It’s normal to ignore messages for weeks

[Anxious114tr]

I’m not in a good place mentally. We moved to a new area about a year ago. I’ve been trying to slowly meet other people and establish friendships. I got along with a neighbour really well (lives 6 doors down). Thing is she doesn’t respond to messages till very late (a week later minimum) or sometimes not at all. I don’t bombard her with messages at all. In all the time I’ve known her I’ve probably sent 8 messages. The recent one was 3 weeks ago I sent her a message saying it’s nearly summer and be lovely to catch up etc. she messaged me today after 3 weeks. DH thinks it’s nothing wrong and completely normal. Just for context I respond to messages promptly, I am also very busy but I do not ignore people as I think that’s rude.

Would you respond to her or just take it as a hint she doesn’t want to be friends? The message she wrote I haven’t opened but I can see the preview it says “been very busy. I will let you know when I’m free to meet up”.

I’m thinking for my mental health I’m just going to stop contacting people that take ridiculous amount of time to respond to me. One self help book I’ve been reading says “you teach people how to treat you”. What are your thoughts? Please be kind I’m in a bad stage of my life mentally. Surely people who are too busy to even spend 20 seconds to respond to a text are too busy to try and make friendships with so I need to stop trying.

Oh this is so true. I try and remember it to stop me getting irritated with others behaviour but thank you for the reminder, I will screenshot and save your post.

"Psychologically we (humans) get very annoyed when people behave in ways we don't ourselves feel 'allowed' or 'free' to do."

But also, psychologically, we're social beings, who don't like being or feeling rejected. For example, if someone asked a friend out for coffee and they took a month to reply, even someone with generally high self esteem, is going to 'question' themselves.

You can almost compare it to the game playing of the dating world. How do you think some men keep women on the end of a hook and vice Versa?

Leave it to her op now. I got rid of the must catch up soon ones. Friendship all one way. You get tired of that too. Think key is have a few friends.

I've been there OP. I tried so hard when we moved to a different part of the country. Spent years putting in All the effort, making all the arrangements to keep the "friendships" going.

Then my disabled child's health took a turn for the worse & I just wasn't able to keep it up. They all knew & I really needed a few friends then, even the odd text would've done it. Where are these friends now? They all disappeared. Not slowly. Not gradually. Overnight.

I knew it was one sided but at the time I hoped it would develop with effort. I won't get into that situation again. The question I now ask is "are they worthy of MY friendship?"

Thank you to those who are understanding. Yes it’s so hard moving to a new place and trying to make friends. I’ve actually lived in this city for 8 years and moved to this new house 1 year ago. If I’m honest I don’t have any friends. I have lots of casual acquaintances that I text and meet for coffee etc. but no real friends who I can chat to freely and share things hence my mental state. I don’t know how others do it, I am very shy so the fact I’ve put myself out there has been so scary and taken a big knock on me when people ignore me. If I had lots of friends and high self esteem I could move on but it really takes a knock on you.

The neighbour seems to have a full life which I was hoping would help me mingle more. She knows everyone and last time said she would introduce me to “x, y,z” as she knows people that have kids in same class as my kids. I think I’m going to just not contact her anymore. I don’t want occasional friendships I want to develop meaningful relations with other women who can be there for me and vice versa. I think it is very much like dating as someone said so in those terms I want a serious friendship not a casual fling!

I admit I am someone who will reply to a message within say 12hours etc but do not think that it is rude if others do not reply in a timely fashion.

However, one thing that stands out from your post is the person you are messaging may not actually see you as a friend and it does sound that maybe she is not interested in your relationship developing into a friendship as you do.

I don't agree with your "treat them mean to keep them keen" hypothesis.

I think from the overwhelming majority of PP it simply comes down to headspace and the constant juggle. A text for non urgent matter just isn't a priority (rightly or wrongly).

If you want a quick answer to make concrete plans why not make a 2 min phone call?

I find this incredibly rude. We are all busy, leading busy lives working, taking care of children, our houses, ourselves, our animals. The list can go on and on.
I sometimes may take a few hours to respond to a message but usually it's because I've been caught up with something else. But I'd never ever ignore a message and not respond. I feel very strongly about it!
OP I would say this person is not the friend for you and I wouldn't text her further.

I can take quite a while to reply to messages sometimes.

