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!

Yup, she wanted to be my closest friend and would message constantly. She would be very bitchy about people and then nice to their faces and when I ran into her and her sister while they were out once, realised that their meaningful looks were because she was doing the same to me. Final straw was realising she and her family were raging racists (came back from holiday and had her children describing their fun to me - they used the term ‘darkies’ and this was about 6 years ago )

Reduced contact rather than completely ghosted.

It was fine when my DCs were younger (compliant) although she had a track record for being blunt/borderline rude and had alienated a lot of other people.

Then she started using me for childcare. I called a halt to that and took one step back.

The second strike was when she continued to insist on meeting with our DCs, once my DCs were old enough to have a voice and opinion (that being that they found her DCs challenging at best, destructive at worst, and didn’t want to spend any time with them).

We have SEN in the mix and she is very intolerant of those, so I have to put my DCs first. I don’t think I’d ever have the balls to say it to her face though.

Yes because sometimes when someone’s hurt you over something so painful to discuss and you know you will never ever fix things again
That’s it

Probably better than maintaining a fake veneer around them yet silently wishing them bad

Sort of.

One - I’ve completely stopped initiating contact because I was fed up of being the only one to do so. No regrets.

Another - again, I have cut off almost entirely because I cannot be near her abusive husband and I won’t support their benefit fraud. (Yes I’ve reported it).

I ghosted a friend who was very self-centred could not read social cues. At all.

Our conversations would consist of endless laundry lists of what she had been doing with no attempt whatsoever to reciprocate.

We were friends when I was living overseas and to be brutal I needed all the friends I could get. When I returned home I resented the amount of time I was expected to devote to her.

She would phone in the evenings when she knew I had a full time job and a small child and expect to have hour-long catch-ups which basically consisted of her moaning on about her dating and work problems etc.

I would drop increasingly unsubtle hints that I had to get off the phone and she would just bulldoze on as if I hadn't said anything.

It got to the point where I just physically didn't have time for it so I just stopped picking up the phone or returning texts. Thankfully she lives in a different country so its rarely an issue.

I still feel mildly guilty about it but I also think if a grown adult makes no attempt whatsoever to think about other people's needs and circumstances and ploughs on regardless there comes a point where you need to put yourself first.

I didn't ever feel the need to tell her because I find generally people like this are not sufficiently self aware to admit their part in this.

Yes and no, really. I had a friend who knew mainly online and she clearly viewed that friendship quite differently from me and I had to reduce online contact because she wanted us to be closer friends in real life than I think would really have worked - essentially we had a shared interest in a particular thing and I drifted away from that while she didn't, and we didn't have a huge amount else in common. I just scaled back a lot on messages and also declined a few invites to real-life things (she lives in a different part of the country to me). She is quite sensitive and I just felt that a gradual scaling back was kinder than me saying 'You know, we're really just online acquaintances and this friendship isn't what you think it is.'

I also had a friend who I did the opposite of ghosting to - she was very intense and it was completely suffocating and I said 'OK, you know what? This is too much pressure, you want far too much of me and I can't do this, sorry.' It might actually have been better to ghost her as she went absolutely mad and I had to block her across all social media platforms.

Iv had it done to me.by a work colleague and friend who was furious that i didnt agree with the affair she was having and then i had the audacity to feel sorry for her DH when he found naked pics of her and the guy.

Iv done it to a friend a started secondary school with.I was under her thumb because I was shy and introvert, Id come from a small friendly junior school to this huge place knowing nobody, so i guess i was grateful for the friendship. I had years of her spitefullness and bullying, She started smoking and then told me i was childish because i didnt smoke,,,yeah right,, We all had to wear blue and white checked dresses in the summer as part of the uniform,Mine were made up by a dressmaker .She told me that everyone would laugh at me because my dresses were awful. But all the other girls loved them.And she hated that
We lost contact years ago and she went to live abroad, Now she is back living in the next village.Her DH has asked me to contact her to meet up,but theres no chance im having that load of crap again.
So i guess Im ghosting in advance really

Do you know what, I have realised literally as I’ve idly read this thread, that I have been ghosted or I’ve ghosted someone. Not sure which. Is there a term for joint ghosted ?
No fall out. No issues. No nothing. I cancelled her coming to lunch couple of weeks before Xmas 2017 (yes really! That long ago 😂) as I had a chest infection and her response was all lovely and chatty and have a wonderful
Xmas speak soon blah blah
And I was so ill over Xmas, parents split up, had a new puppy etc etc etc and yeah. Never heard from her again. In about the April 2018 I saw her in town with her mum, I was sooo pleased to see her, ran over, hugged her and said OMG how’s
It been so long how are you all chat chat chat and she was awkward

I walked away thinking ohhh weird. And that’s it. No contact either way since.

