To not want to reconnect with estranged friend?

[ThePensivePig]

Long story, sorry....

For 10+ years, I was very good friends with a woman who lived in another part of the UK. We met online and we just clicked. We enjoyed years of enjoyable friendship, meeting up 2-3 times a year in person and chatting every day on the phone.

I supported my friend through an unpleasant divorce and the death of both parents and she helped me when I had any ups and downs. Over time, she became close to my husband and children and I considered her to be the sister I'd never had.

Things became difficult when I took a more senior job. It was a massive stretch and I struggled to manage a demanding role alongside a young family. My mental health began to suffer and I definitely leaned on my friend. She was initially supportive, until one day, out of the blue, she told me she needed to take a step back. This 'step back' involved us going no contact for a while. She didn't explain why, just said she needed a complete break.

I really struggled with the no contact thing. To go from daily contact to nothing at all felt awful and I was bereft. In my unwell state, I panicked and assumed I must have done something terrible to upset her. I ignored the no contact request and asked (begged, in fact) to be given a second chance, asked why I was being pushed out and so on. My friend responded once to say I'd done nothing wrong and that it was to do with her issues (which she didn't want to discuss at that time). Then silence.

Silence that lasted a decade.

In the meantime, I had a breakdown, lost my job and struggled to cope. I became severely mentally ill, was sectioned twice as my life was at serious risk. It took me YEARS to recover and although I'll never be the way I was before my breakdown, things are better now.

My former friend has recently been in touch by email. She says she wants to re-establish contact with a view to potentially building our relationship again.

AIBU to say 'no thank you' and continue with my life as it is? I'll always love my friend and understandably I'm curious as to why she's got in touch now. Having said that, I've worked hard to regain my sanity and don't want to revisit that awful time in my life. Could I ever get past the fact she ditched me at my most vulnerable?

Any thoughts please?

@OlivePinkSky thanks, I’m doing much better. And found some better friends! I hope you too are doing better

And what was stopping her from actually speaking to her friend, in an adult, mature manner? Once in 10 years?

I am very sorry for what you went through op but super pleased you are in a much better place .

I am going to give a slightly different perspective on this . I've had a very long term friendship with a similar set up to your previous . We both supported each other through various challenges of life , mutually . Sometime last year, my friend was going through an Incredible difficult time in her marriage , career and relationship with her siblings . I really tried to support her but it got incredibly difficult and taxing of my emotions . Her dh recommended some form of intervention via therapy which she had one session and decided it wasn't for her so continued to rely on me heavily. I found it harder and harder to support as I too had a young family and am even more demanding job than she did - I was working 60 hours a week whilst trying to juggle being mom ,wife , sister and friend . At one point it all got a bit too much for me . I was on the phone with her for hours every single day, she constantly messaged me throughout the day and I was caught on my phone at work on several occasions. I was overwhelmed as she was very down and obviously quite negative and having unhappy .

I nicely told her that I needed to take a step back but I lied about why as I didn't want to hurt her feelings . I said I too was going through a difficult time . She was quite pissed off to say the least and stopped messaging me.
It took a lot to win her back but she was forgiving and we eventually did rekindle our friendship.

My point is that - sometimes it's incredibly difficult for the other person . It's not that I didn't care - it was actually taking a toll on my life , my mood and my soul. She needed professional help and I couldn't have helped her .

Op you sounded like you too were also in a very bad place and that's a very difficult problem for your friend to have been able to help you navigate through . I'm sure she didn't give up on you immediately but eventually it becomes hard if the unhappy person isn't seeking professional help.

I'd talk to her and find out why she had to take a step back - she probably has very understanding reasons for doing so.

That’s not like OP’s situation.

and I would be very unimpressed if a friend behaved towards me like yours did over not sharing something ASAP, as if we were 14 yo

Nah don't even respond to her email. She didn't give a toss about you for 10 bloody years! Now something's possessed her that she wants to contact you. You've already moved on and you don't need her in your life.
I had something similar with a so called friend. This was after we'd just returned from holiday. There were some things I know irritated her about me during the holiday (fair enough as I felt irritated with her too) but she cut me off very abruptly, without any explanation. When I asked what's happened she said she's taking a break. Then nothing for about 2 months, suddenly she calls and texts saying she's done with her break and asking to resume the friendship. No apology, no nothing. Long story short, we didn't. And better that way, because I understood then, when she gets peeved she just ditches people at a drop of a hat. She had form for it too, there were others she'd bad-mouthed to me, who she'd cut off similarly (before our fall out).

No fucking way does she deserve another chance

A few posters have mentioned that the gap was 10 years but I can't see anywhere where this has been mentioned by the op. Op can you clarify whether the gap was actually 10 years ?

what happened to you was hellish but I cannot imagine what you were doing and saying in the run up to it all?

You may have been a huge well not burden but similar to a burden. Friends are great but they are not mental health professionals- maybe she could foresee you were going slightly mentally unwell and didn’t know how to deal with you or just couldn’t handle the stress of it all.

OP says: "Silence that lasted a decade."

@Stravaig thank you for clarifying

She showed you who she is; believe her.

She doesn’t deserve another chance and the likelihood of her repeating her crappy behaviour is high. You can ignore her, or send a brief message such as “You treated me appallingly and I have no desire to rekindle any sort of acquaintance with you. Please do not contact me again.” And then block her after you’ve sent it.

