My best friend of half my life is getting married to her fiance. My husband and I set them up. She has always jokingly been my actual half. I love my husband but I love my friend more. The last year has been absolute shit for me. My career was burning me out and derailing my emotions. For some context; I work in non-profit as an advocate for adults with global developmental delays.

A few weeks ago, I needed to check in with her because I felt a pull. I had a nagging feeling she was keeping something from me; she called me annoying and told me to take her words for what they were then stopped writing to me. She has liked my social media posts and watches what I repost. It’s all these small things that I’m overthinking.

This is the last message I sent to her. She has not given me one clue what it could be about.

First black out name is my son.
Second black out is an event I bought tickets for us to go, which we planned together. She ended up going with her two other bridesmaids.

Edit to say; my husband will always be my husband. I love him so much and he’s been super understanding but he’s never lost a friendship before and I would like tangible advice on what I can do to move on

You just stop talking as much, life gets busy, and one day you realize you haven’t spoken in months.

And the weirdest part? You can still love that person and genuinely wish them well, but somehow the friendship doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re too quick to think every friendship that ends has to have a villain. Maybe some people really are just meant to be part of a certain chapter of your life.

But then again, some friendships probably could’ve survived if both people had tried a little harder.

Have you ever lost a friendship without there being an actual falling-out?

I miss my childhood friends😭

I don’t really know where else to talk about this, but I’ve been carrying a lot of sadness lately and just need to get it off my chest.

I recently turned 30, and one of the hardest things I’ve been dealing with is grieving friendships with people who are still alive. People I once considered family, people I genuinely thought would be in my life forever.

Throughout my twenties, I had so many friends. I was constantly going out, drinking, partying, and surrounding myself with people. But looking back, I was also going through some of the worst periods of my life. I made horrible decisions, put myself in situations I shouldn’t have, and honestly, I wasn’t always a good person or a good friend. And that’s probably the hardest part to admit. A lot of these friendships didn’t just end because we grew apart. Some of them ended because of me. Because of my behaviour, my decisions, and the person I was at the time.
I carry so much guilt about that.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about old memories, inside jokes, random conversations, and all the little things I took for granted. I wish I could go back and handle things differently. I wish I had been more mature, more understanding, and more appreciative of the people I had.
I’ve changed a lot since then. I stopped drinking and partying, started focusing on my career, my relationship, my mental health, and just becoming a better version of myself. I’m genuinely proud of how far I’ve come, but there’s something incredibly bittersweet about becoming someone you’re finally proud of and realizing you’ve lost so many people along the way.

I know becoming a better person doesn’t undo the hurt I may have caused. And I know that just because I’ve changed doesn’t mean anyone owes me another chance.
But God, I miss having friends.

I have a wonderful boyfriend and a cat I adore, and I’ve learned to appreciate my own company. But romantic love doesn’t replace platonic love. I miss having girlfriends. I miss having people to spontaneously grab dinner with, go shopping with, have movie nights with, or just sit around talking about absolutely nothing. And trying to make friends in Toronto at 30 feels almost impossible.

Everyone seems to already have their established circles, their routines, and their own lives. Even when I meet someone I click with, turning that initial connection into a genuine friendship feels so difficult. And I’ll admit that sometimes I’m part of the problem. I crave connection, but when opportunities to socialize come up, I sometimes retreat into the comfort of staying home.
It’s such a frustrating cycle. I want friends, but I feel exhausted by the process of trying to make them.
I don’t even want some huge social circle anymore. I just want a few genuine friendships. People I can laugh with, be vulnerable with, and build memories with. Friendships that aren’t dependent on drinking, partying, or constantly going out.

I think what hurts the most is that I’m finally becoming the person I wish I had been years ago, but the people I wish could see that growth aren’t around anymore.
And sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever find friendships that feel as natural and comfortable as the ones I lost.
I don’t really know what I’m looking for by posting this. Maybe reassurance that I’m not the only person who feels this way. Maybe advice from people who have had to rebuild their social lives after losing friends because of their own mistakes.
I just really miss having my people. And I wish I had appreciated them more when I did.

