Thanks. It was so hurtful.
I read a quote once, went something like this:
Some people want a friendship, but some just want an audience.
I had a friend borrow some small sum off me; $25 in 1976. No biggie; I said consider it a gift. A couple weeks went by and he let me know he couldn’t pay me back yet. Don’t worry — I don’t care about it. I like you and enjoy having you around. He became more and more distant and after a couple months I just never saw him again. That’s probably the most trivial one I can recall right now.
I asked a lot of a friend while I was in and out of mania, before my hospitalization. I always hoped to repay her for her many kindnesses when I was back on my feet. However, while I was writing a check for her itemized list of expenses, I was also writing her off. I mean, really, a parking fee?
I had plans with friends that involved them coming into town to pick me up in the afternoon and taking me away to stay with them for a few days. Another friend invited me out for coffee and a browse around the shops together so I made plans with her for the morning and told her about what was happening in the afternoon.
On the day, my friends called first thing and said their plans had changed and they’d actually arrive in town that morning, quite soon, rather than the afternoon. I called the friend I had coffee plans with, apologised and explained.
Several days later I began hearing from mutual friends that she was telling everyone how I’d deeply offended her by canceling on her like that, and that she was writing me off. I didn’t hear from her again.
Two decades on, we have a friendly chat if we bump into each other, but we don’t make plans together.
I had a friend stop speaking to me because I didn’t invite her children to a birthday party I was throwing for one of my nieces. The kids didn’t even know each other!
I lost a friend who had been a fairly good bud for a little over a decade.
Our group of youngish guys likes to make bets with each other, seemingly on almost anything.
This friend, who we’ll call Igor (because that’s his name and it’s awesome), and I made a long-term type sports bet for $100. Not to weigh you down with the details, but the bet in question was about which hockey team would make it to the playoffs first, a team Igor picked or a team I picked.
A couple of years later the team I chose made it to the playoffs, with Igor’s team nowhere in sight of the playoffs. He took a couple of years to finally pay me after numerous reminders, and he was trying to rules-lawyer himself into only paying half of the $100 we agreed on. After I got gruff with him about his shenanigans, he went out and bought $100 in nickels, took pictures of it while mugging for the camera, and texted them to me. I responded with simply “lose this number” and I’ve never heard from him since.
I’ve heard through mutual friends that essentially all is well if I ever wanted to call, but fuck that guy. He’s got a weekly sports book, and I’m pretty sure his bookie wouldn’t let him off so easily if he played games after losing a bet. Why do that to a friend?
Eh, happens all the time. Sometimes you never know what people really think of you, or you’re just ignoring it because you have a good time together. Or you put up with their shit for a long time until you’ve had enough, and the other person doesn’t ever realize what the problem was, or isn’t going to change something basic just for you.
I had another one that was more of a slow burn. She was nice enough on the surface, we were neighbors, and had kids the same age who played together. Overtime I realized that I always felt like shit about myself when I was with her- she had a knack for the back-handed compliment or snarky personal comment. The final incident was trivial, but I just chose to not put up with anymore. So I was pleasant to her, but stopped socializing.
Her kid ended up a jerk as well and treated my son pretty badly as they got older.
There was a kid I was friends with in high school, but not really close friends, but friendly enough that I think we spent time together, and kept in touch after high school. In college he sold me a computer that ended up having busted parts and he wouldn’t give me some money back to replace the parts and we just stopped talking (he stopped talking to me iirc).
Several years later, when Facebook came around, we became pals again and he said he didn’t know why we stopped talking and had forgotten about the computer thing. Ok.
We were very close for a few years - when you’re in your early 30s, single people travel in sparse little packs - going out to dinner, watching movies, having late night conversations. Nice relaxing adult stuff without any feelings (we were very much not attracted to each other).
One day we were having a conversation online and I was telling him how I was tired of people I knew trying to get me/my company to make small hobby-business websites, because it was too hard to fit in to our company’s practice of building and maintaining large enterprise websites. I said “the smaller sites are better for guys like you” - which was true, as he was just starting out working on sites, and was good at it, and it was a hobby, and small sites were better for him than enterprise sites.
That was probably 5 years ago or more and I haven’t heard from him since. I did hear that he got married and had a kid which seems really strange to me but that is neither here nor there.
Had you invited the friend to the party? Because I can see where that would be super awkward to explain to your kids. “Mommy’s going to another child’s birthday party and you aren’t allowed to come. Maybe I’ll bring you a piece of leftover cake.”
I used to be part of a volunteer organization and intentional community, and I lived with a bunch of fellow volunteers (2 girls + me, 2 guys) in a house in the middle of nowhere, all volunteering with the same population of people. The two girls (“Ellen” and “Kelly”) and I were instant friends, and got along fabulously all year. We even went on a week’s vacation together, just the 3 of us, with long hours of driving – no fights, a great time was had, the whole bit. Even up to the day that our year-long contract was up and we all left to return to our homes in different states, everything was great between us.
That was 10 years ago, and Ellen and I have kept in touch regularly. Kelly, I have never heard from again. Neither has Ellen nor our two male roommates. She’s not dead (she has a Facebook page which she occasionally updates), she just has never responded to any of our emails, phone calls, PMs, nothing. The rest of us have never understood what happened to her to make her cut us off so completely, either. She was such a fun, friendly person, and the dynamics between us were such that we could (at least IME) be open with each other about conflict or tension. It makes no sense, and I still miss her friendship.
