Cause, on 14 July 2023 - 02:06 AM, said:
In a separate but troubling development for me one of my friends who I used to speak to practically daily has started to take hours to days to respond to my texts. She is notorious for this and when I first met her over a decade ago this was her pattern. She uses her phone regularly, its not that she isnt aware of texts, she just chooses to not respond for whatever reason. I have always found it odd as with the exception of reading a text when Im busy and planning to reply later but forgeting to, not responding to a text has always been foreign to me. However for the last ten years we have honestly probably texted or spoken quite regularly and she would respond to me in what I would just describe as normal texting behavior. I cant nail down exactly when this started changing but the change is obvious. I first asked her if she is okay and more recently called her out on it once already. She acknowledged it and said work was just really busy but the pattern has continued for over a month.
My problems with my friend have continued. I am deeply upset and hurt by this. I lost a friend before the first year of University, one day he just told me via chat on an IM computer app I cant even recall the name of he wanted to end our frienship. It was the worst breakup of my life. We Had been best friends for 8 years. He was my best friend, I was for years perhaps the only friend he had. In high school we were considered to be inseparable. If you saw one of us, you expected the other was nearby. I found out years later he came out as gay (I never knew or even suspected) and mutual friends (my friends who were friends with him through me) of ours who stayed in contact with him untill they slowly drifted apart, have theorized to me the two life events were linked. Maybe he wanted a clean break for some reason or maybe I hurt him in some way. He never explained why even though I asked and I stopped trying to figure it out when all overtures to fix it were ignored. It hurt me for years, until with time it becomes something you just never thing about.
The friend I spoke about above continues to be distant. When you used to speak to someone 3 times a week and now she can go 2 weeks before replying to you, you tend to notice. Or at least I did. I curently feel I being passive aggressive by not messaging her until after she responds to me first whether it takes a day or over 2 weeks but I am not. I have brought up this behavior multiple times askign if there is somethign wrong and asking her if she is okay.
I dont know how we got to this point but for her to say she hadn't noticed anything's wrong in the first place when I first brought it up felt worse than if she had agreed something was wrong. When I asked a second time if something was wrong she said she had been making an effort and hadnt I noticed (I hadnt), she tried to imply I was the one who had a problem with her and she couldnt understand why I was upset about and the problem was me. It struck me as almost purposeful trying to not understand what I was saying. The third time, a week later, I had a rare chance to speak to her in person and I called attention to the fact that she now regularly takes days to weeks to reply to me. I pointed out that when I was in the UK for a business trip and tried to plan going to canterbury with her (somewhere she told me she wanted to go) that I found her so disinterested I remembers explicitly asking her if she was excited to go on the trip or not. She accused me of not being empathetic for her situation even as she told me I was the only one of her friends who cared to check in on her during her hard times (over the last two years she left an abusive boyfriend after I supported and encouraged her to do so, and she broke her knee and was stuck at home for months), and she said I was one of her most important friends. She cried telling me how hard its been and how little support she has had (even as she acknowledges me as one of the few who did). She told me I was misinterpreting events like the canterbury trip. She told me again how its been tough with work and she isnt checking her messages much and she went two weeks without talking to her own mother even. I almost wanted to accuse her of gaslighting me but didnt given her past with her boyfriend. I said if she was having a hard time I wanted to be there for her and told her whether it was intentional or not the way she was interacting me the past few months came across as rude or disrespectful (I forget excactly what word I used but something along those lines). Still I hoped the conversation had let finally understand where I was coming from and hoped their may be a change. There hasnt been.
Part of me worried that maybe she is having a tougher time the past two years than I realized but thats not how I feel. I feel the far more likely explanation I think is that she isn't too busy, she is too busy for me. Or just too disinterested. Everyone has there phone everyday not checking or replying to your messages is either purposeful or because you forgot. I forget to reply to people I admit. Normally a distant Aunt who messages me happy birthday and I forget to thank them for 3 weeks. The peoples who I forget to reply to are not the people I consider most important in my life. The last two direct messages we exchanged outside of a group chat were 11 and 7 days apart.
I dont know whether to bring it up again, I have brought it up 3 times over the last three months. I dont want to lose another friend and would rather fix it if I can but how often can I bring it up for no result and keep trying. I also dont know what to make of the fact that something so clearly has changed between us a
Help