A very good friend did this to me, then got in contact after eight years. I dithered for ages about whether to respond but eventually, I decided that I'd already mourned the friendship. i would never trust her as freely as I had previously, so would always be waiting for signs that she was off again. And I just didn't need that level of drama.

So I haven't responded and I've made peace with that.

I guess just ponder and decide what YOU want, I considered whether to reply for two years and finally decided that fore, we were done.

I think we are often conditioned into thinking that to 'forgive and forget ' is the best path to follow, but by doing this we are only allowing our own pain to be invalidated and minimised. She won't have a plausible reason for turning her back on you, she was just a shitty friend. Good on you for getting through such a difficult time OP. It can't have been easy, especially with so little support from people you thought you could trust.

‘thank you, but I don’t want to get back in touch. I don’t owe you an explanation but I will. The past 10 years have been very tough ones for me, and I no longer have the resilience I once had. I miss what we once had, and have for ten years, but I owe it to my mental health to not let someone who has disappeared on me with no explanation before back into my life. I hope you’re happy and doing well these days.’

I don't know enough to tell you what I think you should do, OP, but I went through something very similar - an incredibly close friend who suddenly ditched me and didn't want to explain why - and after about five years she emailed and asked to get back in touch and I said that I thought it was too late; that she'd hurt me too badly. But about a year later she followed me on Twitter and I eventually followed her back and gradually started to remember how much fun she was. So we got cautiously back in touch and now we have a more distant, but still loving, relationship, and she still makes me laugh. So my view is that you have the right to take as long as you like to feel ready to talk to her again, but if the time comes when you do, and you feel she still wants to, you should. You can avoid her hurting you again by avoiding the intensity of your previous connection, but that doesn't mean you can't find a way to revisit the good parts. Good luck!

A very close friend of mine ghosted me two years ago. No-one would ever know but that friendship meant so much to me that I still cry about losing it sometimes when I am alone. I hope I don't always miss her.

Have you seen the film the Reader? I saw it recently and could completely understand the inability to be close again to someone who has hurt you so much.

In the unlikely event that my ex friend got back in touch I know I could never trust her again so wouldn't respond.

It hurts though. I definitely leaned too heavily on my friend and went through some tough times that I opened up to my friend about. I will always wonder if I became someone she dreaded to be around and so she ghosted me.

Yup. No two ways about it, it was an utterly shitty thing to do. Leave her to stew in her regrets.

Please protect your mental health recovery by ignoring this woman and blocking her on social media if she attempts contact. You have proved what a strong, resilient individual that you are to have coped with so much. Your former friend maybe reaching out as she has hit upon a crisis, or been abandoned by other people who have seen her for what she is. Avoid like the plague, you managed a decade without her. She had every right to step away, but ghosting someone in distress is just cruel and exposes her as a fair-weathered friend.

Some of these replies are batshit partly because people are misreading the OP, I think. The serious mental illness, breakdown, and sectionings happened, as I read it, after the friendship had ended, not before. If so, the friend presumably knew about none of it. Before that, it was a mutually-supportive, if very intense, friendship. The OP says her friend had both parents die and a nasty divorce and that the friend supported her through her own ‘ups and downs’. Things only started to unravel once the OP got a new job.

Obviously the OP should not reconnect with the friend unless she wants to, but what the OP describes sounds like an unhealthily co-dependent relationship between two fragile people who had a lot to deal with. I don’t see the point of demonising the friend. We obviously only know what the OP has told us about the dynamic, but by her own account the friend was doubly bereaved and divorced. Which of us could say, hand on heart, we could deal with that AND support a friend who is having her own struggles with daily phone calls?

Wow
No op.
She didnt push you out at your most vulnerable . She chose to focus on herself and you dont know the backstory.

Now AFTER your friendship ended, your life started to fall apart. But you decided that you'll blame her for not being there for you as you hold on to resentment and being petty

Her coming back in your life could be amazing. But you are not even willing to do that because you are being petty.

You have no clue what happened to her. What if she's been through in a decade of hell and could basely uphold her own mental health.

At least give her a chance. Hear her out. You can always still pull away later if you wanted. But dont say no merely because she left you 10 years ago and you blame her for not being there for you, eventhough you were there for her in the years prior.

Let go of all the resentment and try
Or give it no more headspace. Block her and move on.

Only you know what you want in you heart. But don't make a choice based on being petty

@Dithyramb

The op s mental health started to deteriorate whilst they were still in contact. So the friend was very aware but still chose to piss off.

You can’t go back to the friendship you used to have.

Don’t sacrifice your dignity for curiosity. Let sleeping dogs lie.

IM foreever reading on here how some friends are very dependant on some posters and theyve always been adivsed to step back its too much

on the other hand 10 years is a long time to step back and not explain why

i guess id always wonder what happened

Yes, but the OP says the sectioning, breakdown etc happened after they stopped contact, and only that she was struggling with a stressful job when they were.

Plus, to be perfectly honest, the friend isn’t a therapist, and had her own major stuff to deal with, and the OP admits she ignored the no contact stipulation and begged for a second chance. It sounds scarily intense, and it’s not hard to see why someone might not have been prepared/able to deal with it.

Yes @Dithyramb but Mumsnwt comprehension skills are poor and OP hasn't responded to refraining techniques so here we all are lost in a "cheeky bitch drive ne to suicide now demands my friendship" where women (most of whom hold a non dominant role in their own lives) compete to tell OP to tell friend to fuck off as if to escape the powerlessness they hold in their own lives by proxy.

Some threads go bad.