To ask why people ghost their friends instead of just being honest?

[SassyDeer]

I see a lot of posts about people getting ghosted by friends, and I wonder why this happens so often. For those of you who have ghosted friends, what was your reasoning? Did you feel it was easier than explaining, or was there something else behind it? Why not just tell your friend you need space, or that you’d like to end the friendship? I’m genuinely curious to understand.

‘I’m fed to listening to you witter on about your divorce; it’s been five years. To be honest, I think you did marry him for money, yes I do think you should have to get a job now, actually. I’m starting to see what was wrong in your marriage; it’s your way or the high way. And he is right, you do have a problem with alcohol, which you refuse to admit. I’m fed up taking you home comatose in a cab. Your DC is violent, my DC has put up with it for longer than they should have, due to the divorce, all the upheaval, but actually you need to get your child some help, they’re not managing and other children are being hurt. I’m sorry I’m not divorced, I can’t keep apologising for not being single. I don’t want to go out every Saturday night with you, and I don’t think I should be given an earful of abuse if I don’t. We’ve not even been friends that long. I can see why you don’t have any others’

Honestly, what was the result of that conversation going to be?

I took the easier option, and life is calm.

I wouldn't view slow fading as ghosting personally, to me that's a more natural thing stemming from both parties. To me ghosting would be a close friend you have a lot of contact with and is a constant in your life who suddenly dissapears without having the decency to say anything. Sure it might be built up annoyances that have hit a wall, but if someone doesn't communicate that during the friendship (unless it's something super obvious) and makes out they're happy and everything in the friendship is great then yeah that is cowardly.

Yeah I would agree with this. When I faded out the people I mentioned above, they didnt once reach out to me to initiate contact either, or to ask how I was or if I was ok. That actually made it easier for me but also made me realise it was the right decision.

I see ghosting as suddenly disappearing and ignoring someone with no warning- messages get completely ignored. Many friendships do fade out on both sides naturally and thats not ghosting, thats simply people drifting apart and it's very common in friendships.

I've had one friend sit me down and tell me at length all the things that I had done/said, how it had made her feel etc, plus bringing up a few fundamentals of my personality that she didn't like. At the end of the chat I said that honestly it didn't sound like we were a good friendship fit, but I admired her honesty. In my opinion most of the stuff she listed were either misunderstandings or just things we viewed differently (ie once I gestured towards a door as if to say 'after you my lady' and she saw it as more of a 'oi you get over there!' and was very offended). We actually still email now and again, but aren't besties like we were as we just didn't suit. Was kinda like a breakup. Felt very mature really.

Equally have had a friend I've known for over 20 years plan a trip together in the summer, cancel last minute and then never speak to me again. No idea what happened. I still wonder about it, often.

Would far prefer option a. Option b leaves so much room for dwelling. I like the closure!

I wonder if the people who ghost friends end romantic relationships in the same way? Feels like mostly if you're going to breakup with someone you have a chat about why, but people don't treat their platonic friendships the same. Appreciate platonic and romantic are not the same in that you have multiple of one and usually one of the other, but in terms of the respect etc it's still an important person in your life. If they're no longer going to be in your life then giving them a heads-up feels polite.

Not quite the same if it's a slow fade, where life and logistics etc are getting in the way and the friendship just kinda becomes defunct. But where it's a sudden 'yesterday' we were talking and today we are not' then I think that deserves an explanation.

I think it's fair enough to not want to stay friends, but here's a good example of where you didn't have to ghost. Your friends probably had no clue why you stopped talking to them, and it probably hurt. You could have said to the first one, I feel our friendship is a bit one-sided. To the other one, I feel there's too much negativity in our friendship.

Not saying you have to give a reason at all, but just trying to point out that it's not as hard as people are suggesting to not ghost others.

I'm sure that if friends who've ghosted me would give me a general reason, it would have helped me to understand and maybe change those things so that I didn't lose any other friendships. (Although I do suspect the ghostings I've had are because I don't believe men are women.)

I dropped a friend once because she did something utterly vile to me. I stopped speaking to her, blocked her etc. But when I calmed down, I also sent her an email saying I guessed she knew why I'd dropped her, but if she wasn't sure. I would be okay to discuss it with her. She never replied. But even in that circumstance, I didn't want to be the person acting cruelly.

