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.

I disagree. I did say 'some' people. She may have reached a point in her life where she can't handle anything negative, she can't offer any support, she wants light, superficial (for want of a better word), easy, fun, friendships. Ours was always fun but when you're very close to someone you naturally hear about the difficulties in their life. Supporting friends through hard times is something that I've always felt privileged to do. Maybe she just can't handle anything like that anymore and that's absolutely her right but I don't think ghosting is the way to go about it.

I think there's a middle ground though. You could tactfully tell someone that you don't want to be their friend anymore without getting too personal. You could even block them once you've said it (if you were worried it would blow up).

We've all had relationship breakups. You don't ghost a partner (unless they're absusive/a danger). You can gently let someone down.

Guess it depends on the type of support being asked for and how long it goes on for? There has to be some balance in a friendship.

You can gently let someone down.

Fading away, as you said she was doing for the last two years is one way of gently letting someone down.

It’s not fading away though if you suddenly start ignoring them after previous recent conversations where things were normal. Thats what ghosting is. If communication naturally stalls from both parties then that’s not ghosting, it’s mutual drifting apart. Suddenly ignoring someone when you’ve been communicating regularly is incredibly hurtful and it’s really not hard at all to simply say, I need some space right now as I’m dealing with stuff.

I've been in that position OP- and to be honest in your friends position as well- and it hurts. But oftentimes it's nothing you have done as such.

People often ghost because fade away isn’t working.

It’s not fading away though if you suddenly start ignoring them after previous recent conversations where things were normal.

I'm just reiterating the OP's own words. Her friend was fading over the last two years, and now has progressed to outright ghosting.

By the sounds of it, things haven't been normal for a while.

"There's nothing I can pinpoint but after 2 years of slowly fading out of my life she's now cut me off."

I imagine the friend would hope the OP would take the hint with the fadeaway but he/she didn’t do the friend ghosted.

For me there was no fade just a cliff edge

But maybe the fade away isn't working because the friend genuinely loves and cares and wants to make the friendship work so instead of ghosting just be an adult and have the difficult conversation.

I did this to a friend as the friendship had been very negative for a number of years. She was rude about my other friends, critical of me and not able to take any responsibility for her own actions. I did try and talk to her several times but she would just tell me it was all coming from me and wouldn’t take any responsibility herself, In the end she let me down when I was really ill and it was a relief not to see her anymore. I’ve never missed her and it has given me space for other friends.

Or you could, you know, just say the friendship isn't working any more, wish them well and say goodbye. Its not hard, except for the craven.

Ghosting is pretty awful. However, when I was dumped by my two best friends of 15 years (been at school together, gone on holidays together, really really close), they took me to a restaurant to tell me that they didn’t want to see me anymore, that I’d become boring (my mother had died in my early 20s and I suffered a period of severe depression, but I thought I’d been very careful to keep it separate and still tried to go out to have fun and certainly didn’t offload on them, I’m not sure if they had even realised). It was horrendous, I was completely blindsided and starting crying and then they were angry with me for embarrassing them. It was honestly like going through another bereavement. My closest friends didn’t want to know me any more, I thought I must be a horrendous person.

With close on another 15 years of processing, I can see we were quite different people. I also was the single, convenient friend, always available to go places with them or be there if they fancied meeting up. I then had met my DP, now my DH, and suddenly didn’t have as much time or inclination to go across London to a party at the last minute, for example (maybe that’s why I was boring!). I’ve also been diagnosed with autism, which maybe explains why I didn’t read signs of discomfort earlier, or assumed that the friendship would go on forever without appreciating that times and circumstances change. However it still hurts that it ended and I’ve lost a huge chunk of shared history. I hear they are still very close too, which also hurts.

Just mentioning to say that although ghosting hurts, so can the direct approach - rather than thinking, oh maybe something is happening in their life that means they don’t have time for me, being told exactly why you’re no longer wanted is pretty fucking brutal as well.

Surely it is about balance. A good friend does support through the tough times. But if that tough time has been going on for 2 years and every time you talk it's just negativity because you can't 'fake being well' then that is incredibly draining. Friends are just that, friends. They are not therapists.

