Confusing friendship makes me feel sad- what to do?

[autumnleaves77]

A girl I’ve known for several years (would say we were pretty good mates), recently has been less good at replying to messages and meeting up, I put it down to (and she has blamed it on) her being busy, lots going on for her at the moment. That’s fine and perfectly reasonable.

She meets up with other members of the friendship group with no problems though.

And more recently has just arranged a trip with some of them, leaving others of us in the group without an invite.

Typing it out it actually seems clear, “she’s just not that into you!”.

the confusing thing for me is that when she does get in touch, her messages are always full of comments about how she misses me and would love to see me soon.

Shes extremely popular and well thought of. I feel the need to move on, but due to her nice words and other people’s opinions feel I may be missing something??

It’s always action and not words that you must take notice of.

That way you can easily dismiss her flowery words as hogwash if she doesn’t follow up with action.

I be less available op. I had the same. Non committal about meeting. I just leave it now.. it should be 2 way efforts

Match her effort.
and yes, words mean nothing.

A good way to make yourself popular is to make other people feel good about themselves, saying how much you’ve missed them for example. It seems she’s spreading herself thin though and doesn’t have the time to make good on her compliments.

If you think that might be true, don’t take it to heart but don’t expect to see her more frequently than you do.

Thank you all, this is exactly what I need, some wise perspective!

But... Okay, so you are all in a big friendship group, but you don't all have to be invited to everything. Some people in a group of friends might just want to hang out in twos and threes, or whatever. They aren't purposely leaving you out.

I have a similar friend. Makes you feel like her greatest mate ever when you actually manage to see her but is shit at staying in touch. Messages left halfway through a conversation time and time again. Always manages to make arrangements with others though. I’m fading the friendship out as I’m too old for this.

Yes britespark agree I dont chase friends anymore got tired of it. Same too old for this crap!

I second @britespark1 comments. I think we all have the same friend. Except mine just stopped responding. I reached out a few times, no response, so I’ve actually just blocked her number as it’s been ten months since she’s responded so I have the message now. Too old to deal with this type of stuff.

Had a work mate like this . Very cheerful and smiley and very supportive when I went through some issues at work . When I left it was a different story , I was the one initiating all contact so I just blocked and moved on . I later found out she was running with the fox and hunting with the hound , slagging me down to others I was having problems with and just telling people what they wanted to hear basically

Agree too old for all this. I find people soo flaky now. Tired it

She is an arsehole. Move on. Sod her.

YANBU, and honestly, you've talked yourself into the clearest answer already — actions are telling you one thing consistently (busy for you, available for others, trip arranged without you), while words are telling you another (misses you, would love to see you soon). When there's a genuine, sustained gap between what someone does and what they say, the doing is usually the more honest signal, because it costs them something real — time, effort, an actual invite — while warm words cost nothing.

Honestly, she sounds like a bit of an arsehole here, playing you with nice messages while quietly leaving you out where it actually counts.

The "she's popular and well thought of" part is worth naming directly, because I think it's doing a lot of quiet work in making you doubt your own read. Someone being generally well-liked doesn't mean they treat everyone in a group equally, and it doesn't mean your specific experience with her is wrong just because others might not have noticed or experienced the same thing.

Popularity isn't evidence against what you've actually observed happening to you specifically.

I don't think you're missing something. I think the sweet messages are making it harder to accept a fairly plain pattern: she's investing effort elsewhere in the group and using kind words with you in place of the invites and replies that would actually show it. That's a common, if very confusing, thing people do — it lets them avoid an awkward conversation while still feeling like a nice person.

You don't need her to confirm anything or explain herself for you to trust your own experience here. It's fair to quietly redirect your energy toward the friendships in the group that are actually reciprocal, without needing this one to have a dramatic conclusion. Feeling sad about it is completely valid too — you can mourn a friendship cooling even while being clear-eyed that it has.