I ghosted a group of friends about 12 years ago. DD was still young and I was struggling a bit and it coincided with a time when they were active socially and inviting me along. Which they meant well by, I realise.

With this small group I was youngest by a few years and went through life changes a bit later than them and often found their witty remarks about my lack of life experience in these areas hurtful and like I was a bit stupid. They were also slightly closer as a group of three too. I know years before I "ghosted " I should have maybe tried to address somethings.

Anyway - so one day I just started to make excuses not to go to get togethers until one day they stopped asking.

I do regret my behaviour as if I bumped on to them now, assuming they would even acknowledge me, it would be hard to articulate why I did without sounding like a stroppy teen. To make it worse I've heard via mutual friends one of them was very poorly a few years ago (now recovered) and I very nearly reached out but didn't know what to say. And aware that if may be come across as about me feeling guilty more than concern if that makes sense.

I do feel sad and wish I'd just spoken up many many years ago.

I love the first comment as this sums it up fab. Us brits don't like having difficult conversations and would rather not. Why upset someone we are all different and sometimes that's OK to fade why make someone unhappy for been them

try to be friendly with everyone but it’s just not possible for me to give that much. So if someone becomes too demanding it’s easier to just let it fade away

//

I think this was me. I with I'd handled it better.

@dontbedaft2000 thats brutal but actually quite true- the part about how you cant control other people but you can control your reaction to it.

I think as humans we are conditioned to want an ending to things- films are usually tied up at the end with a nice neat little bow. Films that remain open ended often incite rage and fury from people who then postulate their theories online about what is really going on. It's human nature to want a certain type of closure. Thats why I love David Lynch films - completely open to interpretation and nothing is ever fully "resolved".

Lots of reasons really.

We usually want to see the best in people, so we have a tendency to ignore the small niggles. But those niggles grow and become a dynamic, and then it becomes a question of when to challenge it, and how.

Which brings me to the next point. How. I was never taught conflict resolution or how to express my boundaries. It was only reading MN that taught me it's ok to have boundaries - I didn't even understand that I could refuse as medical procedure. So in these situations I could feel that I was unhappy, but couldn't articulate why, so I couldn't address the issue.

When I knew what the issue was I didn't necessarily have the language to address it with someone. It's hard if you've never witnessed conflict resolution to know how to do it. Even harder if you have any kind of abuse in your past and my God there are so many of us that have that. Add into the mix that I'm probably ND and just used to get told off by scary teachers and any time I tried to offer an explanation was further admonished for being rude, yet received zero instructions on what exactly was rude and how I should otherwise have said something. So I just learned to accept it.

With all of the above it is simply less emotional work to ghost someone.

Fair play to them too - after a few times of heating my excuses they stopped quite quickly

But there was a middle option, which was to say, I don't feel like this friendship is a good fit anymore, I don't think we share the same values. I wish you well but I'm not going to be in touch again.

Although if she was actually being abusive towards you, I do think that's different and don't think that requires any explanation.

This. I deliberately let one friendship slide because I realised I never looked forward to seeing her. She did nothing particularly wrong but I just often felt inexplicably stressed in her company, and think I was mostly agreeing to meet out of politeness rather than really wanting to.

She moved away for a few years, during which time I didn't miss her at all (she doesn't do much social media so we didn't even have that connection). When she decided to come back to the area I helped her with lots of practical stuff, but realised again that we are just very different types of people, and I no longer had the will or energy to keep up the friendship.

Eventually - and for genuine reasons - I had to turn down a couple of invitations from her, but then I couldn't being myself to reciprocate with any other invites or meet-up suggestions from me, and so we haven't met for over a year now. I do feel guilty that she might feel ghosted, but I can't bring myself to get in touch again.

I ghosted a friend because I couldn't handle her flakiness and poor time keeping any more. She was good fun when we were together but getting together with her was a never-ending drama of texts she didn't respond to, leaving voicemails, arranging to meet up and her turning up late. She was chronically disorganised and in the end it did my head in so much I just stopped even trying to make arrangements and met up with other people instead. I don't miss her at all to be honest.

