To ask if you’ve ever suddenly stopped talking to a friend?

[thoughtfulfriend]

I saw a post here recently from a poster whose friend had suddenly stopped talking to them, and it got me thinking. I want to ask from the other side… have you ever just stopped talking to a friend?

What were your reasons for doing so? Did you eventually reach out to them again, if so why? Or did they contact you? What happened after that? Did you continue the friendship or choose to move on?

For context, I haven’t ghosted a friend myself. I usually prefer to communicate openly and end things directly when needed. I’m just really curious to hear others’ experiences and understand what might lead someone to cut off contact suddenly, and whether or not they reconsidered it later.

Hope the OP doesn’t mind me using their post as inspiration!

I dropped a friend silently a few months ago. We had been very close during university, but then after 7/10, she started posting Instagram stories called Hamas ‘resistance fighters’ and justifying their atrocities on that horrible day.

I am Jewish and have friends and family in Israel, so this was a huge line in the sand for me. I stopped replying to her messages. I presume she has an inkling as to why.

Yes.

She'd always been quite negative but I put that down to a very difficult childhood. I helped and supported her through to adulthood. We had a laugh. She supported me and was a good friend too. But gradually she just gave less and less and had an increased cynicism and criticism of my life (which was going well).

I put up with it but the last straw was when I got the opportunity to do something quite remarkable and very special. She was so dismissive and rude about it. I didn't expect everyone to be in awe or fawning but I did expect her to acknowledge that it was a biggie for me and that I was really proud of it. But she just scowled. And was rude.

I went home knowing that there was no give and take in our relationship anymore. That I was putting up with shit, still making an effort and getting nothing back.

I stopped making contact. A cowards way out but glad I did it.

Same.

I've neve ghosted someone but I have reduced contact, sometimes until it stops altogether.

The most recent one was a local friend.DH and I noticed it was a very one sided relationship with me asking her to meet, doing favours etc. We just stopped organising meet ups and they never picked it up. They clearly weren't fussed about seeing us. I see her in town sometimes and she makes a big thing of hugging me and saying 'we must' meet up.

I've had to learn that what she says is not what she means!

I’ve posted this before. But my oldest friend lives abroad. Her and her new husband were coming for 10 days over Christmas.
She never came/called. On day 9 she rang, was rude, wanting to pop by to pick up something (which wasn’t convenient) and to get some info for next part of their trip. Made a big deal about being busy on day 10, never mentioned she was meant to be staying. I suspect now it had something to do with new husband, however it was a trip that had been organised for 2 years.

She did occasionally writes things on Facebook about wishing she could meet up etc. she had contacted me twice directly.
Once to basically pay for her and husbands accommodation on next trip. Ignored.
Another time her son was going to do some course in the U.K. and she was looking for contributions to pay for it and to host/entertain him when travelling. Also ignored.

Ive seen on her Facebook she’s become a conspiracist and super religious, it’s very far removed from what she was 30 years ago.

Yes. She had been having issues with her family and I had supported her a lot. She often came round at short notice to chat about it.
She came round one day and told me she was having a party for her birthday but she was limited with numbers so couldn't invite me. I felt hurt but understood:
Then posted photos on Facebook of said party. Loads of people there who were far less friendly with her than I was.
I just couldn't bothered after that.
Saw her at a party of mutual friends and she came towards me and I just turned away and blanked her. She's never reached out and neither have I.

Yes. I got friendly with a new member of staff at work, we were the same age (25ish) and lived close to each other. I was single, she was married with two kids. Things were good for a while but she started becoming a bit demanding of my time. I became her support when she went through a few medical/housing/relationship problems and was ultimately diagnosed with a personality disorder. Looking back I realise she was trauma dumping on me and it was very draining.

her husband left her and she started to lean on me even more. I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night with her crying, dealing with emotional breakdowns at work. I was her kids emergency contact at school!