Oddly her and my dh bumped into each other and Hers commented that we really should make
up as we’d beeb friends for so long .... I put dh straight and said please let him know if
You see him again that us ‘falling out’ is news to me!
So so
Weird
I was super fond of her, enjoyed our times together but always kind of half sighed at the thought of
Meeting her as she was hard work and her teen dds were Urgh.

Yes, I've ghosted a friend.

She came to stay at our place in a different country from the one we had met in. The plan was for her to use our home as a jumping-off point for travel and finding herself I suppose.

There was no travel, and very little leaving the house at all. It took two weeks for her to go to the supermarket alone, 5 mins walk away.

I had a young and difficult baby and some serious troubles with an off-the-rails teen so apart from gently enquiring if my friend had any future plans after 2 months of her living with us I didn't have any energy left over.

When she eventually left, grudgingly I feel, I never replied to her followup messages.

A couple of years later she sent me a ranty message with some pretty bad language. I didn't reply to those either but I suppose I understand why she felt that way.

Ghosting is the coward's way out, no doubt. In my case it happened when I just couldn't summon the energy to have an hours-long conversation about why I needed to withdraw. And it really would have gone on for hours, with lots of melodrama involved

I got ghosted once by two women
(Our kids in the same class where friends)
I looked after ones kid while she was in labour
I had the others kid while she was ill and took him home from school
every night for 3 months
I also had the kids while they where shagging around behind their fellas backs and just tried to do as much as I could for them cos ‘that’s what friends do for each other’ even tho I had my kids too (didn’t know about the shagging til later)
Both borrowed money and never paid it back even tho their blokes are on good money
I’d feed their kids even tho I was a single mum on benefits at the time
They both hanged up on me (I was bloody vulnerable after getting out of an abusive relationship) and everything I did was wrong-from my parenting to the colour I painted my kitchen
Both tried to get me to borrow money ‘to better my life’ even tho I couldn’t afford to pay it back
Every choice I made had to be ran past them or they’d tell me off
Would brag about what family had bought their kids-and then go mental at me for spending any money on my lot-right down to school shoes
Not once did they take my kids or even help in any way just bossed me around and made my life hell
My dd has a birthday and neither of these women showed up to it and then went on to make my life hell at the school gates-I tried to ignore it and they ramped it up but refused to speak to me
I honestly think it’s when I started to grow a mind of my own and said ‘no’ which caused them to turn on me and ghost me
i swear one is a narc and the other a sheep

Yes, sort of. It was someone I met and got chatting with. We got quite friendly quickly. I was splitting up with husband and she had her own issues and we would meet up once a week and have a few drinks and compare stories of misery.

Then it started to get odd. She was neglecting her dogs and I popped in a few times to let them out for her but it was almost impossible to get them back in from the garden. She was struggling financially and making some pretty crazy decisions. She began to talk more and more about injuries / pain / illnesses. It felt really manic and escalating. I reduced contact and she eventually posted on facebook to say she was in hospital, taking huge amounts of morphine and paralysed. I offered to visit and she said she wasn't in the right place for people at that time. I breathed a big sigh of relief.

Around the same time I moved house and changed my mobile (she knew the house move was on the cards). I didn't reach out to her and didn't hear from her. Some weeks later I got a messenger message saying she was going bankrupt and in a wheelchair and she wanted to meet up. I ignored it. A few days later I got a crazed rant about my leaving her when she needed it most. Perhaps she was right but it was a pretty casual friendship, I now lived an hour away and to be honest I didn't believe the wheelchair stuff and the bankruptcy was clearly self inflicted. I blocked her. I don't feel bad.

I have. She was only interested in herself and our friendship was a one way street, when it was to do with her we could get together (but only if I made the effort to make the arrangements) and she was always the centre of attention. We only had a friendship if I made the effort, so I stopped.

A couple of times. One is a girl who sat on a couple hundred million dollar wealth complaining about her sister who married into a nine hundred million dollar worth family and there I was earning average UK salary at the time and struggling. She had no empathy, and her husband is an arse as well. She cancelled on me a few times to hang out with socialites. And lunch with her consisted of her not paying attention to anything I said, rather she looked around to see any rich people she knew. And she was tight as fuck! I have no regret.

Yes

Someone who was just so constantly vile to be around - nothing good to say about anyone, lies about anyone and everyone - even a 4 year old with terminal cancer, impossible to reason with. She was my next door neighbour and our fence was only 4ft - every time I went in the garden she would start talking to me and slagging everyone off. But she plays the victim all the time, nothing is ever her fault.

I simply work up one morning and thought I do not have to listen to this - I am a grown adult and can choose to no longer have her part of my life. So I did

Never regretted it - she made friends with the neighbour the other side and 18 months later that neighbour also cut her out of her life totally.

Even if I had wanted to tell her why I no longer wanted her in my life it would have made no difference - she would still be denying she had ever done anything wrong - so I simply saved myself the grief.

I ghosted my dad. I realised I was the only one initiating contact so one day I just stopped texting/calling. It’s been 6 years now since I’ve heard from him.

🎻

Yes one friend when I saw the appalling way she was treating a mutual friend.

