Friend stopped talking

[Savvyshopper17]

Hi everyone, i am new here so please be kind. My father passed away last year and a friend who i thought was very close attended the funeral then all of a sudden stopped communicating with me. I haven't received even a message, i then reached out to her to check she is alright, she said she was busy.. I feel hurt.. Another friend had told me soon after the funeral that she was shocked to see how many friends i had who attended to support me and that it wasn't her job to check on me anymore as i seemed to have plenty of people. I always considered her to be close, we are in our 40s and have been friends since we were in our teens. I am not sure how to feel about all this but I feel really down.

In the same situation.
One of my closest friends contacted me once when my mum died a few months ago. Once. I've seen her briefly once, because a mutual friend invited us for a cuppa.

It's heartbreaking, and I honestly was/am blindsided by it. It also leaves you questioning yourself, when you should be focusing on much more important things.

💝

She seems offended that you have other support. Maybe she didn’t really want to go to the funeral but felt like she needed to as your friend but then when she saw many other friends she felt like her time had been wasted.

Either way this is not a good friend.

The friend who said ‘she’ was shocked to see how many friends attended your father’s funeral — was she talking about the other friend who’s stopped contacting you, or herself?

Good riddance to the likes of her.

The friend who told you she was "shocked" you had so many people supporting you is not a good person. Thats a horrible thing to tell someone- surely she should be glad that you, her friend, have people supporting you at a time when you are grieving? She seems almost annoyed about it which is really mean spirited. I would be avoiding her.

As for your other friend, unfortunately, bereavement really shows you who your real friends are and I think if your friend has literally ghosted you after your father died then that shows she wasnt really a friend at all. I am sorry.

Going forward, I would focus on the people who show up for you. They are your real friends.

So the friend who has stopped contacting me has made this remark.

Thanks, yes i know its a horrible thing to say but i guess i feel so vulnerable that i forgave her for saying it and i was making excuses in my mind about it all.

She isn’t a good friend and that was a thoughtless thing to say. Sorry about your dad 💐

Thank you for your response. I suppose deep down i know its not something i should condone or accept but i feel like rubbish and allowing people to treat me this way

Sorry to hear this, guess there really are more selfish people around.. I feel blindsided by it

It’s seems as if things have changed over the past few years and many people are no longer thoughtful. It isn’t you. ❤️

She isn't a friend, op. It's a lucky escape. Painful I know especially when you are vulnerable after loss but she has shown herself in a true light.

Hmm, a "friend" who relays this about your other friend isn't doing a good deed.

I wouldn't trust that one either. It's nasty.

It's quite possible the friend that came to the funeral and supported ypu now needs your support by having space to deal with being busy.

Then I imagine her philosophy of friendship is rather like my mother's -- she (unconsciously in my mother's case) looks for people to befriend who are lonely and hence 'need' her because they have no one else in their life. It makes her feel powerful and needed. Her self-esteem is so poor that the idea that someone with lots of other friends might just enjoy her company even though they also have lots of other options would be foreign to her thinking.

This 'friend' of yours, like my mother, is actively put off someone with lots of other friends because they don't 'need' her.

Yes, that seems to sum it up. More than likely it comes from deep seated insecurity but still a shitty way to deal with it.

A Similar thing happened to me when my mum died. A very close friend ran for the hills as soon as I said she was ill. Then disappeared after the funeral. I got a message from her 10 years later saying I was a terrible friend and had let her down. By having a new born baby and a terminally ill mother I was not around to support HER in her hour of need.

I was hurt at the time but that message showed me she was batshit crazy and living a main character life. I was well rid but it did make me wary of making new friends for years.

Oof that's hurtful! As if being your 'friend' was a massive chore she no longer needs to do 🙄

How pompous of her really. And not a friend. I'm glad you have plenty of other (better) friends. Focus on them and sorry about your dad 💐

Well, I don't disagree. I'm just explaining the 'logic' of my mother's thought processes. She would probably not have said it aloud, or not so explicitly, but she would absolutely have experienced the number of supportive friends at the OP's dad's funeral as rejection, sort of 'I thought she needed me, and it turns out she doesn't!!! I'll go and find someone who does need me!'

She experiences popularity and even happiness or luck or success in other people as a violent shove away. I think she suffers more from it than anyone else, though. It means she spends all her time with people who have no one else in their lives at all, because they are unpleasant or entirely self-centred, or just want to trauma dump on someone.

I was agreeing with you, in case I didn’t explain very well.

This seems like a logical explanation, i am so sorry to hear that your mum is this way. I am failing to grasp how unkind people can be..

It’s a hard lesson. ❤️

Well, I'm sorry you were disappointed in your friend. It's a depressing thing to realise, especially at a time when you were grieving. On the other hand, console yourself that it's absolutely nothing to do with you, or anything you've done wrong -- it's just an aspect of her own insecurity. And you clearly have no lack of other people in your life. You don't need someone whose 'friendship' is dependent upon her own misinformed assumption that you 'needed' her because you didn't have other people.

Thank you, an insightful perspective i hadn't thought of.. Xxxx

Same happened to me last year after my step father died. For some reason my 'friend' assumed we were not close because he was ONLY my stepfather yet shes very close to her mothers husband but when I told her that it was ok she didnt need to come to the funeral that my step family etc would be there and when she offered to drive I said I was going in one of the mourning cars and her response was 'oh so you are like one of the main ones'? and genuinely that was it. She realised I didnt need her and I had family and other friends around me and she dropped off the face of the earth. It was bizarre to me.

There are some really awful people out there.. I am so sorry xx