that. No regrets. She's never tried to contact me so presumably she wasn't (ever) bothered.

Also, I find it quite patronising to sit a grown adult down and explain why you don't like them anymore. I would be mortified if that happened to me

Yeah, definitely more mature just to blank them completely...

Yes. Someone I had met as an adult who I was friends with in primary school. We met up a few times but it was clear to me we were very different people and I found her very boring. But she latched on and invited herself in my holidays, weekend trips away etc. But the thing is, not my beach holidays, but my city and hiking tours...and she hated walking and would complain the whole time about the amount of walking we were doing. In the end I just stopped replying to her and meeting up.

Yes. She was instantly very clingy, gushing, making future plans for the friendship. But was also flakey as hell and constantly cancelling litterally 10 minutes after she was supposed to be somewhere to meet. I just left her on unread for long enough, ignored her calls and then eventually blocked her on everything.

Friendship should be effortless. Too little or too much contact is stressful as hell and the last thing I needed in life was more stress.

I did. We weren’t particularly close friends anyway and one day she said something so insulting to me (in front of others too) that I wasn’t interested in having a go at her for it/ seeing if she would apologise. I just cut her out immediately. We still had to see each other in various situations and I just blanked her each time. For a while she tried to ask what was wrong / what she’d done, but I figured that someone who couldn’t work out that insulting someone badly in front of a group of people would upset that person wasn’t someone who I needed in my life. She eventually stopped asking and then fortunately we moved away from each other. Have never regretted it for a second - she didn’t add much to my life anyway!

Had to. She was unhinged at best and I tried to help her too much. When I got dogs abuse from her for refusing to provide a false alibi to Gardaí or lie to her ex boyfriend to pretend she was pregnant I realised there was no hope. Tried to just phase her out, wasn't available when she wanted me, refused to hand over money (she already owed me 7+grand). Total block when she tried to get me to lie for her about something really, really serious.

Yes. Currently doing it unfortunately.

Everything is all about her. She's your best friend and would do loads when she wants but if someone/something better comes along, you'll not hear from her. Till it goes tits up then she'll be back playing the my life is shit, I'm heartbroken card.
She's a complete martyr as well and nobody has ever had a tougher time than her.
I've had to take a massive step back for my own sanity, another friend has as well and my life in general is much better for it.

@funnyfuckers I could have written that post . I didn’t ghost as I said i was limiting contact. After some abusive replies I just didn’t bother to reply again and I feel like a weight has been lifted .

Regarding those that meet the person who ghosted or they ghosted how to you deal where there are mutual friends or social activites ?

yes

my erstwhile best friend is very flaky, she is one of those 'spoons', ME, fibro people. i got really fed up with CONSTANTLY being bailed on. a couple of times she's bailed on plans with me( 'i'm so exhausted/I'm suicidal today sad face sad face') then been tagged on her other friend's fb doing stuff with them. in the past i've had big breaks from her when shit like this has happened, then we've kind of fallen into hanging out together again. this last time i did the same thing, she would text me like ohhhh we needed to hang out it's been soon long so i would suggest stuff and then she either would say yes then bail later, or just say she couldn't do it because she was doing other stuff with other friend/tired from doing stuff with other friend/ 'saving her spoons' to do stuff with other friend, and eventually i just thought, you know what pal, you can stick your spoons up your arse and fuck off while you do it.

i know she wants it to be my fault that we don't hang out any more, she posts all these sad ghost club type memes about hidden illness/mental health problems and 'normal' people not being kind and understanding when you cancel plans or don't feel up to doing things and how horrible it is and how you should always be there for people etc etc etc but i've had a bellyful of it, i go quiet, she contacts me to do stuff, then bails on me. she has plenty of 'spoons' to do stuff when she wants to, always has had. she can fuck off. no regrets.

Sort of. A friend who doesn’t respect boundaries, including the fact that I don’t have time for chatty phone calls unless scheduled in advance. She has WhatsApp but never replies, other than by forwarding those awful New Age wisdom things. When she calla out of the blue, usually at 5pm when the children need feeding, I don’t pick up, but instead send a brief, friendly WhatsApp. She doesn’t get it, so most likely we will never communicate again.

Yes.
We weren't friends for very long but she became very possessive and would actively discourage me from spending time with other friends, she also tried to cause rows with DH and she became really stalkery and always seemed to know where I was and what I was doing. I tried a cooling off period but she got worse so I just stopped replying to her, didn't answer when she came over and blocked her on all social media channels. She still pops up from time to time somewhere trying to say hello but I would never, never speak to her again, she's a dangerous person and a pathological liar.

I'm not sure if this is "ghosting" as such.
I had a male friend who I'd known for a long time. We ended up living at opposite ends of the country but would visit each other, message regularly etc. When I met my now DH they got on well and became friends. But when we got engaged things changed, he didn't seem happy for us even though he was seemingly in a good place, living with his GF etc. Every time we saw him he would drink too much and become obnoxious or really, really emotional. I could never enjoy myself at social gatherings if he was there as he would corner me wanting to have really long, deep, serious conversations while everyone else was mingling and having fun. Then on one occasion (I think it was my birthday) he had too much to drink and told DH's brother that he had a "passionate fling" with me at university (which was 100% not true!) and that things were "still complicated" between us...first I'd heard of it! I had always seen our friendship as very much a brother/sister type relationship. We didn't find out he'd said this until DH's brother (who knew it was nonsense) mentioned it a couple of weeks later. Fortunately DH didn't believe a word of it. We didn't see him then until our wedding where he got really angry with one of DH's friends at the evening reception, actually squared up to him, which was totally out of character. Apparently this was in response to the friend speculating that DH and I would probably start a family soon. Neither DH or I actually witnessed this so only found out a few weeks later and it seemed too late to 'confront' him about it by then.
After that we were "busy" the next couple of times he wanted to visit us...not a lie exactly, we did have a lot going on with work and then I had a complicated pregnancy where I was quite ill. I didn't "blank him" exactly, but I didn't make myself available when he informed us he'd be "in the area" and I was increasingly late replying to messages (I just didn't know what to say to him to be honest) until eventually the messages and the requests to visit us stopped coming. I know I didn't handle it brilliantly but I couldn't be arsed with a big confrontation which inevitably would have resulted in him being very intense and emotional (he's just that sort of person) and wouldn't actually change the fact DH and I just felt too awkward staying friends with him and his GF due to his behaviour.

Yes I have, but it was because I needed time alone to deal with a sad event.
I felt the friend was belittling my feelings by constantly telling me to "put a positive spin on it" or "There is no need for negativity" which was highly inappropriate in the circumstances.
I needed time to grieve and she wasn't allowing me to do that.
Maybe she was "trying to cheer me up" but I just needed space.
I do regret it now and in normal circumstances I wouldn't do that.