You mention that you have some mental health struggles, OP. Bear in mind that for some people, their mental health might be the reason they don’t respond immediately. Also bear in mind that you are unlikely to be the only person who is messaging your friend. You may have only sent her eight messages, but she may have 30 other people messaging her every ten minutes for all you know. Sometimes it’s just the volume of messages from everyone combined that becomes stressful for people.

So I don’t think your friend is being unreasonable. However, if this is something that matters a lot to you, then it sounds like perhaps you and your friend are not very compatible. You have different communication styles and different expectations, so it would be perfectly reasonable of you to stop pursuing the friendship if it’s not working for you.

What I find interesting about the theory that some people are just busy and it's not personal is that when I see one of these friends in particular, she is constantly glued to her phone...and will saying sorry I just have to send a message to X or Y needs a reply. So I've realised I'm just not important to her.

Her response was very brusque to me - I’d personally see it as the brush off

”so sorry for taking so long to reply , I’ve been super busy and missed your message , when are you free?” Is a more encouraging response .
Personally I wouldn’t message said “friend” again I’m afraid

It's worth remembering not everyone is tied socially to their mobile phone. Mine sits on the kitchen table when I'm at home.

I generally respond pretty quickly too

However I do have one friend who I know if I answer immediately will bombard me with questions, meet ups (if she comes she stays for hours and you basically end up throwing her out to get her to go), talks about things she assumes you know about in a nudge nudge way. It is exhausting so I tend to leave it until I am in the frame of mind to handle her.

Without being harsh as you say you have mental health issues do you tend to bring these up or make conversations all about you as that may be why friends aren't keen to engage.

It's a long time but tbf she might have just forgotten and then your message goes further down the pile when new messages come in, and she won't see it to remember.

It does sound bit non-committal in her response. I would just respond with a 👍 or "like" (depending on what message platform you’re using). Then leave it up to her to make the next move. She said she’ll get back to you when she can...ok so now it's up to her. Don't use your energy chasing

I respond to most messages relatively quickly - within 24 hours. I do however have one particular friend who I know will take a lot more energy and 'headspace' to interact with. So sometimes I don't respond to her messages. She will message again the next day or send a 'meme' or some such interaction, and I will respond to that if I can. We are good enough friends that I hope she understands, but sometimes it does get very frustrating. I can respond to an anonymous forum here because it does not require much empathy/energy/thought, but I like to give those things to my friends, and sometimes there isn't enough to go around.

Mum of 3 here, with a full time challenging job with long hours.

I may take weeks to reply as I find keeping on top of general chit chat messages another thing to do on top of an already busy schedule of work, school, kids clubs and seeing family. I literally never stop and when I do it’s very late at night and I’m about to fall asleep.

the fact she has responded at all is surely positive and I wouldn’t be writing off a friendship because of delayed reply time. Some of my best friendships we can go months of not speaking properly and when we get together it’s like we were never were apart.

Go easy on your friend. She may also be struggling.

caveat… the tone of the reply didn’t appear to be that friendly. Maybe the issue is not the delayed reply time …

Sometimes it takes me ages to get back to, but may sound bad but it's also depends who it is, if its friend that I talk to almost daily, I'll respond next day, if it's my good friend of life sometimes we respond almost straight away, or it can be a week. Same with other close friend, and we know and understand each other very well. I also got neighbour friend/another mum from park, it can take a while to reply to each other, but at least we know each other. Unfortunately I did have those 'new' people in my life who I thought we got on with very well, but clearly the other person didn't mind much , and so we stopped texting each other at all 😬 if that neighbour of yours doesn't come across as very interested, maybe it's not even worth including her into your life, you'll find other lovely people who will deserve your time and will have same manners :)

If you want to reply to someone you make time to reply. Simple as that.

I think it’s rude to ignore people for weeks. taking a few days to reply, fine.

That’s typical Mumsnet for you. Most of the ones claiming that they don’t respond for weeks is because they have barely any friends.

My close and best friends I would respond the same day or the next. I do have a couple of friends (ones I see 3/4 times a year) that I would take a week to respond.

I think maybe if you message to meet up then give more of a timeframe. “I’m free x day/evening - would be great to catch up then”

i often leave messages unread or unanswered. I mean to get to them reasonably quickly and often forget. It’s not personal generally, I just think to myself “I’ll get back to soandso later” and it slips my mind

Totally agree

She's not rude, just different from you. And that's the advantage of social media : you can discover how your neighbour is in regard of reacting, answering, inviting etc. without spending days in the coffee shop discussing your habits. If it annoys you she's not the person for you.