That sounds incredibly painful too. Thankyou for sharing it, it does help seeing a different perspective.

Taking you out and telling you like that was really brutal and the opposite of sensitive.

I've also done that with a very close friend. I've moved back to my home area a few years ago, and when though we were very close growing up and maintained contact as I lived abroad for many years.

In my case, i saw that we'd developed in very different ways. Her sectarian politics (NI) had become more extreme. I just don't like it, it's not something I'm comfortable with.

It's always for a reason, you just don't know. Sometimes the reason is best left unsaid. It's what she wants to do. You need to accept she can do that.

It is possible that in at least some of these cases there is something severely amiss with the ghosted. My mother has bipolar disorder and will not rely to friends calls or messages for months or years if she is too depressed. They must feel they are being ghosted. Sometimes if manic she will cause a fall out and then cut someone off. It might be several cycles later that she regrets it but by then it is often too late. Illnesses like this can develop later in life. My mum was in her mid to late 40s.

Sorry above I meant “with the ghoster” not the ghosted.

I've been left behind and left others behind.

she can't handle anything negative, she can't offer any support, she wants light, superficial (for want of a better word), easy, fun, friendships

You keep doing this, putting this false binary that does the character assassination that you said was unneeded. You can assume the worst of her if it makes you feel better in your grief, but it doesn't change that you don't know this is true and I think does more harm to you.

Someone who may be going through a hard time may also not have the bandwidth for the 'fun easy' friendships either. When I was going through my hell years of family members with terminal illnesses and funeral planning, I lost some friends, but I also left people behind because I didn't have any mindspace or energy and when I resurfaced from the fog of it, they'd moved on or we'd both changed so much that there wasn't anything or I realized that weren't actually good for me. Lack of energy and getting clarity that they were causing me more harm than good are the main reasons I've left others behind - and I'm aware I've likely been that for others even when neither of us have done anything 'wrong' other than leaving each other feeling worse rather than better.

It may be cruel, but in assuming she can only take 'easy' friendships which, as you have so little to go on, you don't have much evidence for other than you seem to want her to be this. Uncertainty is painful, but getting comfortable is the way we move on from these pains of life. In 30 years, many things would have changed about you both, and this is part of that.

I think lots of women simply can not handle conflict so just ghost instead. I mean in a long friendship why not just say I don't like you going on about this all the time, etc. Instead because of your own issues you just ghost.

I left a 35 year friendship recently. It was completely one sided, I'd had enough. I loved her and her personality, but her flakiness was unreal. She asked to bring her extended family to my wedding, I agreed and paid for extra catering. She and her family did not show up. No card/present/text message, nothing at all. 1 year later back in contact, as if nothings happened?! Then gets married, with our lovely shared friend on the guest list! Our friend felt awful because she asked if I wanted to share the driving, and stay over?! I was excluded. I finally realised what a fucking bitch she actually is, and ghosted her. I have lovely and well mannered friends, who are very kind to me. I don't need to hang onto someone, just because I've known her for a long time.

I "ghosted" on a 25 year friendship with a man because he cheated on his wife and was gaslighting her and being generally quite abusive, plus kept continually bringing up the fact that he and I had slept together drunkenly many years before. It messed with my head and I couldn't side against his poor wife, he absolutely destroyed her as a person. I miss him from the time when we clicked, but I don't think I can get on board with who he is and what he did. And I didn't feel I needed to explain further to him apart from the "that's disgusting, what an awful thing to have done, why are you telling me like you expect sympathy?" conversation we had. Maybe it's shitty. Maybe. But is there anything at all that might be at odds with your friend's morals or way of life that has made her uncomfortable in your company?

You are right @LolaMoon and I do agree that I would and do make time for friends who have had hellish circumstances or genuine problems. And in the past i've been way too generous with my symptahy for pretty jeffing trivial problems, while i had severe problems we never even touched on because friends were all MeMeMe.

I think what I can no longer tolerate is the friends who look for the bad in life, the drama and upsets and then use meet ups to offload about those, rather than focus on having fun together as a way to alleviate the load. The friends who assume that every grievance or bump in the road they;ve experienced deserved someone else's undivided attention without even realising that everyone in the world has stresses and problems. We just do't all offload all the time.