A couple of years ago I (43m) became friendly with a woman (33f) I would frequently run into on my commuter line. We worked in related fields and would have small talk and eventually grabbed lunch together. For context, we are both married with children.
I had gotten some vibes from her (not sure if justified or not) and I made it clear that despite finding her attractive I was not interested in messing around outside my marriage and I didn’t want there to be any misrepresentation of the situation. We had a good laugh and were on the same page.
We continued to be friends and contact via socials, text, in person, etc, which continued and increased over the next year or so. Met her husband in that time frame, seemed like a good dude, and tried to make plans for them to meet my wife which she always said she wanted to do. I tried a couple of times to set an actual dinner but she would always delay so I stopped asking. I also was clear that if I couldn’t bring my wife into the fold it would be hard for me to keep being friends.
As time passed I reduced my contact as it didn’t feel right to me that I was continuing to be friends (close perhaps) with a woman my wife didn’t know. We were both always friendly and neither of us were ever non-responsive to each other’s messages.
Out of the blue a few months ago, I was unfriended on the socials (noticed a DM line with an unknown/disabled user account) and my last message outside of IG was never responded to. I kind of had my ideas what was going on so just didn’t try to reach out anymore and didn’t see her on the commute.
A few months pass and she comes up one morning acting like nothing ever happened and all was the same. I reached out a couple of times after. The first time no response, the second time I did get a response when I asked if she didn’t want me to message her anymore but she didn’t say not to message her and just said sorry for late response and that she was in meetings all day.
I reached out again after another week or so and asked her to just let me know if she doesn’t want any contact with me after seeing her and thought she was dodging me, but I have been left on read.
I’m totally fine with her wanting to break contact for any reason or no reason given how complicated a male/female friendship can be between two separately married people, but just at a loss for why she wouldn’t just tell me. On my end I won’t be reaching out anymore but just looking for some perspective. Why would someone refuse to just tell a friend the friendship is over?