letters from: My best friend keeps ghosting me

Nov 21, 2024

Hello lovelies!

For my first Through the Threshold column, I went to Reddit while people are submitting their questions. (By the way, submit your questions! You can do so here.) I found some relatable questions and wanted to start with those. The first question? “My best friend keeps ghosting me.” This seemed like a perfect one because I think we can all relate to this!

The OP (who I will keep anonymous) said,

“Hi all the title is pretty self explanatory, I try to reach out to my best friend to hangout and she leaves me on read or not bother to reply. She has a boyfriend and spends every minute with them, I understand she is in love but I have been treated poorly ever since. This has been going on for a year now and I’ve had multiple discussions with her about this problem and she comes up with excuses. What should I do? I want to cut her off, but I feel like I’m being dramatic.”

Ah, the dreaded friendship shift when your friends get a partner. It’s upsetting and no one really likes it. Here’s the thing about the shift: it is inevitable that it will happen – and when it’s in balance, it’s actually normal and healthy.

If your friend gets a new job, starts a new hobby, moves in with their family, or has some other life shift happen, you probably will expect their schedule to change. It’s the same for a romantic partner: they need to figure out their new schedule and new normal now that they have someone else to consider and plan their time with. If we think of our capacity as a pie chart, here are some possible categories: self-care, career, family, friends, hobbies, and home. Maybe there are more, maybe less. This means that your pie chart of capacity might look something like this:

Now, if you were to add in a partner, suddenly you have to make your pie have another piece. Maybe it would look something like this:

Note about the friend piece: Unless we only have one friend (which is certainly okay), then we have to find a way to take our friend slice and divide it amongst all our friendships. We probably won’t give each friend the same size piece; we will likely prioritize connections with close friends (both intimacy close and location close) and friends who might overlap in other pieces: maybe friends we work with or friends who have the same hobbies as us. Maybe we have friends who we share housing with. Depending on the circumstances in life, we will probably allocate different-sized pieces to different people. Maybe we have a friend who’s getting married, going through a breakup, or has a milestone birthday coming up – that friend might temporarily get a bigger piece of the pie. Maybe a long-distance friend is in town for a week – they will likely get the majority of the slice for that week. And of course, we also have to consider that during a busy time at work, that pie slice will grow and others will shrink. Family might become a bigger slice during holidays, etc.

Of course, this is not an exact science (for example, much of my family slice overlaps with my partner slice because we are married, my home slice also overlaps with my partner, and many of my friends are my chosen family), but I think it just helps us visualize.

How each of us approaches changing our pie slices when we add in something new (whether that be a relationship or something else) differently. Inherently, there is no right or wrong way to do this. We may have opinions on what’s right and wrong, and we might have feelings on how others do this, but there is no set right or wrong.

For some, the pie slices adjust to fit in the new partner, but they try to keep the partner and friend slices pretty equal, or at least close to equal. For some, the partner slice takes up the whole pie in the first few months of a relationship, then starts to shrink and evens out. And for others, it stays the primary slice. Because this letter writer said that it’s been a year, I am imagining that this friend falls into the latter category.

Again, if that is how this person wants to approach splitting their pie, then who am I to say that is objectively wrong? All I know is that it’s right for her because that is what she is doing.

And I know this is usually very hurtful to those in the friends (and perhaps family) slice. I know because I have been there! Honestly, I have been there on both sides. When I first started dating my now husband when I was 20 years old, I absolutely prioritized our relationship above all else. My second priority was school/work. It was probably a shitty time to be my friend. I fell into the second camp, where I started to even out, especially after I graduated from college. Now, my partner is probably still the biggest slice, but I have a comfortable balance, so my friend piece is still pretty large.

I have also been the friend who used to take up a big part of a friend’s pie and when she got a boyfriend (that I didn’t particularly like, either), it felt like my piece was getting smaller and smaller. That transition hurt, a lot. I think it especially hurts when they are still a big piece of our pie – it starts to not feel equal or reciprocal when we invest a lot of our capacity into them, and they stop investing in us.

Here are the things I think we can do when this happens:

First and foremost, ground yourself. Being reactive instead of responsive will not help your situation. Identify what you’re feeling at your core: are you angry, or are you feeling hurt? (or both)
Identify what you want – are you okay with waiting it out and seeing if the behavior naturally evens out (if this is happening at the beginning of a relationship)? Are you okay making your other slices bigger, and hoping you come back together after the “honeymoon” period has passed?
Talk to your friend. Avoid being accusatory or attacking. Perhaps the first time you talk, say something along the lines of, “Hey, I’ve really been missing spending time with you. I know you’ve been extra busy lately, but I would love if we could find some time to catch up!” This makes it feel less like you’re accusing them of ditching you and more like you’re trying to connect. If you need to have a second conversation, perhaps you can be a little more vulnerable. “I’ve noticed that ever since you and X got together, I’ve seen a lot less of you. I miss you, and while I am so happy for you, I wonder if we can figure out a way to get some more time in. I think that would help me feel like I am also an important part of your life.” Sometimes, our friends truly don’t know how they are making us feel. All it takes is telling them sometimes! For many of us, we may feel like the ideal may be that we shouldn’t have to tell them – they should just know. While this would probably be very helpful, it’s also unfortunately very unrealistic. Very few people do things maliciously to the people we care about.
Compromise. Your old dynamic probably won’t ever go back to exactly how it was – and that is sad. Allow yourself to grieve this transition and change, and also think of how you can find a middle ground with your friend. Maybe they want to hang out with their partner on the weekends, so can you find a time during the week to have dinner? Do you have a partner that you could propose going on double dates with? Can you talk on the phone more often during times when they are more busy? Asking your friend to help you brainstorm is helpful.

In the case of the letter writer (or OP in this case), they have already tried to talk to the friend several times with no success. If this is the case, then there are two options:

Keep the friendship, knowing that you have to accept the way things are and that they are not interested in changing it. If you’ve talked to the friend several times, and they don’t acknowledge how you feel, they probably are happy with how things are. They have let you know that they have no intention of compromising or making space for you in the way you would like. This hurts. If you’re okay with this hurt and the knowledge that you’ll likely need to rearrange how much pie you’re giving them, then keep the friendship. Explore what it will look like now: maybe, sadly, you might just have lunch once a month or only see each other for special events. Maybe this relationship relies more on texting and calling than it does in-person hang-outs. If you can make peace with this and want to salvage the relationship, then do this.
If you are absolutely not interested in this transition or are having a hard time letting go of the hurt you feel, then you might consider ending the friendship. The original writer says that they want to “block out” this friend, but wonders if that is too much. If you genuinely do not feel interested, willing, or able to continue the friendship, then by all means, let it go. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as “blocking them out.” If the friendship is already fading away, the solution might be to simply let it fade away and stop putting in effort to save it. This option might mean you still like each other’s posts, say happy birthday, or check in now again, but things are basically over. Perhaps you feel called to have a final conversation, letting them know that you feel it’s best to part ways.

Just like there is no right answer to how we should prioritize our time when changing our pies when we get a new person/situation, there’s also no right answer to this question. However, if you follow these steps with gentle and compassionate reflection, I think you will know your answer.