Struggling to let a close friend go

[Lunalara]

Hey lovely people of Mumsnet,

I was close friends with another student on my Masters Course. She seemed very happy with my company, which she expressed the last time we met up before the ghosting. Then out of (seemingly) nowhere, she stopped talking to me. It is up to her of course if she doesn’t want to be friends anymore, but I wish she told me that it was her intention.

Her decision to ghost me has really affected me a year and an half later. I invested a lot into the friendship, and I struggle to trust other people. I don’t have many other friends, and people are generally awkward around me. It is not as though it affects me every day, but I still grieve the lost friendship. Any advice to help me move on/similar stories would be appreciated.

Maybe she sensed your neediness and decided to let go.
I went to Uni as a mature student and met a few on my course that I felt we got on famously with. I had a few set backs and they left me. Crushed me at the time, when I was most vulnerable. I ended up leaving. Never ever heard a word from anyone on my course. It's hard. I moved on. Don't dwell on it. You will find your own people.

I can empathise with this. Several girls on my PGCE course were part of my core group. We graduated and then they seem to have gone off grid and no one’s heard from them. People are weird.

I’m sorry, OP.

I get that it hurts. But I’d MUCH prefer someone to just drift away than sit me down and tell me all the reasons they didn’t want to be my friend anymore, and I suspect you might feel the same if you did a little thought experiment about how a friendship breakup conversation might actually go. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

I ghosted a friend once - or rather did a slow fade - as she was just way too intense. Like you, she struggled to trust people, but I ended up feeling like she had an expectation of our friendship that she should be able to trust me with her life or something - that it was a huge and heavy responsibility to be her friend, and I hadn’t signed up for that.

I’d have been happy to keep on meeting for drinks and cinema but she seemed to want me to be almost like a partner or family member to her, and it was too much. I’d seen enough of how she operated in other relationships to know she’d just become even more intense and clingy if I spoke to her directly about the mismatch in our expectations, so I just eased myself out and made myself scarce.

I just wanted honest closure, I dont think that’s too much to ask, considering that I did a lot more for her than she did for me. My brain struggles to move on because I only have an idea where I went wrong.

I am feeling quite close to giving up on life. I have been going from friendlessness to other struggles a lot. I don’t know how I am supposed to have hope for the future. I am an outcast and nobody likes me.

I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. It sounds like you could really do with some support. Your GP should be the first port of call, although if you do not feel able to keep yourself safe you might contact the mental health crisis team or go to A&E.

Do you think there is a chance you could be neurodivergent at all? This might explain a feeling of being an outsider, struggling to find people you click with, and finding it hard to let things go / not have certainty about the ending of a friendship.

Just to clarify, in case it’s helpful - nobody tends to get closure when a friendship ends. This hasn’t happened because you did anything wrong.

Friendships come and go, and don’t tend to have a definite ending unless there is a big argument. It’s just part of life. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, particularly if you feel very isolated otherwise.

Please talk to your GP, or a local mental health charity like MIND who can help you access to therapy and other supports.

Hang in there, and take care of yourself.

What you say makes sense for the most part. I don’t usually get affected by loss of friendships as they happen naturally. To be honest I stop messaging people and they don’t reach out to me as they were never really good friends. This friend was different and I cared about her a lot. We had seen each other a few months before the ghosting happened and she said she had the time of her life.

I am frustrated with counselling being so hard to access. I have to keep trying, but it’s only making me spiral more to not be able to easily access therapy. I am on a low wage and spend my spare money on driving lessons, so paid therapy isn’t an option at this point in time.

Yeah, it really sucks. I have no idea when my partner will propose to me, or if he even will propose to me. But if it happens, I won’t have many people to invite to my wedding. I hate myself, because I know I could have had a very different life. Now with the best days gone, it feels like I might as well write off the rest of my life.

you poor thing- did she ghost you after the course? Sometimes friendships are more circumstantial school, uni, work, baby groups etc can all be areas where people strike up close friendships but don’t last once you aren’t seeing each other every day? Sometimes people move on once they are in a new routine in life and it’s not personal they just don’t have capacity to maintain their new friendships and older ones too. It does sound like reaching out for support may help you.

Yes, but it wasn’t immediately after the course ended. I also did bump into her in real life fairly often.

Oh bless you, that's not a nice feeling.

