To wonder why people sometimes ghost good friends who did nothing wrong?

[ThatIcyLion]

I’m not talking about abuse, toxic dynamics, safety issues or situations where the friendship had clearly broken down.

I mean situations where the friend had done nothing obviously wrong, you liked them, valued the friendship, things seemed broadly fine… yet you still abruptly stopped replying, drifted away completely or effectively ghosted them.

I find it such a strange and painful thing to experience and I know quite a few people it’s happened to.

After enough time passes, I imagine reaching back out probably starts to feel awkward or loaded, which maybe makes the silence continue even longer.

But if you’ve done this, why? What was going on for you at the time? How do you feel about it now? Do you ever think about reconnecting or apologising?

I’m genuinely trying to understand rather than attacking anyone.

I’m guilty of this 😩, in my defence it’s happened when I’ve had a MH crisis.

I “lost” a friend during Covid for the same reason
I don’t miss her and her self importance one bit!

as I’ve got older I’m less tolerant of arseholes!

I agree with others that someone thinking they "did nothing wrong" doesn't actually mean they did nothing wrong. Lots of reasons why they wouldn't know they'd done or said something that caused the "friend" to walk away.

Even if someone genuinely didn't do anything wrong, sometimes there's just not enough time/headspace to keep on all your friends and a "cull" is sometimes needed when life gets busy for any number of reasons, i.e. marriage, children, moving away, new job, relatives needing more support, new hobbies etc.

People also change over time. They may simply not feel they "need" the same number of friends, may lose the interest in socialising, etc.

I’ve ‘ghosted/blocked’ a friend of over 15 years without any explanation because of what happened when my Mum was dying of terminal cancer. She was very close to me and my Mum growing up and often messaged my Mum chatting about her life updates and ‘issues’ over the years. They were close. When I told her my mum was ill she firstly read my message and didn’t reply for nearly a week and when she did said she was sorry she was busy with her kids and didn’t have a moment to reply (bollocks). She then went on to tell me her mum was also having health issues (which turned out to be minor). She showed no empathy, no concern and didn’t seem bothered. She then didn’t speak to me for the 6 months leading up to my Mum’s death but did message my mum a month before she passed away wanting advice about her relationship breakdown with the father of her children and said I quote ‘none of my friends care about me lol’ that was enough for me to block and delete her and I didn’t feel the need to tell her why.

I had one friend who I met early 20s and we worked at the same place. We got along well and were good friends for a few years and then I ended up getting a job elsewhere so since we didn’t see each other at work we had to make more effort to catch up (it wasn’t just ‘let’s hang out after work’ type of thing).

We drifted only because our meet ups got further apart. I didn’t respond to her latest email I just felt we had grown apart and had less to talk about. I think it was no love lost on either side.

If I saw her out I’d say hi. I actually don’t know where she is at (aside from this MN account I don’t have social media and wouldn’t sign up just to find people).

I think friendships definitely can drift without a falling out and maybe less meet ups and growing apart plays some role in it.

I’ve done it. My ex-friend was very vivacious and outgoing, a real party girl in our youth (which I wasn’t). She was fun to be around. But she was also extremely manipulative and very pushy: she just would bulldoze people into getting her way. I think she’d be really spoiled as a child. It was kind of amusing to start with, as she was naturally very funny, but eventually I grew really resentful of everything being “her way” (meet ups, etc).

As we grew older, I also realised she was racist, and was also mildly neglectful of both her children and animals. That’s something I just wouldn’t have known when we were carefree single young women.

It got to the point where I just couldn’t stand the gaping differences in our values, and i was fed up with being guilted into doing things she wanted. I tried to let the friendship drift, but I think she was so thick skinned she either didn’t notice or don’t care. So eventually I just ghosted her.

From her perspective she hadn’t “done” anything in that moment, but it had been building up over years and I finally had enough.

I’m so sorry for your loss.
The first friend you have mentioned sounds like a genuinely lovely person so I’m so glad you have reconciled.
The others sounds terrible and it’s a blessing you don’t have them in your life. Especially the last one!!!! One month?!?! What a bitch! I hope you have deleted her.

My best friend ghosted me just before covid. They also did same to lots of people we both knew. Came off Facebook etc.
I miss him but tbh he can go whistle.
I didn't deserve this treatment

I don't think I've done this unless there was something really wrong with the relationship one friend I had though my teens and twenties as always a bit of a wrong'un but she could be great fun and was very clever and stimulating to be around but in the end I had had enough of her shit and cut her loose. Another was a friend who just had no concept of boundaries and really did some awful things to the people closest to her, she was just completely untrust worthy and a liability.

Other friends I just drifted apart from, they moved far away or I did and we just didn't see each other for years and eventually the emails stopped or one of us forgot to send a new contact address. I don't do social media and that seems to be the way most people retain even tenuous links these days.

