Would you have hung up on me

[spanieleyes22]

So I posted before about a "break up" with a friend of over 15 years around October last. I found it very hard as she wouldn't talk to me or discuss anything she just blocked me on everything. I sent her a Xmas card but no response. Yesterday I was feeling down and lonely I've been sick with a flu thing and am just very down. I remembered last year when I was sick she was the only person I really told as I don't want to moan to family and she checked in on me - by text- and I rang her number withholding my number. I did try doing that a couple of times back when it happened but she never answered just a voicemail message would come on. I suppose I didn't expect her to answer and when she did I was happy and said hi it's spaniel eyes and then long silence and I said please don't hang up but before I finished the sentence she had hung up. I know it was stupid of me. I've been really upset but annoyed with myself too. I know it's time to forget her now she couldn't make it any clearer. I'd just love to know why she feels she has to do this. Whatever happened I don't feel warrants this: I feel it's actually cruel. But I know you all will tell me to stop wasting my time so I'm trying to do that. I id hope for a minute or so but quickly dashed.

No I actually think you were right to question it. Would you really have wanted to have continued the friendship as a downgrade???

You now know you’ve done absolutely everything you could have done to salvage a friendship. Now is the time to find peace in that and move on having had closure. She wasn’t the person you thought she was, and now you know that.

I’ve had No Caller ID calls from someone I could not stand another minute of. I did a slow fade to no contact yet still she persists, periodically. It just confirms my decision not to have her toxicity in my life was the right one

But, kindly, so what? This was presumably when you were still friends, before she asked for space and didn't get it, and blocked you.

I don't see how you don't understand that checking in on an ill friend who is actually your friend is completely different from withholding your number and phoning a former friend who's been clear about wanting no further relationship with you.

Without wishing to distress you in any way, you did ask the question. And my answer to that is yes, emphatically, I would have hung up.

If she's blocked you she does not desire contact. This isn't a starting point for negotiation. Your former friend has made her wishes clear and your only option is to abide by these and move on.

I totally disagree with ghosting in any circumstance. It’s cruel.

She DID owe you at least an explanation, you know. Lots will disagree with me but I stand by thinking it is the cruelest thing to leave someone questioning everything.

I do genuinely hope this helps you draw a line, grieve, ans move on

Think you need to read the back story. The op was asked to give the friend space and wouldn't

But she didn't ghost out of nowhere. If I'm understanding comments on this thread correctly - there was a disagreement or similar. Then at some point, the friend started to try to draw back a little. OP didn't want her to and got quite arsey about it. And then the (now ex) friend blocked her.

I had a friend who did this - phoning from an unknown / withheld number. She once even got a guy to call (I didn't know him) and ask if it was me, then passed the phone over to her. When I asked what on earth she was doing she said "I thought you wouldn't answer if you knew it was me". I had to tell her straight, "this is like having a really persistent stalker and I need you to stop calling me" and she did.

The reason I didn't want to speak to her, which could be wildly different from you, is that she phoned me every single day to bang on about some bloke she fancied at work. Every day. For about an hour at a time. It was boring and a total waste of my time when I had things to get done.

Whatever you've said or done was probably innocuous but just too much for whatever reason. I think you may well have been too emotionally reliant on her and that can come across as needy and be unwelcome.

As a PP mentioned, I'm also getting Borderline Personality Disorder/ EUPD vibes.

OP. The post I'm quoting here is blunt and direct. It's also the kindest possible advice you could receive in the circumstances.

Your posts to the tune of 'I get it, I'm too needy, I must be a terrible person, lesson learned' etc are a combination of passive aggression, self-pity and manipulation. I'm sorry to call them so bluntly, but this is what they are. They are also, for any person who has been on the receiving end of emotionally abusive behaviour, a huge red flag. I'm not saying at all that you are an emotional abuser. But, nonetheless, these are some of the tactics they use. If this has come in any way as a surprise to you then it's worth doing some serious self-reflection as to why that's the case.

I can also say with a fair degree of confidence that if this is the way you interact in your friendships, then this alone is a clear reason why people are distancing themselves. It sucks people dry. Emotional vampirism, the psychologists sometimes call it. You say yourself you thought she 'cared' - perhaps at one time she did, but has reached the point where she now has nothing further to give. That's fair. No one owes us their friendship. What you need to do now is to respect her decision.

You can deny these issues and retreat into self-pity if you want to, but this isn't going to help you in any way. You've had lots of help on this thread but you seem to prefer to view that posters are simply being mean, in the same way you feel your friend has been mean. Neither is likely true.

I get it. Rejection isn't nice. It makes us feel horrible. But if you really want fulfilling, properly reciprocal friendships in the future, you'd be wise to take the well-meaning advice on this thread and try to unpick all this with the help of a therapist. Working on yourself is hard and forces you to face unpleasant truths. I know, I've done it. But the choice of whether to wallow in recrimination and self-pity, or foster a happier future with emotionally healthy friendships, is yours alone to make.