If you want honesty, I think it's as simple as this 'you need her more than she needed you' (sadly) she might be one of these people that makes friends wherever she goes and is generally quite floaty within friendships. I wonder if you're one more for fewer and deeper connections. (I am too) And it sadly sounds as though the importance and weight you've applied to the friendship, she hasn't applied back.

I think it's as simple as that. It sucks for you I know. But try not to spend too much time dwelling on it. It will only make you feel low. It's much harder to make friends as an adult. I barely have any friends to be honest.

I think maybe she had the best of intentions to maintain the friendship but has maybe got busy with life?

it can be hard to let go though when you valued a friendship more- but think of it this way if she has ghosted you she is not the person you thought she was so you aren’t really grieving her it’s someone else you thought she was and she doesn’t exist. Alternatively she’s maybe going through a hard time herself, I guess you can always ask if she is ok?

If I was in your position though I’d consider myself to have 2 choices- ask her what’s wrong and why she isn’t in touch or let it go. Only you can decide what’s best- what is it you would ideally like from your situation? Closure or reconciliation? To go back to how it was?

It’s weird because she did kind of need me, at least at one point in time. She was struggling to settle in this country and had fled Russia after protesting. She hadn’t made any friends here and was struggling with a lot of things. Perhaps it was a point of she needed me at the beginning, but not towards the end. People do change after all.

I have asked occasionally over time to see if she is ok (like once every 6 months), but by now it’s obvious she has no intention of reaching out. I am aware that she does have mental health difficulties, but she has outgrown the friendship too.

That’s hurtful but you haven’t done anything wrong and it doesn’t sound personal at all- sounds like she just doesn’t have capacity xx

I sure hope so. It would put my mind at ease. Either way, it is impossible to know for sure.

For me, I would love to be friends with her again. But ultimately, if that isn’t what she wants, then the priority is closure.

I know I am not special compared to other people, but I am extremely hard on myself. I don’t want people to be hurt by me, and it makes me feel very guilty knowing that at some point I must have done something bad.

Do you really wish she’d told you though? ‘I don’t want to be friends with you because of < X Y Z negative things >’ Agh I wouldn’t want to hear that! I’d rather just tell myself that her life has moved on and I’m not a priority for her and that’s her prerogative (and her loss).

Yes, I would. Even if the reasons behind them are not what I agree with, I would appreciate the honesty so I don’t repeat them with future or present friendships.

Fair enough. Tricky though as many people wouldn’t want to give or receive that feedback, hence the slow fade is a thing! Abrupt blatant ghosting is a harsh option for sure.

You’re giving her way too much power here, by behaving as if her subjective opinion on what you may have done ‘wrong’ must actually be correct, and resolving that you would never repeat it in future friendships. It may well be nothing at all to do with you! If she’s a Russian dissident who can’t return home, and struggles with her MH, isn’t it possible she’s just withdrawing in a bad patch?

This is what I think too.

but also you shouldn’t be changing yourself unless you’ve actually done something wrong.

maybe she just found it to intense to maintain the friendship when she maybe had other stuff going on,

Maybe she’s just moved on and found new friends she feels she has more in common with.

I think as well the closure you need has to come from you and your self confidence- why would you want to have a friend that ghosts you.

I feel for you OP, this is tough. Yes you've got to let someone go if they don't want your friendship anymore, but it hurts.
I'm not sure her explaining her reasons to you is either a realistic possibility or (if it happened in some form) a good idea. You probably haven't done anything wrong. I hope you can move on and make new friends, and I wish you well.

Or it was a situational friendship that didn’t survive the end of the master’s programme. The OP mentions seeing the friend ‘a few months’ before she stopped responding to messages, which doesn’t suggests they saw one another a lot or lived close to one another.

The fact that you are so badly affected by the loss of this friendship (and that you see it in the context of having few/no other friends to turn to) suggests that her reason for drifting away may have been that you were more heavily dependent on the friendship than she was. You may have been a bit too intense for her preferences? Not in any way that you should feel bad about - just enough to generate a natural fading away after the course ended.

I hate this term 'ghosting', which is only a few years old. It seems to have made people think there is some clear protocol to follow when you drift away from someone - an explicit 'closure'. There isn't. Contact just decays naturally.

It is entirely possible in this case yes. But (I think) a lot of other people don’t like me, so I assume the worst.