I blocked out names or identifying information just in case.

Basically, we've been friends for over 10 years now. She got her first serious boyfriend about a year and a half ago and the amount of contact she had with anyone other than him decreased massively, but we were still texting somewhat regularly and having video calls every now and then. Our last time seeing her in person was in April when we went out to dinner and everything seemed good.

We had a conversation in May where we discussed meeting up with her and her boyfriend when we all came back to our hometown for the summer which she seemed enthusiastic about and told us that she was free whenever and to let her know when we wanted to meet.

Since that conversation she's started ghosting us completely and we don't know why. We tried contacting her in the group chat to arrange the meetup but she never responded despite reading our messages.

The images attached are messages that I've sent her privately since then. She's read them but not responded to those either. I keep sending her messages every now and then in the hopes that she'll respond but she hasn't yet and it's now been nearly 6 months since any of us spoke to her.

It's just all so confusing since there doesn't seem to be any reason any of us can pinpoint as to why she'd suddenly cut us off completely like this. No argument or disagreement or even a conversation that could explain it. She just suddenly stopped wanting anything to do with us. At first we all thought something must have happened to her or maybe she was busy or had personal issues going on, but based on her social media and other online activity, nothing seems to have happened. We tried messaging her to check up on her, but no response.

After almost 6 months now, we're all pretty sure that she just doesn't want to be friends anymore for some reason, so we're trying to mostly leave her alone, but it's just really frustrating. I just want some kind of response or explanation from her. Something to explain how she can just throw away over 10 years of friendship for seemingly no reason. If she told us why, then we could try to understand and either fix it or move on and go our separate ways, but at the moment we're all just stuck in a limbo waiting to hear from her to get an answer of some kind.

She was so ahead of her time. She was so naturally funny and sweet and so smart. She would treat u with the most consideration in the world. Everything u said she would try to understand and make you feel heard. And me in middle school, I was as selfish as everyone else so I never fully appreciated her. She was this flower amongst all of us and just too pure for this world. I wish I was there for her and I wonder where she is now. I’ve grown up a bit now and still look up to her.

In 2024, three people reconnected. I have a "no returners" rule because if someone takes me for granted while I'm around and only realizes what they lost when I'm gone, how does this serve me?