She always had a habit of using our mutual friends good nature to her advantage, but when friend’s husband was terminally ill she got worse.

She made a constant nuisance of herself and then bragged that she was the one “keeping friend busy”.

She and friend went to a night out and was meant to be staying over, but friends husband took a turn so she had to go home. The one I ghosted actually bitched about being “abandoned” even though she was only 10 mins from her flat!

She then behaved abominably around the funeral. The night before the funeral she invited the friends who were travelling to dinner with her. She told everyone mutual friend had told her she wasn’t up to having everyone popping by. This was an outright lie and it emerged about a month later mutual friend was quite hurt that none of us popped in.

On the day of the funeral she turned up in the most inappropriate outfit (hi-lo dress where the hi was extremely high and she flashed her knickers twice at the wake getting on and off a bar stool).

The final straw for me was when she complained that mutual friend’s sister and cousin were having a rota to stay with her because she believe that mutual friend would be better off if she moved in for a while. She had it all planned out. She commented that it would be an ideal chance for her to save so she was planning sponging.

The last time I seen her she invited me to an event and I said I couldn’t go, then said I’ll let you know if I’m free when she asked when suited for something else and never spoke to her again.

Yes I have. I’m not normally the type. Developed a friendship with a mum at school. She’s very bolshy, strong opinions and able to handle herself. We bonded as both of us had children with Sen at the school. My dc suffered a lot of serious discrimination. So serious it went to court. She backed me was utterly vehement (to the point of obsession) that I should go public, I should destroy them that when the time came she would take them down etc etc (her son didn’t have the experience we did she just didn’t like hearing and was in denial around certain elements of his special needs). When the time came and a review by the governors and LA came around she didn’t want to speak up. Having her push and push me to take action when the time came she wanted me to do it all and didn't want to do anything. I felt used to a degree and also felt that she was full of hot air. We both believed in the cause but she decided to do nothing. In the end I distanced myself as I felt hurt, let down and used. I wouldn’t normally do it to someone as I’m quite shy but i didn’t want a confrontation.

Yes I've ghosted friends and partners before...only due to extreme dislike that has developed after a long time and repeat offences. Usually my mind is made up and I no longer care about them therefore I don't waste my time on an explanation, I also try to keep my life drama free so again, not gonna have the chat. It's like when you encounter something unpleasant and you just really want to get rid asap?

Yes. I was getting pissed of with being used.

I ghosted a friend. I lived with her for a year and she destroyed my mental health.
She would constantly run me down, even waking me in the middle of the night to do so. Once she came into my room in the middle of the night and turned on my light to look at photos on my wall. She commented on how I was pretty when I was younger but it would have been better for me to have been pretty now. Another time to tell me how she had decided I should save up for breast implants as I was out of proportion.
Once I moved out I blocked her number, deleted her from social media and never spoke to her again. She managed to call my mum who went off on her. She apparently was shocked and had no idea what she had been like towards me. This was about 10 years ago. A couple of years ago she messaged me a couple of times on fb but I ignored and blocked. No regrets about ghosting her, I only wish I had never met her and lived with her.

I’ve phased people out, mostly because they were bad for my mental health.

I've been on both sides of this.

Was ghosted by my best friend of a few years (not actually a crazy long time), completely justifiably as I was a wreck - possessive, controlling, and would actually ghost her myself sometimes as and when I saw fit. I ran into her socially and we had a brief catchup but it actually made me feel quite sad. I'm in a much better place now than I was then and I'd love to sit down with her and apologise for how awful I was but I doubt she cares, and plus, I think the whole point of being ghosted is to avoid that conversation isn't it? It's just like an emergency exit button.

I had a friendship with someone for many years which would pick up again about every 18 months or so and we'd be very close friends for a few months and then contact would drop and then pick back up again and resume from where we'd left off. Nothing too strange in that, a lot of adults have friendships like that when they have their own lives. However last time she text me (probably the tail end of last year), I just didn't reply. I think it was one of those situations where I saw it whilst I was busy and thought "I must reply to that later", then a week went by, then a month and before I knew it it would've been too awkward to pick it up again. We've not been in touch since, although I wouldn't be shocked if it picks up again. She has social media but very rarely uses it, but I am friends on Facebook with one of her closest friends and, judging by his posts featuring her, she's doing absolutely fine!

Mixed feelings on the "pulling away from people you always have to make the effort with" front. I did something like this quite recently to someone I always felt I had to make the effort with and, rather surprisingly, he picked up the slack after about a week of no contact, leaving me feeling rather silly for pulling my little stunt in the first place

I stopped contacting my lifelong (50 years or so) friend last year. My sister died suddenly and I was devastated .... her total lack of support spoke volumes and changed my opinion of her. I can’t move past that.

Yes, happy to ghost anyone who ends up revealing themselves as a constant gossip or generally just people who show a pattern of behaviour that suggests they aren’t very nice to their friends.