The recipe for messin' with me

[nayad]

It's probably not the best idea I've ever had, to post the One True Way to put me into obsessive mental spinning about things I don't understand, but I guess I like to live on the edge. Are you ready? Here it is. To completely mess my mind up:

Disappear from my life very gradually, with no explanation, acting all the while as if you're not really

Comments

[australian_joe]

It's usually a bit of laziness and a lot of cowardice, I think. They might have decided the gains they thought they had from you weren't worth the maintenance, prioritised you last, but then felt bad about it and so found it easier to vaguely drift away rather than outright cut you out.

It's certainly cruel and demeaning. It's like they want the upside of negligence without any of the costs.

I note there are of course many possible explanations that don't require evil or even neglect. But if I had to bet, in the circumstances you describe, I'd be betting on laziness and cowardice.

Was Niko particularly confrontation-averse?

[nayad]

Was Niko particularly confrontation-averse?

I would have predicted from her general behavior that she would be direct about expressing herself if she had problems with someone, but I never saw her choosing to end a friendship with anyone else, so I could have gotten that completely wrong.

[australian_joe]

Hmm. Yeah. People are weird. 8-/

[urlgirl]

I'm going to be the devil's advocate for a minute here. I can tell that you all are rational people who demand clear closure and to know where they stand with respect to people. I totally respect that

[nicolle]

What if she comes from a culture where this kind of confrontation is severely frowned upon, and the correct thing to do is to be unfailingly polite, but let your actions speak for themselves?

Reason number one that I will never live in England, because as far as I can tell they value politeness over straight communication over there and I just cannot take it. (This from someone whose best friend from college is British.)

I'm in the camp of ask her a straight question, and take what you get. Of course, I'm likely to shrug stuff like that off as 'growing apart' so it's not as emotionally triggering a situation for me...

Just don't make it mean anything about you, okay? You are fabulous just like you are, whether she wants to be your friend or not.

[bibliofile]

I will never live in England, because as far as I can tell they value politeness over straight communication over there and I just cannot take it.

Don't forget Minnesota Nice, where people get stop talking to friends who forgot a dinner engagement -- but they're too polite to bring it up. D'oh!

On the other hand, politeness can sure beat some of the self-absorbed people I've known, who can talk about general subjects or themselves but never seem to think about you except as an audience.

re: closure
I hate not having closure too (though it's gotten a lot easier since I started taking antidepressants). Clearly this woman doesn't want to be friends any more, preferring to let you go rather than try to resolve any issues she might have had. Good riddance, I say -- that's not what a real friend does. Real friendships need a little maintenance occasionally, but people get through it.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, though.

[nayad]

I agree that she doesn't want to be friends, and had pretty much accepted that before learning that she was back in town. The information that she moved back here without contacting us is basically the sound of the door slamming behind her, so I think I'm going to leave it alone--why put more energy into pursuing the matter?

[geeveecatullus]

I agree with markbourne.
I'd drop her a line or call and just say something like "I heard you were back in town and would like to catch up" and take it from there ...
I am very much someone requiring closure, and I hate people drifting away from me ...

[nayad]

I could almost see myself calling her if it hadn't been so many years already, but she's been back at least since 2006, so I think I'm going to live with the mystery of it all. I hardly have enough time for my real friends, these days!

[bzdchris]

Perhaps the reason this is getting to you so badly is because you are taking it personally. It's possible that her distance is not necessarily a rejection of you, and has more to do with her.

Friends come and go, this is something I've learned over the years. I've had wonderful relationships with women with whom I worked, who I didn't see or talk to again after one of us moved to a different job. I lost touch with one of my best friends shortly after we went to Pennsic together back in 1992 - don't really know why, but we lost touch and moved on. It's sad, yes, but then I try to remember all the other friends I have now and it just feels like natural attrition, I guess.

I read once that a secret to not going crazy was to never take anything personally. Now, I take pretty much everything personally (which explains a lot, doesn't it?), but I would heartily suggest that you follow that advice as much as possible.

[nayad]

"Never take anything personally." I'm sorry, what language is that? ;)

I don't see how I could avoid taking this thing personally, but since it had been pretty clear that she wasn't interested for a few years before my discovery, recently, that she was back in town, it doesn't sting that much. The whole thing just solidified when I knew that she had been living here again for a while without telling me. Until then, I could think of it as if she had simply been absorbed into her new life; now, it's clearly a choice she's made. I can't believe there wasn't a reason she made that choice, but I had mostly moved on from her before learning that she was back, so I'm not too worked up about it.