Facebook friend no longer responding to email exchange

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think I can fairly safely assume I’ve been silently unfriended in spirit, though I’m pretty sure I’m technically still on her friends list (not that that means anything, she’s got hundreds, maybe thousands, I don’t remember).

She and I were very good friends on and off through elementary - high school (off because we didn’t share any classes, not because of falling-outs). She contacted me with a message, I responded, she responded, I responded, and now silence.

There are basically two possibilities, as I see them. I’m certain I said only innocuous things - we were still in the Hi!!! How are you?? phase, but I did let a month go by between responses. I apologized profusely and had a good reason (wiped out by long viral illness on top of chronic illness), but she could be upset about that. Mind you, I responded belatedly in early October, so it’s been like a month and a week now, and yes she has been posting on her Facebook regularly.

So, she could be procrastinating or upset about my long absence and giving me the silent treatment.

(I’m sorry about all the backstory, it’s a bit necessary.)

On the other hand, though, the only thing I’ve done since last responding to our message thread thing was to personalize my profile (I’m new on Facebook). Someone told me Facebook was also used as a dating site, so I put in my profile that I’m bisexual.

My question is two-part:

  1. Was putting that in my profile inappropriate for Facebook in general, and should I take it out?

  2. Given that her mom is Brazilian and likely Catholic, (or for any number of reasons, though I’m a little surprised by such a reaction from one of my peers - we’re 25, grew up in a pretty liberal area), is she probably just not comfortable with the bisexual thing? Just out of curiosity and for future reference, really. I know there’s no way of being certain without asking her (which would be ridiculous at this point) and that it really doesn’t matter. If/when she responds is up to her. I just don’t know how open I’m supposed to be with other people, you know? I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

She’d expressed that it’d be great for me to visit her sometime, and I’d agreed. She also asked me to come to her wedding in December, though I assume that offer’s off the table.

So now, I really want to take the bisexual thing out of my profile, but doing that now just seems kind of deceitful. And I have no idea how inappropriate, if any, it was to begin with.

What do you think? And should I send her a message asking if everything’s okay and/or a message acknowledging our unfriendedness? I don’t want her to feel as though she has to actually on paper invite me to her wedding just because she asked informally if she doesn’t want me to be there anymore. My gut feeling is that I should just keep quiet and be open to her response if/when it comes and just shrug my shoulders and move on in the meantime.

Thanks.

2

In all fairness. I bet your friend is not actually thinking about you. I doubt you did anything to offend them. The reality is that Facebook connects us to casual acquaintences who really don’t give a shit about us or our lives.

3

Or you could just ask your friend. You know, instead of a bunch of anonymous people who don’t know you, or her.

4

This is one of my pet ridiculous things to be bothered by. Facebook is really a pain in the ass for this kind of interaction, I’ve decided. There doesn’t exist a mechanism to make it clear that you actually want to involve a person in your life in some meaningful way versus just adding each other as friends and going on with your separate lives. Honestly, the interaction you’ve described is a pretty accurate summary of (the entirety of) every exchange I’ve had with anyone with whom I reconnected on Facebook after any appreciable hiatus.

And let’s be honest - it is that way because that’s the way we want it most of the time, like mswas says. We don’t give a shit. But then with the one out of however many you really are “so excited to hear from, how are you OMG,” the problem is the language available is insufficient to communicate the sentiment, since we’ve all exhausted all our reserves of delight on the other 400 people we’ve friended and didn’t give a shit about.

So, that said, who the hell knows what your friend is thinking. I’d be very hesitant to ascribe any particular motivations to anything, and I think it’s way too early to decide that she’s “probably” this or that. Facebook, since it’s so easy to use to find everyone, is not really built to transmit the authentic version of the kind of friendships it is built to foster. Don’t assume; you took a month to get back to her, but look how much you care about the relationship!

5

I should have made this clearer. I know Facebook implies short messages, but I’m talking about long multi-paragraph emails regarding school/job/hobbies/current activities/pets/parents/siblings/etc discussions. Just nothing that requires an opinion and could therefore be offensive. In my opinion, anyway. Or does that not change anything?

Um, and thanks for reading all of that and responding, but I need a ruling on the bisexual thing. Should I take it out of my profile or not?