1. a friend from whom I separated. I went through something, he didn't help after encouraging me to hold people accountable. He was sideways involved, and after I rebuilt my life, he kept criticizing me and my new work and kept shutting me down. I knew I was onto something and just decided that I needed to disconnect because he was a person keeping me back instead of helping propel me forward. About a year and a half of disconnecting, I received undeniable and major accolades for this work which proved he was full of shit and proved I did the right thing. Fast forward ten years he writes me on Twitter which I didn't use for a half-decade. It was half-assed and I never replied. He is fully irrelevant. I've changed too much, grown too much, and I have no desire nor energy to fill people in on my life or hear what happened to them and get caught up. My identity now is the work he was criticizing and I knew he was full of shit at the time, so how do I reconnect with someone so clueless about something I got so good at it became my identity and profession?
2. another friend who was going through a divorce at the beginning of Corona in 2020 and shut all of us out and would read our messages and never respond. He also reconnected in 2024 after his ex-wife was talking to me, assumed we were talking, I told her I haven't spoken to him in nearly four years. Soon after, he reconnected with all of us, the conversations were nice, but it seemed like a mask. We agreed to keep talking, he kept making appointments to chat, then when I would make time, he would disappear and then a week or two later say he was hammered with work or something. After a while, I gave up. He still likes my IG posts, though, two years later
3. The big one: a close friend, like my closest friend, my found family, and an incredibly important person in my life reconnected with me towards the end of 2024 after a completely incompetently carried out avoidant discard by her at the beginning of 2020. She more or less deactivated while she was on the plane in 2020 to come to my country and we were planning to hang out again. She sent a voice message prior to leaving, gave me all her flight details, I tracked it, she never confirmed all was well on the other side like we agreed. I contacted her later, she flipped out and called me a "stalker" for using the flight details she gave me. Anyhow, this turns out to have been her deactivating because she's a moron. Anyhow, the discard went super messy, even after I gave her space to manage my life because she's even bad at being avoidant and she takes being given space as "I thought we were done". I went on with my life, thrived through the Corona era, then in 2024, she writes me out of nowhere apologizing for nearly five years prior which was weird, but ok, since I didn't need her to come back to tell me I did nothing wrong, something I told her directly. Turns out she was lying about the reasons and was hiding her avoidance and she was fully self-aware and likes and protects being avoidant. She came back after a supposed ex dumped her due to her avoidance. She came back, I gave her a conditional chance, she didn't respect my condition to go EXTREMELY slow and that the moment this became one-sided, I would leave. Despite this, she did the push-pull, withdrew, lied, triangulated using "narcissistic psychopath" randos she would meet on reddit, discord, and tinder and keep blasting to me they were "partnership material" and compromise us instead of just being normal and just existing. She likely realized I was putting the pieces together latently and started getting uncomfortable. Fast forward to almost 90 days, she deactivated, I gave warnings in the weeks prior, I made sure to verify if she was reachable or not just to make sure everything was crossed off on my checklist to have no regrets. She was unreachable, no longer there, and on autopilot again, the same as exactly five years prior. So the moment she deactivated again, I saw it, named her avoidance, and dumped her, but without animosity, and with love and regard, despite being annoyed and even insulted she brought this attachment theory bullshit into my life. She gave a rambling response which confirmed fully she is avoidant and that she knows it and indulges in it, complete with pro-avoidance subreddit links. She even acted kind of like I came back to her when I forgot about her existence nearly a half-decade prior. In the wake of it, I decided to look inward and reopen my personal history on what brought me to that point since it's two people and not just one. I ended up using my experience and education to understand who I was when I was younger and what I was actually going through at the time and it was an amazing experience of inner work and sort of self-therapy. So maybe it wasn't all that bad, but I actually miss the peace and attachment theory-free "innocence" I had prior to her return. The sickest part is how she lives in the attachment theory subs and probably discord where they advocate to be avoidant and give talking points to support it, as well as blameshifting talking points and she's so ill she legitimately projects her own specific qualities and traits onto others, including me. So yeah, with her, I lost her again, my closest friend, my found family, but there was no way forward because she's so avoidant now she can't even have non-transactional friends and doesn't even realize the way she talks about her friends it's transparent she has no real friends and maybe one IRL friend is described only in transactional terms. She also now leans heavily narcissistic and appears to emulate her narc father when she deactivates.

So basically me n this girl have been friends since like childhood she was my neighbour b4 she moved to a city 7-8 hours away and like this happened a few months ago where my sophomore year of hs was over and I was starting junior year in a couple of months and I was having kind of a rough time back then like everything was just pressuring me I had noone to talk to and then SHE reached out (my old "bestie") in tt and i was kinda happy I had someone to talk to. After talking for like a week she asked me to send my picture I did of my face obv and thought ntg of it but then she started asking more and more in the period of days ahead and I was starting to get a little suspicious but I didn't wanna lose her because at that time u could say I was desperate to talk to some1. Then she told me about a guy she was talking to and MIND YOU she was the type of girl to like fuck around yk what I mean right so when she told me abt this guy I was like whatever. Anyways then she started asking me about pics of my body and no matter what I was not giving that type of picture and I directly asked her wtf was she on to ask me shit like that and then she told me that SHE WAS SENDING MY PICTURES TO THE GUY SHE WAS TALKING TO ALL THIS TIME...I couldn't breathe I was so mad I was cussing her out and all she had to say was "you are so pretty and he likes me very much cuz of ur face and hes asking for body pics pls send" i was stunned i couldn't speak i thought she was my bsf. All this time the prb is the guy thinks I AM talking to him not her and Ik what kinda talks she has its all about sex and stuff and I dont talk like that never. I blocked her and told her mom and idk what happened after but im in a good place now and i want u guys to know that u shouldn't do anything just because ur in a bad place sometimes ppl u trust can do worse than ppl u don't.