When I was offered a job and moved away so that I could be closer to my family and my long term boyfriend she didn’t take it well. She visited a few times for my hen do, wedding etc but others noticed her erratic behaviour and how demanding she was of my attention. In the year after our wedding I had 3 miscarriages, one of which was complicated and traumatic. She was constantly pestering me about when was I going to have kids, working it into every conversation, even into Facebook comments about buying a house, moving jobs etc. She didn’t know about the miscarriages. I reduced contact.

the final straw came when, out of the blue, I received a long rambling message about how she had seen I had shared a post about baby loss awareness week months earlier and she realised I must’ve been affected. She had just suffered a miscarriage and was finding it hard because someone close to her had just had a baby so she knew how hard it was (at this point she had 3 kids and I had none). My husband read it and pointed out that she didn’t get in touch when she realised I’d had losses, only when it had affected her. The messages got longer and needier and I finally realised what an emotional drain it was being her ‘friend’. I was going through such a hard time with infertility and complications from the last miscarriage that I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with her. I dropped the rope.

I did this twice as a teenager. I was very shy and made ‘best’ friends with much more confident people. I think I fell into a pattern of letting them call the shots and then expect me to bow to their every wish and when I didn’t they would blank me until I did as they said. I moved away but we would visit each other often until I grew a spine (well sort of!) and just stopped answering or returning calls. One responded by calling me from a blocked number repeatedly and just being silent if I answered. I only suspected it was her so one day I asked a male friend to answer and say that we knew it was her and she was to leave me alone. I didn’t get any calls after that!

Yeah definitely, the harsh truth is that often people don’t mean it when they talk about meeting up or staying in touch no matter how enthusiastic they may seem! And you soon figure that out when you stop taking sole responsibility for maintaining the friendship. It can be so confusing though especially if you’re ND!

In April I contacted a friend in I’d not heard back from in 18 months. She replied and said she’ll be in touch in the next few weeks for a phone call and that she wants to visit me. Months later I’ve still not heard from her. This happens a lot.

For context she has mental health issues and is also ND, but still if I never hear from her again then so be it. My door is open - she’s not a bad person- but I won’t be the one reaching out again.

If a friend you're trying to reduce contact with asks to meet up how do you respond? Do you say "sure!" And then not reply with dates and follow up?

I did it to someone once. They'd always been a bit flaky but it got ridiculous. They lied and lied about why they were cancelling last minute on plans. (We know they were lying because they told different stories to different people). Turned up 2 hours late to a meal I'd cooked for them. Asked "Who else is going?" when I invited them out and sounded v disappointed and unsure when I said they were the first person I asked. Cancelled last minute on attending the hotel stay a friend had booked for all her bridesmaids the night before friend's wedding (crap reason, had previously accepted the invite).

So I figured they didn't really want to be my friend. I'm v conflict averse so decided I would just wait for them to contact me, and if they did I'd go see them. But they never did.

Years later bumped into them while shopping. They asked wide eyed why they'd been "chucked out" of the group. I waffled but agreed we would meet up. Never heard from her again, obvs.

Yes. We had been best friends since school, but she always seemed jealous of my life even though she had a lovely life (I was a single parent) and a hell of a lot more income than me. She drained me and dragged me down for years. There seemed to be one unnecessary drama after another with her. I don't miss her, infact I feel like there's a weight been lifted off my shoulders. Sometimes you need to be selfish for self preservation.

I blocked an old school friend who was posting triumphalist crap like "We won, get over it". I never really thought that I ghosted him, though - what he did was the friendship equivalent of constructive dismissal!

Another friend I stopped contacting because he would make all these little bitter snippy remarks and it got too much to ignore. He was also into conspiracy theories, both anti-semitic ones and some niche ones relating to a hobby of his. Oddly, it was the latter that finally got him in trouble with the law. This was someone I had cut far too much slack because he was uneducated: since Brexit, I've just instantly blocked all gammons and I don't care about their sob stories. We've all got problems, doesn't mean we have to become trolls or racists.

Yes. They posted incredibly homophobic comments on my business social media pages - over multiple platforms. Where my gay clients could see it. I’m a wedding vendor and it was on a post celebrating a couples wedding, where the couple had already commented thanking me for my hard work, so would clearly see it.

I have no interest in being friends with someone as hateful as that. It was totally out of the blue - we’d been good friends for a while, drifted a bit, but I blocked them on everything after that. Never talked to them since.