The telltale signs your friend is ghosting you…

I don’t expect to ever fall in love again. I feel like I’ve had my great love stories and now that I’m 60, I’m not actively looking anymore. I’m happy with my partner and if I want to feel those highs of first love again – instead of the potential anxiety of a whirlwind affair – I’d rather adopt a Labrador.

But avoiding romance doesn’t mean avoiding the pain of losing someone you love, because we still have friendships. And losing a friend can be just as painful as losing a loved one.

It is normal for these kinds of relationships to come and go, to die due to lack of contact, distance or even more serious reasons such as disagreements.

And sometimes, just like with a boyfriend, you get dumped without mercy—though honestly, the fact that a guy I’ve been with for months said he wanted out is never as bad as a friend abandoning you. Especially when that friend subjects you to the prolonged death of ghosting.

You don’t realize it’s happening. You suggest meetings, but no response. Days later, you send another message. After a meaningful break, there’s a response, but they’re “busy” and suggest meeting when “work is less hectic.”

You tell them to get in touch when their diary is clearer. A month may pass, you try again. ‘Oh, sorry,’ comes the reply, ‘hell has frozen over.’ Well, that might as well have been the case, because the excuse given is lame, but still believable. Then maybe it’s the third time you suggest meeting – and because they feel bad about blowing you off, they agree to a quick cup of coffee. You’ve had longer sneezing fits.

They’re friendly but busy, busy, busy. They might talk more than usual, leaving you no time to ask anything too pertinent. And the slow, slow drip of friendship erosion begins again, until six months have passed and they don’t even like your Instagram posts anymore.

Oh, it’s agony. For anyone who’s ever been the unpopular girl at school, this will take you right back to that time in year nine when your two best friends stopped talking when you got close.

That’s why it was so painful to be unexpectedly found back in those insecure teenage years as a forty-year-old mother of four, who was enjoying life to the fullest with a friend who was so close I could finish her sentences.

It was long before the term ‘ghosting’ was even coined. I still think of that girl with nostalgia, because she was 15 years younger than me when she suddenly dropped me.

We met at art school, she was a graduate student; I was enjoying precious time away from my young children. She was posh. I wasn’t. But we clicked. After a while, however, the friendship soured. Now I realize it was my fault. I had asked for top dollar for work we had both done, which she saw as a collaboration. There were other mistakes, too. But I did a lot of good things for her, too.

Then she got engaged and our friendship fell apart. I had no idea what was happening until I realized she had stopped calling and was never free to meet up. She finally confessed that she could no longer trust me. The end.

A year later I saw her while I was walking. I nodded. She stopped and called me. I was hesitant, like a child expecting to be hit.

“I saw that you wrote that your father had died,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” I paused. “But nothing has changed,” she added.

‘Well, to hell with you!’ I thought. I turned and walked away. That’s what I was – dumped. I understand why it happened, even if I felt it was a little unfair.

But then it happened again. This time, the fact that my friendship is faltering is much harder to understand. My recently ex-girlfriend is a smart, witty, glamorous young mother and so much fun. What I was to her, I’m not sure – perhaps an uncritical motherly type?

It is normal for these kinds of relationships to come and go, to die due to lack of contact, distance or even more serious reasons such as disagreements.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem to work anymore. She’s busy with ‘family and work’ and while I have both, albeit in smaller doses, I’m the only one who has the time. My messages go unanswered and attempts to meet up are ignored and then rejected. Ghosted again.

I get what it’s like when a friendship has run its course – I just wish it hadn’t because I was so in love with her. What can you do? You can’t make someone want you by being a needy whiner. I feel like such a fool, clinging to something that’s already dead.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised – because I have to admit, I have ghosted people too. The woman who believed in ghosts and told me someone had died in my house – maybe a cat she was offering for sale – was getting too weird for me. I replied to her messages with an emoji for a good three months. I know. What a***h, I shudder at my meanness. What can I say? Karma happens to us all…