To wonder whether people who ghost ever feel bad about it?

[OneKhakiSwan]

I don’t mean situations involving abuse, toxicity or a natural drift. I mean friendships where nothing obvious was wrong and one person just stops replying and disappears, leaving the other hurt and confused. Do people who ghost like that reflect on it later? Or does it just feel easier than having an uncomfortable conversation?

AIBU to find that kind of silence harder than an honest ending?

Well not really.... People are responding and posting about their experiences of ghosting people, in answer to a thread posted where someone is asking about peoples experiences. The fact I ghosted toxic, catty, jealous Val doesn't 'play on my mind.'

I am merely speaking about it because that's what the thread is about.

100% this! ^

Yes- there are people like this.

The person I used to know is someone who deals with life's challenges by throwing everything away and starting fresh. She is incredibly intelligent and fantastically hard working, so she achieves extraordinary things, but then discards people and often beliefs when they start to cause too much friction in her life. She is extraordinary, but ruthless, and can be so unkind.

I've been the ghoster and the ghostee.

I was ghosted by a friend of 30yrs. I don't know why. We'd never had a crossed word in all those years. 10yrs later she text me out of the blue. We met up and it was great. She said 'losing touch' had been one of her biggest regrets and it had seemed as though we'd never been apart. She asked if I could keep in touch this time as she's no good at it.

I never contacted her again. I was supposed to act as though those 10yrs had never happened. We didn't lose touch. She cut me out on purpose. If I wanted the friendship, I'd have to do all the running as she'd already set out her stall as being the one who's no good at it.

No thanks.......

.......and of course, I've never heard from her since.

Yeah. I absolutely can't cope with pressure to 'perform' friendship. I'm your friend or I'm not. You get what you're given. It needs to be freely given. If I have it to give, I will and frequently do. But I have a hectic, busy life and put family, work and myself first. In an absolute emergency, I will put a friend before myself. But if your emergencies are regular, you're either trouble or a drama queen and I really can't be arsed.

If it even starts to hint at obligation, I'm off. When I was younger I felt guilty about it, now I kind of think, 'You're better off without me anyway.' and don't worry.

Oh yeah, I have had the 'I'm not very good at keeping in touch' friends too, where I have been the one to contact them all the time! It's exasperating. And like you, when I stopped doing the contacting, they never bothered with me. Never contacted me. I never heard from them again.

I did have a friend some years ago who had been a work colleague for a couple of years, and when she left the workplace, we stayed in touch. We went for coffees together, and pub lunches with our husbands, day trips together, and even a couple of day trips with our husbands. (We didn't start the socialising together til about 6 months before she left the workplace, and carried it on for about a year after she left....)

After about 3 years of knowing her (and about 18 months into socialising with her (and sometimes her DH and my DH,) she moved house.

However..... She didn't tell me she was moving. I phoned her one day (hadn't seen her for about a month, and had only spoken to her twice in that time,) and the line was dead. I was so confused. I actually drove to her house that was 10 miles away, and there were new people in it. They had no idea where the old occupiers had gone. (It was private let.)

There was no Facebook or anything then, so I had no way to message her...

tl;dr I found out some months later (from a mutual acquaintance) that she had moved 20 miles away, and hadn't told me where she was going as she didn't want to stay in touch, as she was pissed off with me. I said 'what? why? What have I done?'

Turned out she was pissed off with me, because her husband fancied me. He had mentionitis, and kept talking about me and what a laugh I was, and how he couldn't believe how I'd still got such a good figure after birthing 2 children! He said I was lovely and bubbly and friendly.

So she ghosted ME, because her husband was a womanising letch.

In the circumstances I would possibly have wanted less contact with a friend my husband fancied, but she had somehow made it my fault that HE fancied me. I would also be looking at my marriage and if I still wanted to be in it, if my husband was raving over another woman - and a woman that was a friend of mine!

Yep, I never heard from her again. Don't even know if she is still with her DH.

I've ghosted two people. The first, I cut her off the third time she abandoned me on a night out without saying she had left because she went off with a man. I didn't feel obliged to have a conversation with her because you don't need to point out that's not OK.
The other one was starving her newborn daughter so that she would grow up to be thin. The conversations we had didn't change anything and I didn't want to tacitly support what she was doing with my presence in her life.
Both of them perceived this as ghosting, I have heard. I'm fine with that.

