Friend who blows hot and cold

[OwainMaddox]

Can anyone provide any insight into this behaviour. I have a friend who blows hot and cold. She will spend a few months acting like I'm her best friend ever, over-sharing personal information and wanting to spend lots of time with me. Then she will suddenly go cold, not reply to messages, not make any contact and then a couple of months later bounce back like nothing happened.

She used to have quite a stressful job and so I thought the cold periods were maybe connected to work issues. But for the last 6 months she has had a less stressful job which is quite local to me. For the first few months we were meeting up every week and she was oversharing information with me. Then she started to cancel meeting up, got slower at replying to messages and finally stopped replying. I tried to ask her about it and she said she'd been 'busy', which I interpreted as 'you are no longer a high priority'.

I find this type of behaviour so odd and i'm considering just letting her go as a friend but I wondered if anyone could provide insight into why someone might be so inconsistent in their treatment of a friend.

It’s very weird. Could she be a narcissist? Just doesn’t think of anybody else’s thoughts/feelings

I don't think she's a narcissist. When she is in the 'hot phase she can be really considerate, for example she will apologise for taking 24 hours to reply to a message, even though i'm not actually bothered about the delay. But when she's going into a cold phase she will just ignore messages and not even acknowledge that she didn't reply.

I'd guess she might have depression. When she's down she doesn't communicate perhaps. I'm a bit like this but not diagnosed as a depressive nor to this extent, but I definitely withdraw when I'm down and close friends can tell.

I cringe looking back but I was very much like this before I started medication once I was diagnosed with bipolar. I was utterly chaotic but when manic I would ring all my favourite people, talk for hours, overcommit to plans and then once the manic phase was over and depression would begin, I would withdraw completely. Then up I'd pop again when manic again.

I know it doesn't help and it doesn't mean you're obliged to tolerate the behaviour as it makes you sad but I just had to say that my behaviour when manic was genuine - I would be totally invested in my friends during those periods because I adore them. I wanted so desperately to show them that and think I overshared and got them to do so with me too, but now I can see it must have been extra hurtful when I would hibernate once depressed again.

Medication has changed my life, I feel calm and steady and value the friends who stuck around but TOTALLY understand those who walked away for their own mental health because they felt rejected whenever I'd disappear again.

You must put yourself first.

@BackseatCookers Thanks for your enlightening response. Can I ask, when you were withdrawn and depressed, did you want friends to attempt to contact you, to show they still cared, or did you just want to be left alone?

You're is welcome! I wanted to hear from them always, I was just embarrassed I had let them down so often wouldn't reply during those phases (again, unforgivable really and I dont blame them all all for being so hurt) but their messages helped me greatly. Having said that, my poor mental health was never a good enough reason for theirs to be damaged by my behaviour. It's such a tough one