I think it's fair enough to not want to stay friends, but here's a good example of where you didn't have to ghost. Your friends probably had no clue why you stopped talking to them, and it probably hurt. You could have said to the first one, I feel our friendship is a bit one-sided. To the other one, I feel there's too much negativity in our friendship

Ah but this is the point - I didnt ghost. I did not stop replying and I did not ignore them. I was merely just busier and busier and I explained that to them.

Equally, they did not initiate anything either - to me, it felt like as soon as I was no longer available to listen to them endlessly or lend them money they disappeared. Which confirmed to me how self absorbed they actually were.

I dunno, I wouldn't think of this as ghosting as much as they stopped asking you to go out because you never could. They could have reached out and checked everything was okay if it's out of character for you, similarly if you had said I just don't have the headspace to go out at the moment perhaps could have kept in touch. Either way, sounds like you're being really hard on yourself for something that was a 2 way street.

Sounds like moving on was the best option.

It's not really meant to be brutal, though I know it reads that way, just honest, because I keep seeing this conversation being raised online and it's just exhausting.

We all know the reasons, it's not a question that needs to be asked or one that can really be answered - but I do wonder about the motivation for asking the question.

People who try to control other people's responses and choices really get to me, I had a shocker of a friend when I was a young woman who would NOT let me escape, really controlling and a bit of a bully, it took me months to escape her clutches, I even wrote her a stupid letter making up excuses about how busy I was to get rid of her and she still kept harassing me. I wanted her gone because she was bad tempered and a bully - good luck telling someone that without a scene.

I'd never tolerate that now, but yeah, this triggers me a bit because I really dislike controlling people and this question is a bit of a red flag for me.

I recently ghosted an old friend after we had reconnected after 30 years. She was lovely, but I found out (through an extremely reliable source) that whilst ‘caring’ for her elderly mother was actually becoming a danger to her mother and basically wanted her dead! Her mum was upset every day over the way her family treated her and I felt that I didn’t need this person in my life anymore. She was very self obsessed and I’d heard too many bad things and just couldn’t be bothered!

Okay well I don't see anything wrong in that. There's nothing wrong in ending a friendship for any reason.

Ghosting is cruel and often unnecessary. It means that you stop responding and refuse to give any explanations as to why. In my case, I sent a heartfelt letter to my friend, asking her to let me know what was going on and if it was something I'd done, whether I could make amends. This was after 15 years of what I thought was close friendship. No response.

Yeah, there are as many reasons as there are situations. It's not a real question, and it doesn't need to be asked, since there's no answer except for "it's their right to move on, they have their reasons".

On the opposite end of ghosting/drifting apart is telling that person… which I had done to me by a fried during covid and she sent back her birthday present with a mean little note that ended “You clearly won’t miss me!”

I had been friends with her for 15 years and prior to covid met regularly, however during covid it was difficult to meet because of restrictions and the fact I was dealing with some personal stuff that was (for me) quite life redefining…

Personally after the nasty little note and the impact on my mental health I would have preferred to be ghosted.

I've only ghosted after telling friends what they've done and it's not made any difference. Also why should I have to explain any more to grown adults that they need to treat me well, the same way I've always treated them?

These users, flakes, toxic people know full well what they are doing. Explaining it to them makes no difference.

I've been through this recently. I've had an awful summer and all I wanted was a little care. A phone call, text, an invitation to go out for a drink. But no. Because she didn't want to listen to me. Imagine how worthless that makes someone feel? When I've listened for hours, gone out of my way to help for decades. Supported this friend (and she I) through breakups, moving house and job issues for decades. This time though no. So even when I told her did she do better? No she made it worse. I would never have done this to her and she knew it. So why would I waste any more time and headspace on someone who cannot be bothered? Who could be so cruel? I've got to use my energy on recovering.

I believe that loss concentrates people's minds. What we all should do is value those friends that support us.

@dontbedaft2000 I just had a chuckle realising the irony of your username. Honestly, your post was awful, seriously lacking in empathy.

Some of these examples are acceptable.
In my book Its fine to cut ties with someone who is now shacked up with a convicted rapist and who insists that he is present every time you meet.
Ghosting someone because they are very ill and now can’t fit into size 8 yoga gear and wax lyrical about how much Botox, filler, plastic surgery they have because they now have to concentrate on getting better is a different matter.
One is a good example of not wanting to spend time with someone, the other says more about you if you can’t support that friend.