You've been handed an opportunity here of learning from your experience. Don't waste it.

Yes. As per my previous post I’d had about 15 years of listening to the same problems over and over. Constant texting. Ringing. This person knew nothing about me. I was a free counselling service to an energy vampire. It left me drained but mainly it left me fucking angry that I had allowed it to happen. She had apparently done it to others in the past and they’d one by one disappeared from her life. People like to be asked about themselves, two-way conversations, space, boundaries to be respected.

As someone who was on the other side of this (cutting ties after a very long friendship) I can assure you that whilst it may have been completely out the blue for you, it won't have been for her.

I have had occasion to block people on my phone before now for various private reasons. If someone has blocked you it’s pretty obvious. If someone I had blocked then tried to ring me from a withheld number I would be furious.

You need to let this go. Erase her number and email from your phone and unfollow her on social media. Otherwise you’re going to do it again. Leave her in peace, move on, it will get easier with time and distance.

Agree with PP, it depends why the friendship broke down.

I disagree. The fact is that it DID break down and OP’s former friend decided she didn’t want to hear from her again. I’m not passing any judgement on the OP’s behaviour, as I don’t know enough about it to do so. But regardless of who was right or wrong, or to what degree, the decision has been made.

OP - I don’t say this to be cruel. In fact I say it as someone who once tried the same thing. Looking back now I feel embarrassed and wish I’d been able to accept it, but at the time I thought exactly the same as you; that if I could just have a couple of minutes we could start talking and sort everything out. But ultimately you just can’t force these things. You can, however, stop punishing yourself.

You can really like someone but also recognise that the friend cannot change their behaviour and that it has a negative impact on you. I wonder if she knew there was no point in trying to work this out with you, so just went down the best route for her which was blocking you. It doesn't devalue the friendship you had or you as a person, but maybe does suggest there are things you could work on for future friendships.
I would find your actions harassment and would be now finding it stressful every time my phone rings.

OP you need to do some work to reset what your expectations are around friendship and the way you behave in friendships.

Friendship has to enhance your life or there's no point to it. There's no "right and wrong" about this: it's not a contract, it's a feeling: its irrational and can't be explained.

You can't build a friendship on obligation or pity. Friendships are entered into by choice and if both parties aren't actively choosing, there's no friendship. No one remains friends with someone because they feel sorry for them or because they feel guilty or because the other person "did nothing wrong". And people can choose to end a friendship (or a romantic relationship) for any reason they like with our without explanation. You aren't owed anything.

You seem to be viewing this from the lens that there is some obligation to you: to be your friend, to respond to your text messages or calls and to "explain". It doesn't work like that, there probably is nothing to explain, it just wasn't working for her, and the more you push for "answers" the more you will push someone away.

Your tone is very martyred and self-pitying and at a guess I would say that's what pushed your friend away. If you can learn to reframe the narrative you can learn to build healthy friendships. But you're going to need therapy or counselling because what you're describing here isn't friendship.

Dawn right I would. Withholding your number on purpose to ring her is extremely manipulative and almost sinister.

For this woman's sake and actually your own OP, please delete her number.

This is generalising.

She blocked you on all platforms. You ringing her from a witheld number was a breach of her clear boundary.

"should have kept my big gob shut at all times"

We definitely haven't said this.

"Say nothing. Accept everything. Question nothing."

And we also didn't say this. Of course you should communicate about difficulties, misunderstandings and feelings with your friends. Just do it in an appropriate manner, with people who are actually your friends. Somebody who has blocked you is no longer your friend.

"Respect boundaries"

Yes, you should do this all the time with everybody. We all should.

OP you should read your previous threads including the one in the post at 14:19. You know why you’re blocked and what triggered being blocked. You didn’t take her gentler hints not to contact her any more but you did anyway and called her mean for doing it.

Yanbu to miss her but you need to accept that it’s over. You can’t fix it and she doesn’t have any interest in hearing why you sent the text. The people in previous threads told you to leave her alone but you’ve caused yourself more pain by not taking that advice.

Her rejection of you doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. It just means that you’ve grown apart and aren’t compatible as friends anymore.

LEAVE
HER
ALONE

Op, at the very least she could have explained, it says more about her than you. I’d let her go, yes, because it’s a shabby way to treat a friend - just to ghost them.

Why should she have explained?

It likely didn't come out of nowhere & Op knows why the friend asked for space.

Unfortunately Op couldn't/wouldn't do that.

Crikey, I feel exhausted just reading that and apparently there’s even more before that one.

I don’t know your background OP but it sounds like, for whatever reasons, your emotional maturity stalled somewhere. If readers on here feel irritated just reading your pa responses, I can only imagine how draining it must have been for your former friend. That’s not to be unkind but to try to make you aware that an emotionally mature person would struggle to maintain this type of dynamic.