Was I Un-Friended In Google Chat?

[Huerta88]

One of the people who I’d Google chatted with through Gmail some years ago is now showing up on the bottom of the chat partners list as “Invited” (they’d initially accepted the invite and we’d chatted a few times). As I go through the options on the partner list, I see that I can designate a previously-accepted contact as “Show auto, show always, never show, block.” I’ve done “never show” with a few contacts (mainly just to clean up the list from people I didn’t end up chatting with). But wouldn’t that just mean I drop off their list, and vice versa? I.e., what action by a chat partner (disabling their entire account? blocking?) would cause them to revert to being listed, but only as invited?