6

If you are out to everyone you know as bi, and don’t have a problem with people knowing, then leave it in. Facebook isn’t really a dating site. You can’t just cruise looking at profiles.

I think mswas hit it on the head with his response. She’s not giving this a second thought. If you get an invitation to the wedding in the mail you are invited, if you don’t, you aren’t.

7

Are you emailing her via Facebook or via regular email?

I sent a FB email to a friend that I speak with and I know still likes me, and he never responded. When I ran in to him IRL I asked if he got it and he said “I get so much crap in my Facebook inbox that I rarely check it. Send me a regular email.”

He must have FB notifications going to his FB inbox instead of an external address, because I never get any sort of “spam” or junk in my FB inbox. If there’s a message in there, it’s always from someone I know.

Anyway, if you’re sending FB emails maybe she just missed it. She does have a ton of friends. Wouldn’t hurt to go to her profile and post a happy note on her wall. If you can’t even get to her profile and post on her wall, then you’ve probably been de-friended. Then you’ll have your answer.

8

In that case, it doesn’t really belong in my profile, I think. I should remove it. Thanks!

We’ve been emailing through the Facebook inbox. A good point, and a good suggestion. I’ll do that.

Thank you, everyone. I always over think things. :smack:

9

Yeah, try not to ascribe to malice what is more likely indifference.

I wonder how many connections I have lost due to switching around e-mail addresses and such. It just goes with the territory.

10

I don’t understand why this is a big deal at all. People stop communicating on Facebook All. The. Time. It’s just what mswas said… they don’t give a shit. If she has thousands of friends, she probably has dozens or even hundreds of messages. Maybe she played along with the whole polite-how-are-you spiel for a while and then simply got bored of it. Your month-long absence also makes it look like you didn’t give a shit, with the virus thing sounding like a generic excuse (I know you said it isn’t, but that would’ve been my thought if somebody told me that).

The thing is… so what? Why does this matter so much to you? Why do you care so much about her reaction to the bi thing? Do you want her as a friend THAT badly?

If you’re that serious, just message her again, making your motivation clearer. “Hey, did you get my last message? I’m seriously sorry about the absence. I’d love to reconnect and catch up sometime.”

If she still ignores you, she’s not interested.

As for the whole bi thing… I fail to see the relevance. You’re going to remove it because ONE friend who doesn’t even reply to you MIGHT get offended? Are you interested in her or something? If not, who cares what it says? Facebook isn’t a dating site per se, but if you want you can certainly meet people on it. Leaving “bi” there will leave that avenue open to people of your sex who might be interested; it will also dissuade the conservative types from befriending you only to find/freak out later, wasting time for both of you. ETA: The option is there for a reason. If you’re not in the closet, use it.

11

You can certainly cruise looking at profiles, but whether you’d really want to use it as a dating site with strangers is questionable.

You can view people by networks you’re in, interests and hobbies, media preferences, group memberships, friend-of-friend connections, relationship status, etc.

In theory, people that don’t want to be available to strangers or pseudo-strangers can set their privacy options as such. Others deliberately leave their profiles open to certain networks, and if they’re messagable and looking for “Friendship” or whatever, PRESUMABLY they’d be ok with being messaged… heck, there are still people with “Looking for Random Play” grandfathered in from Facebook’s early days. If that’s not solicitation for a date, I don’t know what is.

But then again… these days, with Facebook being so mainstream, maybe some people just don’t know how to deal with the privacy settings. And even if they were open to communication, most attractive women will be inundated with messages from random strangers so your message will be hit-or-miss at best.

12

I’m recovering from self-imposed antisociality and have very little experience with this sort of thing. I don’t have many relationships, so the ones I do have seem more important than they should. She and I have been very close in the past, and it felt like she was trying to maybe establish a bit of that again, but I suppose not. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be very warm and friendly with everyone. I must come off as being rather cold.

I also tend to be extremely honest and sincere and literal and assume the same of others. She contacted me first and was very warm and enthusiastic, and I didn’t see any subtleties in her messages that I’ve learned indicate that someone is backing off or just being friendly (and don’t intend to establish a longer-term bond with you), but I often need to be hit over the head with that sort of thing. The only tool I have to gauge many social interactions that I don’t understand is being able to run it past other people, and this forum lends itself naturally to doing that, given the anonymity and large volume of members.

