To reach out to friend I lost touch with?

[hatelongnails]

I used to be very close friends with someone, let's call her Paige. We were friends for about 5 years. We had fun together and were quite similar in terms of our personalities. As time went on she opened up to me about mental health issues caused in large part due to abuse from her mother growing up. She was in quite a low place towards the end of our friendship. I am naturally caring and with hindsight I didn't set the best boundaries and so I ended up feeling a bit hurt and almost burnt out. This wasn't totally Paige's fault; she wasn't well and I was trying to help her as best I could but I think I overextended myself. I think I am a bit more mature now, having had therapy myself for unrelated reasons.

I asked her if we could discuss the hurt I felt but she said she wasn't in the right place for that sort of conversation (which I understood). But after that things weren't really the same between us and the friendship fizzled out. I discovered that although we'd never had any sort of argument or anything concrete to put an end to the friendship, at some point she blocked me on social media. I don't know if this was because she couldn't deal with seeing my posts there as, knowing what she was like then, I can imagine she might have blamed herself for how our friendship ended up.

It's been about 6 years since we spoke and I think of her from time to time. I wonder what she's up to now and how she's doing. I still have her number and can see that she hasn't blocked me on Whatsapp. This evening I found her on Linkedin and it says she is studying counselling. This has got me curious. I hope that it means she is feeling better and wants to use her experience of poor mental health to help others. She was always empathetic and a good listener so I can imagine she would make a good counsellor.

WIBU to contact her with a short message to say I still think of her every so often and that I hope she is well? I'm afraid she won't want to hear from me or that she won't respond and will block me on Whatsapp too, therefore cutting off any chance of ever restoring the relationship. At least at the minute I still have some small hope that we could get back in touch, even if we're not close friends again. It would hurt a lot if she rejected me completely. But I'll never know unless I try. What would you do?

I would leave it, tbh. You can't unring a bell, and once a friendship has turned bad it never feels comfortable again. I would keep the fond memories, wish her well, but focus on friendships in your current life, not the past.

Send her a message - keep it short and sweet . What’s the worst that can happen? She doesn’t reply or blocks you. Then you know where you stand. Or she could reply and you could get back in touch. Just be aware that your friendship will unlikely be the same again but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

If someone blocked me I would never attempt to contact them again.

Let it lie.
There's too much water under the bridge.

I used to have a really good friend- she was my bridesmaid and I was her baby's godmother etc.
We stopped being friends and it was like a relationship break up. It wa horrible. Years later she messaged me on Facebook abd I had to block her because that contact form her upset me so much. Too much time had passed.

What happens if you continue the friendship and her MH issues cause you to "overextend" yourself again?

If you reach out , you need to be prepared for what she might bring to the table this time

If you still hold the hope of getting back in touch, one of you will have to reach out and risk rejection. Six years have passed already - it's unlikely that Paige's feelings will change after this period of time - so if you want to do this, you might as well do it now. You might have to deal with the rejection but you will have closure if that happens, you won't be forever wondering whether to contact her, you would be able to move on. The short message you have suggested would be perfect.

I agree with this post. I had a friend and we was very close when the kids were small. She went back to work and so did I and due to being busy we didn’t see much of each other. Our kids ended up at the same high school and we thought it would be nice to go out for a meal.

it wasn’t the same we had totally different lives.

personally I wouldn’t bother. Most people have different friends for different times in their lives. Just let the past be the past.

If somebody blocked me I wouldn't want to rekindle the relationship. No way.

It sounds like you're both rather fragile. Telling someone who's in a bad place that they are responsible for you feeling hurt would always land very badly. It might be better to work on other friendships you have and let this one go.

“Hi Paige - I’ve been thinking about you and wondering how you are. Hope you’re doing well. I’d love to hear how things are going for you ☺️”

Then leave it up to her.

A friend recently contacted me after 5 years apart. (Although in that time I'd tried to contact her twice and she never replied) We've met up a couple of times and it's been lovely. We haven't discussed the reasons we broke friends and I don't plan to, none of that seems important now. I would say a brief message is fine, you've literally nothing to lose. But be prepared to not hear back.