Backstory: I met a friend on an online game around 4 years ago. We have been close friends (and some others I met on the game). We moved on to Discord afterwards. We were all teenagers and still are
A lot of drama happened in that group and I lost many friends from it, maybe around half of them, after knowing them for years I realized that they had unfavorable traits (racism, excessive lying/manipulating etc.) but that doesn’t affect my friendship with the others. It might be worth noting that since school returned a few months ago I partially stopped using Discord to focus on studying and I ended up making some friends IRL so I didn’t spend much time on discord for a while as well.
Recently That friend would take hours to respond to one ping of mine. When I ask if something’s wrong, he just says he was talking to a friend. I know people have other friends and all, but I don’t think I have ever ignored a friend for hours just because I was talking to someone else. And I find it pretty rude too. I was once asking him about something important, I had to spam call him and he didn’t even respond, I was very frustrated since it was pretty important to the both of us, after he finally responded (maybe like 40 minutes later, probably would have taken longer if I didn’t call him)
I am unsure if I am in the wrong here, but no friend, new or old, has ever treated me this way. And I just feel too unimportant when he talks to a friend for 3 hours but cant even respond to something important I got to say. The last time we even had a conversation was months ago, because when we ARE in a convo, he takes 7 mins to respond to a single message.
I am not sure how to deal with this, especially that I knew him for too long and I don’t want to lose him as a friend, but I find it too ridiculous to have a friendship like this.
Hopefully this sub is the right place for this and thanks for reading!
1 comment
I understand how frustrated, angry, and upset you are. But I think you’re approaching this as if your relationship is still the same as it was 4 years ago, when in fact it has changed.
He’s said nothing is wrong… so it seems pretty clear that he just doesn’t feel as close to you as he used to. He might have new friends he’s more interested in, or he might enjoy your company less than he used to. This might be a temporary distraction (meeting new people), or it might be that his deeper feelings about you have changed for the worse. That’s why, either way, you doing things like spamming him isn’t fair. Imagine the roles were reversed; you stopped liking someone, but they keep engaging with you, more frequently and more aggressively. It’s just going to make you like them and want to interact with them *even less*. And trust me, I know exactly how it feels for someone to go from instant responses to 4, 7+ mins.
So does that mean you have to end the friendship? No. But you *do* have to adjust your expectations of him. I understand it hurts. You can try asking him to have a heart to heart talk, but if he accepts and still says nothing is wrong, that’s the time to accept things are different.
The good news is that you can never know what’s really going on in his head. Just assume he’s got his own stuff going on. Shift your focus to other people and other things. If he initiates with you, don’t be bitter. It will feel unfair that you have to stay upbeat and light despite feeling the way you do, but I firmly believe this is the only way to keep a friend like this, rather than outright succumb to bitterness and eventually burn the bridge.