13

I’d just let it go if I were you. It’s causing you too much stress already.

If she happens to contact you again in a few weeks, cool, but I wouldn’t count on it.

ETA: To clarify, from your posts it seems that she’s much more important to you than you are to her. Sorry. “Warm and enthusiastic” may just be the way she is; it doesn’t necessarily indicate she wants to be your Best Friend Forever. A lot of women behave that way because that’s how they’ve been socially conditioned (sorry if I’m pointing out the obvious).

14

Ignorance fought then. Every person I’ve ever searched for or whatnot has had a closed profile and I wasn’t able to see it until the Friend Request was accepted.

15

Most people set their profiles to private (ie., friends only) because they have jobs and such, but you don’t have to.

16

Sorry. I think it’s innocuous enough that if you thought it was a good idea, you should feel OK leaving it in there. I honestly don’t even know what most people have in that field because I’ve never bothered to wonder, but I’d obviously check if I wanted to know. Which seems worthwhile, and what it’s there for.

I don’t think it’s inappropriate, either way. It’s either an honest answer to a sometimes-relevant question posed by the people who put the site together, or no answer at all; same as religion and politics and whatever else is in there. Mine’s pretty much all blanks just because I can’t be arsed, but what the hell, right? Your entries in those fields would just be true facts about yourself, and certainly not anything you have a responsibility to moderate on behalf of a potentially offended audience.

And in response to the other point, I’d say that you’d be well served just to consider the possibility that your two-pronged hypothesis from the OP leaves out the most likely scenario, which is that she’s not offended, not freaked out, and not angry at all, and just, you know, didn’t get around to it. I’m far (faaar) from immune to that kind of paralysis by analysis, so hopefully you don’t feel like I’m trying to give a lecture or something, but I think the best approach is just to check in with a simple “what’s up?” kind of message, and ask about the wedding planning if you’re trying to figure out where you stand on that issue. In my experience, the odds are pretty good, if your approach is anything like mine (and it sounds like it might be), that you’re the only one worrying or feeling uncomfortable about this.

17

I don’t think it has to be either extreme. It doesn’t need to be a question of her not giving a shit. I like contact like that with old good friends from my past. People who I do give a shit about, and really am interested when I ask about their life, and sometimes hear from every day for a week, but sometimes dont hear from for a few months, and vice versa. I think neither of us worrying about what breaks might mean, and just letting the give and take go on how it may is what makes it nice.

18

reply’s advice to just let it go is good, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with this person. Just let go of expectations. I’ve had your same problem, fear of loss of a small number of friends. Eventually I ended up with a very large circle of friends and acquaintances but I still feel somewhat awkward in social situations. What I learned is to just let go of what you want them to be. Be friendly with her, just ask her what’s up, don’t make a big fuss about the fact that there was this time apart. Don’t come across as needy, but don’t pretend not to be needy, I mean stop being needy. Just let go of your need to hold onto something you’ve shared. Your relationship with this woman is only as deep as it is. You cannot make it deeper by wishing it to be, that can only occur if you associate with her. Maybe she will respond to you maybe she won’t. She is getting married, she’s likely very busy with her life and that’s what she is concerned with. I agree with the advice that she might have thought you were blowing her off, so making a slightly bigger effort to reconnect after a disconnect that your circumstances caused is reasonable, but don’t push it.

When we push our need to connect with people on them, we end up pushing them away. When we stop being needy, we can be far more empathetic to them and their needs and thus make them more comfortable, and then the relationship will deepen in a natural way. It’s like the blossoming of a flower. You can watch a flower blossom if you are patient, if you appreciate the fullness of its process. But sometimes you watch a flower blossom and you don’t get to see the end of it. That is the hand of death in our daily lives. Sometimes things that we have built up in our lives die out.

Just let it go, let her know you would still like to be friends, but don’t push it more than that. If she drew conclusions about your sexuality, then that’s on her, there is nothing to be done, you are out and open and you should seek connections with people who can accept you for who you are.