Hey, I’m mostly writing this as a reality check to see if I’m just having horrible social skills (not the first time) or if I’m actually valid in this regard, mostly concerning my mental health in terms of always feeling more like “dude we talk to sometimes” instead of an actual friend.
Mostly comes from lately, 4 “friends” I have known for 6 and 8 years just don’t interact with me that much. Situation 1 we’ll call them A, B and C. And then situation 2 where it’s just D.
A and B are in a relation and we keep in contact but I don’t annoy them that much especially because we work/study in different zones, but still used to sometimes talk online and would say we were good friends.
C is someone who has been with me a lot these past two years especially because we are in the same course, and we talked a lot in uni, online, etc…
Now here’s my dillema, I would think I would be considered a good friend to these people, considering we know each other for so long and the constant contact (note – 90% of time it’s me initiating, so it might be one-sided), but lately (last 2 months or so) they just haven’t talked to me at all, no reason given, there was no fight or bad blood recently at all.
Then my other friend asks if I’ve been receiving constant messages from A, and I say no, and then he tells me the three them went on a vacation together that I was even near of.
Should I just give up on these relations and move on? As of now I’ve been just not sending any messages at them at all, and ignored their group chat request to hang out (Couldn’t physical go and it clearly seemed they only did it because they realized I got info they cut me out).
Situation 2 – Person I met a year ago who we spend a ton of time together IRL and online, we play daily through discord, and then out of nowhere ghosts me out for 2 weeks without a single message and then come backs. I only say him that’s not very cool considering he could atleast just send a single message saying “Hey I’m not gonna show up for sometime”, and then he says “nah thats stupid, the friends I have I don’t talk to them for months and they’re cool with that”. After this I just once again decided not to initiate conversations, he hasn’t sent any message back.
After all of this, I’m not a person who doesn’t have that many friends (Besides the ones discussed I got 3 very good friends), so I’m wondering if these situations are actually serious and I should cut contact or I’m blowing them out of the water.
TL:DR – 3 Friends who I know for a long time who decided to ignore me completely without any reason and then what seems to be an attempt to reconcile, and 1 friend who I would even consider my best friend completely ghosting me 2 weeks. Should I just burn bridges with these people or are my social skils completely in the wrong.
3 comments
So from my understanding it seems like friends A, B & C went on a vacation together and you found this out by word of mouth from another friend?
Did you ever see any photos of them online hanging out together or any other evidence that proves this?
It seems like you have known these people for a long time although it seems like there is a bit of discontentment because it seems like you are the one always initiating conversations.
I feel like a bit more context would help, did you meet these friends online or at university? How does friend C know friends A and B?
What do interactions/conversations normally consists of between you and your friends?
Unfortunately sometimes we may consider people close friends but to them we are just a casual/university/online friend we speak to from time to time.
I think longevity of a friendship is not always indicative of closeness between people.
Don’t burn the bridge, just take a break.
Ok, and let’s say you don’t burn those bridges, what exactly is your next move?
You said 90% of the time it’s you initiating contact – so it’s safe to assume none of them will contact you. After they’ve done this what can you even tell them? Will you contact them and look like someone who is bitter because you didn’t get invited? Will you not mention it at all with a high probability that it is not a one off and will again happen in the future?
Sadly relationships of any kind have to be desirable both ways. To me it seems you are the only one putting any effort into those friendships. There is a difference between “they haven’t contacted me in days/weeks/months”. In your case it’s been months.
Life can get in the way of things but for the stuff we actually care about 99% of the time we are able to make time. The fact that through all this nobody had 5 minutes to reach out is complete BS. To me it simply looks like they don’t care.
From somebody who went through this, all I can say is live your life however you see fit, but we often make the mistake of making time for people who don’t make time for us, instead of making time for people who do make time for us.