I have suspected for several months that I was excluded from my close group of work colleagues, and I learned that this is in fact true. One of the girls is off work for a long period, going through a very rough time, and I was there for her, lots of visits, phone calls and texts giving as much advice and support as any friend would. All of a sudden the contact went cold, she stopped taking my calls and would give very short, uninformative responses to my texts. I completely respected this and thought she wanted space and privacy to deal with her issues, and never queried it, I thought that this is the way she was treating everyone in our group. The other girls and I never really discussed it, sometimes they would mention they had spoken to or had seen our friend, which I thought strange as she never took my calls, and ignored my suggestions to meet in person. I continued to text her regularly and continued to get short responses. Today I found out that she is in fact in regular contact with the other girls, they all know exactly what is going on with her situation, and they have even got a group chat excluding me. I am feeling very hurt and left out, and I cannot understand why I was cut off from the group. It's like I'm 10 again and being left out of the cool gang on the school playground! I'm not the confrontational type, I'm not going to cause a fuss or do anything to make my work life awkward. Do I just rise above it, continue to be friendly and pleasant? Who would have thought that this happens to women in their 40's? Has anyone experienced anything similar, and how did you handle it?