Im on the verge of ghosting a friend

We met at work when I moved to the area and knew nobody

We got on really well and then I went through a rough patch with dp

She was one of two people who knew what was going on (the other person lives in my home town)

Suddenly,it seemed everyone knew what was going on-shed told everyone in a 'haha,heard this gossip?'

I was fuming-im a private person who hadn't told anyone what was going on

I cooled the friendship right down (she'd left work by then) and stayed in touch via messenger

All she wants to talk about are:
Her dog
Her cat
How skint she is
The ex boyfriend that shes still shagging
The married boyfriend shes still shagging
An old friend of hers that tried to scam her
Her ex
Ex's family
A date she went on ten years ago that went wrong

It's like there are no other topics to chat about and if you do manage to steer her away from any of the above,shes either had it worse than you or she changes the subject

I knew it was over when I became a granny for the first time and all I got back was 'i'll never be a grandma' rather than 'congratulations'

Im an awful person but I've had almost 11 years of this and cant take anymore

This had never ever happened. People always have a reason or motivation for taking an action.

@Stardancerintheskye congratulations on being a granny. It’s a lovely thing

Thank you
Im bias but she is gorgeous

I've done this when life has just taken over and people that I once spent a lot of time with are just not part of my life anymore.

Those that don't require regular check-ins are those that stay friends with me. I'm (reluctantly) so busy that I struggle to just do life enough, without having to feel a responsibility to someone that isn't family.

It does mean I have only a few friends sadly. And those tend to be the people that understand how hard life can be with very little free time.

One friend was always on her phone when we met up (which wasn’t very frequently anyway) and we didn’t have much in common anymore, and the phone thing constantly got on my nerves so just stopped arranging to meet up.
Another friends group were cancelling meet ups on and off for years and it got worse and worse and I got fed up with reserving weekends to meet up only for plans to fall through last minute. My time is precious.

How can you be sure the other person has done nothing wrong? Either you know people who have ghosted someone and admitted the other person had done nothing wrong, in which case ask them, or you don't know the reasons and you're making assumptions.

I did this with a friend who constantly talked about herself, asked to borrow money & talked behind other friends backs. She would of thought she did nothing wrong, but it drove me up the wall.

The friend I ghosted probably tells herself she did nothing wrong.

My view is very different to hers.

That is usually what happens.

I find I’m less tolerant as I get older.
I had one friend who would talk constantly about herself, she’s now flounced off after I didn’t prioritize seeing her over seeing my DS. A younger me might have contacted her, now I think enough is enough and I’m done.

People seek out the company of friends who make them feel better about themselves. I really think it’s that simple. As an example, if someone is happily married / has a great job / a new baby / weight loss / attention from men / lots of spare money etc, an insecure friend might feel worse about themselves and start to avoid them. If a friend is always late and it makes the other person not feel valued then they might drop them. There’s virtually always some sort of feeling of resentment / envy / annoyance that’s being dealt with through avoidance.

Slow fading a best friend now. Ive been blind for so many years not realising she was in competition with me. So.many underhand hurtful comments that I never confronted her on. Bringing me down a notch every time things were going well for me.

People drifting apart in life happens for various reasons. Ghosting someone is all about the person who does the ghosting. They lack the interpersonal skills to manage conflict and boundary setting so they take the easy way out. Obviously if you tell someone you don’t want to see them anymore, and they keep at it then it’s fine to say sorry you’re blocked. But ghosting is a terrible thing to do. My friend’s ‘boyfriend’ ghosted her and she was devastated!

I ghosted a friend of 10 years when I felt her behaviour had become just too much to put up with. She was increasingly demanding and rude. A big part of the issue was that due to a move we lived far apart, so our get togethers were now always multiple day overnight affairs at one of our houses, and it seemed to intensify the demanding/rude behavior on her side (control issues) and make it harder to bear on my side.

She was the kind of person that would absolutely not take on board any criticism, or want to compromise on anything, it felt pointless to talk to her about it because she'd take it as a vicious attack. So I ghosted. I sent vague excuses to her texts trying to organise our next meet up, and eventually she stopped texting.

I don't feel good about it, but also I don't think I'd have felt any better about it if I'd "had it out" with her. I don't know how she feels about the whole thing.

Even if the ghosted friend has done something wrong, unless it’s something really obvious which you’d probably know about, it’s only the ghosters opinion that it’s wrong. A bit like restaurant reviews, it’s usually very subjective and situational.

This. I ended a friendship a few years ago. She blew up and massively overreacted to a small argument. She was vile and so unkind in subsequent text messages. And then a few days later messaged as normal, as though nothing had happened.

Nope. I was out. Also this was a friend who I had given a huge amount of time and energy to over the years and I realised she offered very little in return. My life is calmer without her. She tells mutual friends she has no idea what happened or why I’m no longer in touch.