To think that ghosting a 30 year friendship is really fucking cruel

[Mumsfret1976]

I'm in the process of being ghosted from a very dear friend. Its so painful, I've spent months replaying conversations, things I could have said or done wrong. I've always done my best to be a good friend. Always been there to listen, to care. Always been interested in her DC. There's nothing I can pinpoint but after 2 years of slowly fading out of my life she's now cut me off.

I'm just left feeling confusing and hurt. I know it's out of my hands, I can't make someone want to be my friend anymore but she meant a lot to me. Its also come at a time of my own ill health and my dad's cancer diagnosis. She doesn't know about my Dad, I didn't want her to feel obliged to stay in my life if she didn't want to and she obviously doesn't.

Has this happened to anyone else? How did you get over it? I do have a couple of others friends and DH, DC and my parents so I'm not on my own but no one will ever replace her.

OP have you actually seen her and talked to her in person ?
I have ghosted a very long standing friend, and also been ghosted myself.
The friend I ghosted- I felt increasingly taken for granted, to me she was a really special friend, but I felt generally not valued. There were lots of small things that mounted up rather than one big thing, and if I had dealt with them better it might not have blown up. I deeply regret the ghosting. It wasn’t actually intended, I just got more cross, didn’t reply to messages, and then had left it all so long that I didn’t know how to resolve it even though I really missed her. After a couple of years or so she got in touch, we had a long talk, she said how she had felt (very upset), I apologised for the stupid way I had dealt with it , we moved on and thankfully we are friends still, many years later.
The friend who ghosted me literally just dropped me, I had been a supportive friend to her during a break up, but when I was going through a really rough time she stopped all contact. She came to collect something she had lent to me, but otherwise I didn’t see her again. She told a mutual friend that she couldn’t cope with me having a serious problem. That did hurt, as I hadn’t actually leant on her at all, I was dealing with a lot and I was sad, and I wasn’t calling anyone and talking about it. I have no idea how she is now, she moved away and I don’t hear anything of her. I don’t have any ill will towards her, I can see that she always was a fair weather friend.

In your place OP, after so many years of friendship, I would put some effort into finding out what has gone awry. Sometimes it can be a complete misunderstanding. I thought my friend wasn’t bothered about me really, but she was very overloaded at the time, in a way that I hadn’t been aware of.

No, I've asked and I just get ignored.

I think this is a perfectly sensible idea. Who knows when you are in your 60's you might feel different again. There's nothing to say you have to go gung-ho into the social scene.

It’s happened to me once, j still think about it and it was 20 years ago.
The person was a good friend- we had been through a lot together - uni, travels, and had possibly drifted a bit, but when I got no response to messages that was the end.
Losing contact or letting a friendship drift is different- that’s mutual really - but not replying to messages and ghosting is not. Plus you never know if you’ve done something inadvertently offensive or they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.,