when a friend ghosts you

[pinkytoe]

We have been friends with a neighbor since we moved here. Our relationship and conversations have always been warm and heartfelt. She went away for a year and now that she's back, she completely ignores us when we see her - as if we don't exist. It doesn't make any sense but it is definitely bothersome to be treated that way. We have decided to respect her wishes whatever the reason and let it go and call it one of life's mysteries. So odd...has that ever happened to you?

[Yppej]

Government officials do it to me all the time, but not friends.

[Tradd]

A really close friend moved from IL to MI, about 3 hours away, in 2020. Frequent emails and occasional calls. Late last year she just stopped responding, not just to me, but every one of our mutual friends. No one had any idea what happened. We’ve all tried one last email, phone call. I even sent a card. Nothing.

[gimmethesimplelife]

I've had this happen to me before - even before it became a thing. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (sorry, I'm just feeling OLD lately) I graduated college in December 1990. Now it's true that young people go their separate ways after college and at least attempt to start new lives - but I have been ghosted by people that I stayed in touch with for some time after college. I still don't know what to make of this - but I remember good times with a few of these people and I am grateful for that much. I can't force people to be in my life - and what's more, over the years I have learned to let people come and go out of my life as they will. So much easier to deal with people in general this way.

I will also admit that I am not totally innocent here myself - I have ghosted people when they have been hurtful or extremely disrespectful - not often, but I have. These few occasions I believed that the friendship was weaker than I had believed and it would have been awkward, very uncomfortable to bring this up. This is so unlike me - I am someone who is quite direct, blunt even - but these times the atmosphere between myself and said other person(s) has been I don't know - icky for lack of a better word. Being direct in these situations didn't seem appropriate. Perhaps this is why others ghost, too, or maybe some variant of what I have posted above. Rob

[nswef]

gimmethe simple life, I too have ghosted people and am generally direct, but sometimes I just don't want to walk on eggshells any more...so I just stay away. I've decided I will choose who can share my energy and those who deplete it cannot. Still some lingering guilt for being unkind by ghosting.

[iris lilies]

It is always weird when this happens isn’t it? I can’t say it’s happened to me, but I’ve seen it happen to others.

I suppose if it did happen to me, I wouldn’t notice because I’m kind of in my own little world anyway, ha ha. For all I know I’ve “ghosted” someone else and don’t realize it. Certainly I have cooled friendships with women who DH calls
my “crazy friends. “There’s a fair number of crazies in the gardening world. There is certainly MANY crazies in the Dog Rescue world, but I am insulated from that because our own rescue group is so tightly and professionally run.

now I remember that my mother had a couple friends who would get mad at her and drop her, and she was always sanguine about it, would chuckle and was always open to starting up the friendship again if they wanted to which they usually did.

sometimes we as humans just need a break from other humans because basically we are all kind of annoying at times, right? Ha ha.

[saguaro]

I know I am chiming in late but yes, it has happened to me. And in fact, right now DH is scratching his head over a friend who relocated out of town, he has reached out and...crickets.

One story: back in my college years I became good friends with a coworker, we had mutual interests in music and would attend concerts, music festivals etc. I even met some of her college friends and got to know them. Then suddenly she just disappeared. She had moved out from her parents, quit school and changed jobs. I got to visit her at her new job which was incidentally at the same school she just quit and then after that nothing more from her. It bothered me but I was in the middle of my senior year in college and was too busy to follow up any further. I wasn't able to locate her other friends to find anything out.

Then, a year and half later, after college graduation I was standing on the subway platform on my way home from work. I hear someone call out to me, it's one of her college friends also on the way home from work. We were going (mostly) the same way from home so we spent the train ride talking. Turns out friend ghosted everyone else at the same time and they were wondering just what happened with her. So we were comparing what we knew in the runup to the ghosting. I guess it was a relief to know it wasn't me, but at the same time, it raised new concerns of what was going on with her. Never did get any answers not that I dwelled on it too much afterward.