To ask: have you ever had someone just stop speaking to you for no reason?

[GutsyBrickMoose]

Not a big argument, not a clear falling out - just silence.

Someone you were close with suddenly withdrawing, ignoring calls or messages, and acting like you no longer exist.

If so, how did you deal with it and did they ever come back?

Not close friends but after my daughter's left primary school i had a few mum friends who all of a sudden blanked me even to my face. They were all mutual friends of someone who has never liked me so I've alway put it down to that

Yes, assume there is a reason but they don’t want to share it. It’s upsetting - or was - but I’m comfortable I’ve done nothing wrong and had to accept I’ll likely never know / be able to do anything about it. Bumping into them will always be awkward to some degree but it gets to be less of a thing over time. My best guess was they felt they’d overshared with me and were embarassed. They’d called me drunk one night and spilled a lot of stuff - sort of a sensitive area but nothing awful, I didn’t care about what they told me and hadn’t told anyone else.

Oversharing and then embarassment is the simplest reason why my stepmum went into radio silence, I think.

Yes and I’ve also been the person to stop replying too. Sometimes it’s really not deep as others are saying ‘there must be a reason’ sometimes it simply is life moves fast, people get wrapped up in their own lives and simply do forget for a while.

No, and to be honest, if someone treated me like this I wouldn't want to know them anyway.

@GutsyBrickMoose this is the second thread you've started with an open question but no input? Last thread you didn't post at all after OP?

So irritating, even ignorant, when posters do that.

well done! When it's over, it's over.

My friend of 20+ years stopped responding to my messages. Initially I would get very short responses but then they stopped completely. I tried and tried but eventually gave up. After 2-3 years of silence she contacted me, apologised for disappearing, said she was having some health issues and feeling lonely. Had a good chat, I offered my support from afar (we lived in different countries), arranged a video call that lasted few hours, all good. Few months after that she took her own life. It's all very sad, I still can't make any sense of it.

My condolences, that must have been very shocking.
I had a friend (we had lost touch with each other a few years before) take her own life, it's hard to comprehend.

Yes. Once in high school. A girl I'd been friends with all through primary school - slept at each other's houses, spoke daily on the phone after school etc. She said she wanted to talk to me after school. I went to meet her and she wasn't there. Waited, but nothing.
Eventually went home and called her. Her Mum very apologetically told me she didn't know why, but she said she doesn't want to speak to me.

She acted like she couldn't hear me at school, and even stranger, about 10 years later I was in a shop with DS who was a baby at the time and her Mum came over to make a fuss etc. Ex friend glared at her Mum and walked off.
Mutual friends have told me they asked why we weren't friends anymore and she's told them not to even mention me again!
DS is now the age we were when she stopped talking to me and I'm still completely perplexed by it all.

Yes ! Dp family! Wondered why at first cuz it was very out the blue but now thinking about it his dm probably slagged me off to them all like she did his brothers ex ! Everyone turned against her because of his dm

I would agree with others that have said there will always be a reason, even if it is one you are not aware of.
I’ve had it done to me several times, on some occasions I think know why, but obviously haven’t had it confirmed.

I have also done it to someone - actually very recently. We were work friends and started meeting up for coffee after we both left the role. We were friendly but not massively close. The last time we met up I was talking about an experience I had that was very emotionally painful for me. She laughed. It instantly changed how I saw her and my interest in continuing a friendship. I didn’t confront her or explain - I just mentioned casually that I needed to leave as I was running late for something and then stopped replying to her messages. I’m sure she hasn’t the faintest idea why. I was too hurt and didn’t want to waste energy explaining how I felt to her.

When I was at uni a very close friend dropped me like stone ver suddenly for no (to me) apparent reason.

Years later I found out that it was because I spoke about people all the time. I admit this was the case but I did it because my mother did so I thought that was acceptable.