This August I went through a friend-breakup with my best friend since childhood. We’ve known each other our whole lives, but we’ve been practically inseparable the last 17years. In August I didn’t know that this would be a friend-breakup.

I wrote about the instance that led to this on AITA, cause it was all so confusing. But because of that I won’t go into detail here. Long story short; I got some long paragraphs in the middle of the night where he tried to confront me with something, but I never really found out what he wanted, or what I had done wrong. I suspect it’s all a misunderstanding of some kind.

Then in the middle of me trying to find out, he stopped answering. And I haven’t heard from him since.

In the beginning of October I gave up. The trust between us was completely broken. I can’t have a friend who’s just gonna disappear if we have a disagreement or a misunderstanding. So I blocked him. I then learned from a mutual friend that he had apparently gone around talking shit about my character behind my back.

I couldn’t believe my best friend of that many years could say such things about me, and to a mutual friend at that. It just confirmed my decision to not let him back, not that i thought he’d reach out anyway at this point.

But after that, I am slowly noticing him removing me from other social media’s. And I have to admit it hurts like hell every time. He deleted his Snapchat, he removed me from Spotify, and this morning I got a notification he deleted his discord.

Even though I think this whole situation is stupid and could’ve been easily avoidable by a face to face conversation… even though I’m legitimately broken after hearing how he spoke about me… I miss him. I miss my best friend. I miss laughing together, being there for each other, traveling together. I miss our inside jokes that have been ongoing for a decade.

Every time I notice him pulling even farther away I get nauseous. I have no idea what to do. I’d really appreciate if anyone could give advice or share experiences, as I don’t have people irl I can talk to about this.

​

Edit it's not just making me sad but very very angry too cause I was there for her alot and she isn't its making me very angry and hurt

So as my title says. My closest friend like the closest is getting away and I don't like its making me sad to the point of it effecting my mental health. I know it's pathetic that letting someone else's behaviour effect me this much. But I thought she would be my friend for life but she isn't apparently. We know eachother since 11th and got close pretty fast. We've know each other for 7 years now. We would talk about everything possible from.silly to all.

Basically we were eachother gonto person she was going to get married in May and she made me belive that she is unhappy with the marriage it was an arrange marriage and she would come home and cry alot and then she went to her home town and she would video call daily and cry on call. No I'm not a comforter I'm not very good with it 8 get awkward n uncomfortable but I was there for her. On her wedding she kept texting n all and I was through her entire journey like her Fallin in love and all of that very happy for her that she gets to experience this she would share all and lot.

But now she have changed drastically alot i know life happens people changes priority does but this just something else and she don't even have that much responsibility yet and is comparatively free. Her response have gotten colder reply shorter very monotonous idk what happened I did asked once she said nothing but I don't buy it.

She does text whenever she needs to rant at that time she would text in details with emoji and stuff but she isn't there for me anymore i got into a bad accident and that cause fracture in mid June and the fracture as it is and some other stuff too making me sad I was also prescribed some anti represents. And one day i told her like nothing is feeling good and the stuff that Im thinking of increasing dosage. NOTHING she didn't said anything not even a are you okay is everything fine.

I know girls are wayyy over the moon after marriage and stuff but this ain't cool I'm literally hurting soo much and as I'm currently in recovery evry thing feels 10x more i know it's ailly and stupid of me to feel this way but we used to be very close and now we aren't and i she was like a sister i dinr have a sister. The thing is I can't cut her out no matter how much ever I want to but I hv stared to reply and return the same coldness still nothing she won't even ask what's wrong.