No, it was a party for teenagers with some adult oversight (Stay in the party area and keep away from that liquor cabinet now! etc.). The guests were all other teenagers. Actually they were all Roma teenagers. And my niece and the co-worker’s daughter did not attend the same school.
Yeah.
I had a friend who I really liked, and who hung out with me back in the 90’s. In time we drifted apart, but I still made a point of including her in my wedding, etc. She had always been self-centered and a little bit black-and-white in her thinking, but she was smart and funny and I still very much enjoyed her company - I knew it was based on both of us liking her a lot, but it wasn’t a big deal.
As I said, we drifted apart over the years. Eventually we drifted back together, and started hanging out again. She had some complaints about my behavior - I didn’t ask after her daughter enough (I had met the girl twice), on a day we spent literally all day together, I spent too much time on my phone texting/etc others (guilty as charged, I told her I would try to change, and I have pretty much done so), I hadn’t gone to a play that she was in (because it was far away and only on days when I had Faire), etc. We discussed them, I apologized where I felt it was needed and explained the other stuff that I felt didn’t warrent an apology, and so forth.
Then she found a Boy. Or rather, re-found him - he was someone she had flirted with when she worked Faire with me, but she had been in a relationship at the time, and so nothing came of it. And she went and slept with the Boy, with the idea that it was a FWB relationship. But she had never been in one of those, and she fell hard. And he didn’t.
And all of a sudden, next time I saw her she gave me the Cut Direct. OOoooookay. As far as I had known, we were just fine with each other?? So I wrote her an email asking what was up, and she replied with a long list of my failings, all of which I thought we had worked out between each other before, and adding in the fact that “People who work Faire are different from people who don’t, and people like you can go out and have casual sex, but it just doesn’t fit with my values.” Basically blaming me for the issues she was having with the Boy, plus all the other stuff.
So I wrote her back, rebutting her points one by one, and ended with “Just because things are going badly with the Boy, doesn’t mean it’s OK to treat me badly as his proxy. If you want to apologize at any point, we can be friends again. But you will need to apologize, because I do not deserve this shit.”
She hasn’t apologized. So there we are.
People can be weird about kids parties.
I had one friend when I moved up to Oregon from California. Just one. Cause I’m shit at making friends. I’d actually known her for years online and finally got to start hanging out in real life once I moved. We had a lot in common, and enjoyed hanging out together. And then I got pregnant. I told her cause I was both kinda excited and kinda scared since I knew it was going to be a single mom sort of experience. And she kinda just acted a little off about it. The next day I got an email from her saying we couldn’t be friends anymore because she doesn’t want the drama of having a single mom in her life. That was that. No response to my emails, nothing. That was eight years ago. Haven’t gotten another friend since 
I had a friend of many years and our friendship eventually ended over two things.
One was religion. I’m a devout Christian, she had pagan leanings and beliefs. In spite of that we got along, but after many years her little jabs about Christianity became annoying. She felt free to criticize my religion, it’s history and beliefs. But she expected that her admiration of the goddess Isis deserved respect, no doubts about HER allowed!
And she started blaming many of her problems in life on having been abducted by aliens, and didn’t know why people didn’t believe her.
We quarreled and haven’t spoken in a very long time. I miss the friendship, I know it was real, but I couldn’t put up with things any more.
I think that a lot of friendships can be closely linked with particular places. I usually have at least one offsider at work, almost always female, for teasing and joking and commiserating and ranting and hugs. For some reasons those friendships never survive outside the workplace, though: I’ll move on, or they’ll move on, and despite all the swapping of emails and phone numbers, and a couple of meets for coffee, outside that pressure cooker of work the relationships never survive long, we just drift out of touch. Maybe I’m just not good at having friends.
My closest cousin—we are the only two males in our generation, and almost exactly the same age. We live a few thousand miles apart, but kept in touch. After he posted a couple of racist memes on Facebook (pictures of Mexicans in sombreros mocking people who speak with strong Mexican accents), I pointed out in a private message that it was racist, and that we had Mexican relatives, and asked him to please stop. He continued. I said stop, or I’m unfriending you. He continued. So I unfriended him, and stopped talking to him in real life, too. Who needs racists?
Now I hear from his sister that he has started a months-long prison term for inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor, so I’m thinking my somewhat petty friendship-ending was a good choice. The original charges and what he plead guilty to are all printed in his hometown paper, so it’s not like I have to rely on family gossip to make up my mind about the case. Plus, looking back, I can see a few red flags.
I’ve had a couple of other friendships end over petty things, from both me and from other people, but it was really a recognition that the friendship was effectively over, anyway, and just cutting the cord.
I had a friend suddenly flip on me the summer before I turned 12. We had been good friends for Grades 1 and 2, and I moved away for a few years. When my parents moved back to our home town we lived on the same street and continued being close friends for a year.
Suddenly one day at swimming lessons she wouldn’t be my partner and started being mean to me. The next two years until high school were horrible, because she became the de facto popular girl/ruler of our grade. Her discarding me was blood in the water and other bullies followed suit. (It was a mean girl fight where saying “NICE jeans” was one of the worst things. Try explaining that to adults.)
There was an intervention by the teachers and principal of the school. She said “What law says I have to be her friend. We have nothing in common.”
Interestingly I saw her in high school repeat that pattern. I managed to be in only about 2 classes with her all high school, which made me quite happy.
Later on I found she studied social work in university then eventually became a police officer. Story around my home town is she made a habit of having affairs with married men. He parents are great people and her mother actually was a lab teacher when I took nursing school. We never discussed her daughter, but she once said to me “I wish daughter still had friends like you.”