I had a friend, she was my son’s god mother. There were loads of people in her life she’d fallen out with, sisters , mum and a couple of other friends. She’d stayed with us at Christmas and I was happy she’d accepted my offer as god mother. Yes there were times that I’d kept my mouth shut when she was difficult but she was quite lonely as she had fallen out with family and friends.
She moved away but we kept in contact and she invited us to stay for a couple of days around my son’s 7 th birthday. We had ( or maybe I thought we’d had) a lovely time and I’d sent her a bouquet of flowers to say thank you for having us. I’d also treated her to dinner on my son’s bday at the restaurant we’d gone to and I’d stripped the bed before we left.
I didn’t hear from her after the flowers had been delivered so I checked they’d been received with the company. A month later I posted her bday present to her .
A week after that I received a letter from her. I assumed before opening it that it was to thank me for her present but no, she’d written to say she no longer wanted to be in contact with us. I did reply to say I didn’t understand why she had done this and what had we done to upset her as she had given no reason at all and what did she want me to tell my son about his godmother no longer wanting contact. She never replied and that was the last time I ever heard from her. My son is mid 30’s now. I have never fallen out with anyone else and have friends going back 50 years.

Me too. I’d come home feeling drained from spending time with her. She’d make little comments that by themselves meant nothing but collectively made me feel like shit. She’s very manipulative. I didn’t straight up ghost her, but I made no effort in the relationship.

It's entirely possible my childhood friend currently thinks about this me, but the truth is I'm not well and simply don't have the capacity to be sociable or travel on my own. She lives the other side of the country and because we have to meet in the middle and my husband has to be with me it's a cross between I can't be bothered and I don't want to bother her.

Yes, I have been ghosted. She was my bridesmaid at my wedding. I suspect I held her in higher regard than she did of me. We remained friends from uni until DC1 turned 4yo. Then she just didn't respond to any text messages after that. 14 years ago. I do still wonder what happened as I had not said or done anything wrong AFAIK. A mutual friend at the time said she didn't know why either and to just move on. Very strange.

The last thing she did say though was that her mum had had a scare with breast cancer so perhaps she felt I wasn't really on board with it all as I was busy with two small DC at the time she ghosted me. Who knows. DH never liked her.
Edited due to typo.

Someone I thought was a good friend, to the point I pet-sat during her honeymoon with very little thanks. After I split with my then fiance, everything seemed fine until one night at a pubquiz she suddenly went cold on me. We had joint friends, who would meet for a game every week, until suddenly all our joint friends dropped me too as she had made them choose between me or her and her husband - her husband was the one they wanted to be friends with so I lost them all. I saw her husband in HMV once, and he said she was distancing herself as she felt I had too many issues and she didnt want to help fix them.

Years later I met one of the joint friends in a nightclub, who told me the real reason this had all happened. Another joint friend had made a pass at me, but I wasnt interested and made a joke about it in front of her at the pub quiz. This was the start of it because she was so upset as she was having an affair with him until she got married, and he had stopped then as he didnt want to come between her and her husband and she was upset as he was free to hook up with someone else but I had turned him down and then joked about it.

Not for no reason, no.

My DS1s godmother dropped me like a stone after calling me a Tory shill after we decided on a private school with excellent SEN provision for Ds1 at the age of 5 when he was still non-verbal and we had been 'unofficially' rejected from the local primary school, (They could not officially turn us down of course but made it very clear that they could not accommodate his needs which amounted to the same thing. ) She said our values clearly did not align.

So i considered it 'no reason'. She considered it a reason. I won't go on to explain the very elaborate shenanigans she then undertook to get her own NT child into her preferred school. Yes -it seemed that ultimately our values did not align.

She recently tried to make contact again - 10 years later- as her gifted and talented DD is about to enter into Year 9 and she wanted advice on our private school because her DD's needs are no longer being met. Not interested love. Figure it out for yourself quite frankly.

Yes, someone I was quite good pals with. We worked together too. I helped her move, supported her with something tough and work and also provided her somewhere to live for quite a while. I asked her to look after some of my outdoor potted plants when I moved house and she wouldn't answer her front door to me. Then she stopped speaking to me. Baffling.

Yes! I think it’s cruel. Leaves the one that’s left with so many questions and self doubts. Apparently those that ghost are more likely to be narcissistic or have narcissistic traits

Yes after 15 years of friendship! Just completely ghosted one day. Another of her friends reached out to me as she’d done exactly the same thing to him. We couldn’t figure out why at all. 3 years later and I’m still sad she never got to meet my baby or my partner. I doubt I’ll ever hear from her again. It was very strange but I’m glad it wasn’t just me in a way as I know for sure it was nothing I ‘did’. I think she has done it to others in the past too as there were people she spoke of often then suddenly she stopped talking about them.

Or a healthy set of boundaries and unwillingness to put up with toxic behaviour just because it comes from a long term friend or family member