People don’t ghost others that are good friend to them and bring joy and fun and love into their lives …..

people claim to be clueless but they know what they do

I ghosted an ex colleague/friend who couldn’t leave me alone in work or outside of work. Endless going over her shit for 15 years. I doubt she could tell you what my maiden name was or the names of my late parents. I was just a general sounding board and a skip for her to dump what she felt like dumping. Many before me had ghosted her so I was one of a long line who had been controlled and smothered and suffocated. She carried on trying to contact me for three years after I went silent on her. Texts. Calls. Withheld numbers calling me. Voice messages. Proved I did the right thing. Self-absorbed lunatic.

You can simply say in that situation you "don't feel you have much in common any more". Telling a once good friend they are a bore or ghosting, both are unnecessary and hurtful.

i ghost only after accumulation of bad behaviour it plays on my mind but not because I feel bad it’s because I feel sad for a lost friendship.

I did it once. That person was dragging me
down. I didnt intend to ghost. I just wanted to have a break from this person for a while. So decided not to initiate contact and take it from there.

Several weeks went by. I didn’t contact them. They didn’t contact me. And then I received a shirty, confrontational text asking if they had done something wrong and why wasn’t i speaking to them

Thats when i decided to ghos

When you say ghost do you mean cut off completely/remove contact etc?

I've found many friendships just naturally go quiet after a while/change in circumstances/if social friends and you don't continue in that group.

It's the true and meaningful ones you both make an effort with, friends for life.

There have been a lot of people I've called friends who I genuinely like but have drifted, no animosity, just life.

I’ve an ex friend who thinks I ghosted her. I didn’t. I told her and told her and in the end I dropped the rope.

she didn’t listen.

But to one person it is being ghosted as they have some issues going on that puts them at the the centre of their universe to the other person theit life may be busy and life moves on people lose touch

There is also people who are paranoid a situation is about them but it is not always

If someone stops contacting me I dont assume anything and dont make up a story in my head of the reasons

I’ve just ended a friendship with someone who has zero awareness as to why she’s estranged from her whole family and now several friends.
its so exhausting to listen to endless self centered monologues. Zero reciprocity, feeling like a weary unpaid counsellor to someone who’ll never change.

I think this post nails it. Explain yourself, or at a push, withdraw gradually and most people get the hint. To go from ‘normal’ to gone is cruel and weak. I would walk past the person in the street who did it to me - you can’t see ghosts.

@AdaDex so you thought she'd ghosted and she thought she'd lost touch? Did you talk about that when you met?

I also don't understand these people who say they are not good at keeping in touch. Expecting someone else to do all of it is just mad. I see it on here a lot, people saying that they're not good at keeping in touch but they still care about all the people they don't keep in touch with... 🙄

I once ghosted an older neighbour who had taken advantage of my friendly gesture in helping her complete a benefit form. She began asking me other favours. Over the course of months I found that I had become her PA. I was becoming more and more mobility impaired and working full time but doing her shopping. and other life admin jobs. She was coming around to my house for a "chat" once or twice a week because she knew I WAH. I put a stop to this by telling her the university had assigned me a new role and I had to attend the office full time. Fortunately she never ventured out once it got dark so she did not come around in the evening. She also lived in the next street so I was able to get home without her seeing me. I gradually saw less and less of her so it was a slow fade rather than ghosting. Then I went off to work in the USA for a year. I imagine she got her claws into someone else as a PA. They always do.

People’s lives take different directions. We have a friend couple who separated in 2024 and while we sat on the fence, there is some clear direction re behaviour where we think one of them is a moron.

However that’s our opinion and as our belief wouldn’t be acceptable to that person, it’s just easier and best not to communicate and engage…

I had a friend who ghosted me, I knew the reason and accepted it. 10 years later she got in touch, I also accepted that. Then she did it again 😂. I guess the thing she didn’t like about me, she still didn’t. No loss, but I hope she doesn’t pop up again in the future as my door is closed.

I did it. I think in her head she may have thought nothing was wrong but 10000 things were and if she had any degree of emotional intelligence, she should realise that. She constantly leaned on me for support through often quite petty situations but she would be devastated or anxious and I’d have to talk her down, when I had my own shit going on.

It wasn’t 24/7 drama, we had fun too and got on but I was always there if she needed me. Then when I needed her she wasn’t there, at all. She would always just give one line responses. I just realised she wasn’t a true friend and blocked her.

Thing is, we became friends at uni because her other friends had fallen out with her and she couldn’t understand why. They said she made everything about herself, she couldn’t see that but then I obviously realised she definitely did!

I’ve got a ex friend who thought I ghosted her.
In reality I told her mutiple times she was taking the biscuit and she still carried on which is her own fault for not listening to my boundaries.

Also ghosted my in laws, they deserved it and I don’t feel the slightest bit bad about it.