Once during her early marriage she seemed off so I asked her and she was sad and something personal so I asked she doesn't and I dint think she can't get it from my text she just doesn't care.

**Sorry for long text I just really wanted to share and get it off its hurting me alot losing a close sister like bind hurts**

Tldrv- my friend changes drastically and it's effecting me more than it should I'm hurting she have gotten very cold only shows emotion when she needs me to be there for her.

My online best friend gradually started getting busy, and then I began getting left on delivered for days. When it first happened, I even messaged her other friend to ask if she was okay or if I'd done something wrong. She told me my friend sometimes disappears for a while, so I accepted it. But she came back and disappeared again.

For around 4–5 months, I was texting her EVERY DAY, while she only texted me twice. The worst part was seeing her change her PFP, post stories and notes, and be active while my messages sat there. I kept wondering if I'd done something wrong. I still don't know.

I'm someone who wants to fix things with the people I love. I care deeply about my friends, and she left when I needed her the most. I felt so lonely. Eventually, another friend told me she'd experienced the same thing with her and suggested I block her. I did, a week before my birthday, thinking that if she genuinely cared, she'd find some way to contact me or at least wish me.

Nothing happened.

It's been five months since I blocked her. I checked her profile from my spam account, and she seemed happy, like she'd moved on without a second thought. Maybe she really has forgotten me. I feel stupid for waiting and texting every day for months, but the truth is, I still miss her so much. I still love her so much.

Sometimes I want to text her one last time and ask why she let our friendship fall apart. Did I do something? Did she stop caring? Why couldn't she just tell me instead of disappearing? But I don't even know how I'd start that conversation after all this time. It would be so awkward.

I miss the little things, like texting her every other day and asking how her day went. I keep wondering if she even remembers me anymore.

I'm genuinely torn between wanting answers and being scared of getting ignored all over again.

Should I text her one last time, or should I leave things as they are?

I'm attaching part of a video showing my messages/reels being left on delivered and seen, for context.

We’ve known each other for so long. From friends to lovers back to friends again. The love I feel for you is deeper than ever, and you told me it was the same for you.

I was there for you when you started seeing someone new. Helped you pack to move to her city. Reassured you that you’re capable of making it work. Kept my promises to visit as often as I could. You said you were afraid of hurting me and losing me again, the way you did when we dated. I laughed and said no, you’re better to me now than you ever were as a partner! I was so confident in us. You always made the space and time to connect, to show up and understand.

I shared my fears. How one by one my friends drifted off into romantic relationships and I have found myself alone with unanswered texts, cancelled plans, and silence where there used to joy and camaraderie. Or how friends disappear, their personalities absorbed into a couple unit, becoming unrecognizable to me. You made the effort to be the exception. You fought for our friendship on its own grounds.

I don’t know what happened. What unspoken thing happened behind the scenes, what agreements you made. But this last visit was undeniably different. I used to leave content and renewed. This time I sobbed most of the way back to our hometown. I felt like an unwelcome guest, an intrusion. All the niceties were said but I could feel you, tense and avoiding even half a minute alone with me. Ignoring my bids for conversation, our usual banter and jokes stifled by propriety. That was never your style. You were tiptoeing around your partner, apprehensive of her every mood and need. I couldn’t even ask “how have you been?” the simplest of check ins. So we passed the time together but we weren’t really together at all. You were subdued and withdrawn and acted scared of me, or scared to be next to me. How incredibly lonely it was to be beside you yet unable to connect.

We kept up the superficialities, the safe pleasantries. You text as though all is normal still. I know something has ended. Some quiet decision that has shut me out from your inner world. You won’t even acknowledge it, so I will mourn it alone. Another friend fading away. Acting like nothing has changed but the silence grows and lengthens and consumes what we used to have. I used to want to confront, to ask questions, to fight for it. But I’m old enough now to know how that goes.