u/PiszedOff

20m

I’ve lost most of my friendships over the years. I’ve never had too many, but the most brutal blow was being ghosted by my best friend after he told me he was tired of feeling like he had to fix me and no longer enjoyed the dynamics of the group. Didn’t tell me he was cutting me off though, I found out from a mutual friend after he stopped responding to my messages.

Another person has just stopped messaging me too. We’ve known each other for about 2 years and he had previously said he was tired of me cancelling plans but just stopped messaging or responding.

Another person cut me off last year because he felt like he and I didn’t really have a dynamic anymore and felt like he wanted to move on.

I now realise I am the problem. I have been acting like a victim for years and wallowing in my own misery. I’ve been told this by quite a few people.

The worst part is that I just feel so angry. I still feel like the victim. I don’t feel remorseful because I’ve convinced myself that I’m in more pain than they are.

I’ve had such a bad life. I grew up in an awful household and had no control. I was subjected to fear after fear and spent so much of my childhood crying or scared. I was shouted at for being sad/scared and just learnt to hide it. Household got worse and I became the ‘adult’ of the house when I was 13 after my abusive stepdad left and I had to pick up the pieces of my mum. She drank and had risky sex a lot.

I just feel so angry. My best friend who ghosted me has a loving family and so many prospects and he won. He won because he got to have what he wanted and I didn’t.

I’m stuck with mental illness and disability and am expected to put in 5 times the work just to be where everyone else is.

I don’t care how arrogant that sounds. I didn’t have time to worry about exams because I had to spend my nights being on guard so the men who came over to bang my mum wouldn’t hurt her.

I feel like I have no room to make mistakes. I feel like I’m expected to be happy all of the time and any time I’m sad or don’t want to do something I’m suddenly ‘leeching’ off of people or manipulating.

After my best friend ghosted me I was diagnosed with a heart condition after being rushed to the hospital believing I was going to die. I still had to go to work to a job I hated and still had to be responsible.

I was told by the mutual friend that he was stressed with his part time job and it was a ‘perfect storm’ for him. I just feel almost no empathy for him.

I feel almost no empathy for anyone. I feel like if I’m not the sickest or the one who’s struggling the most then I might as well not be struggling at all.

I can’t drink alcohol because of my heart condition and hate that it makes me more ‘responsible’.

I know I’m a bad person but I feel like getting better just admits that my struggling wasn’t real. I feel like my worst fear is losing and knowing all the people who cut me off are just better off without me. That terrifies me

TL;DR: I was ghosted by my best friend of 6 years last year and can’t seem to move on. We are both autistic and I valued his opinion the most.

Hi 20m here

My closest friend (I’ll call him Jacob, 20m) ghosted me last August. There was no big fight, no petty drama, no yelling match. He had mentioned a few months prior how he felt like he was growing out of our friendgroup of 6 (it’s now gone) since he started university and made different friends.

I knew he had a problem with me but couldn’t put my finger on it and wouldn’t really answer if I asked. I then spoke to one of our mutual friends and he said that Jacob was tired of me. He felt I was manipulative and leeched off the friendgroup.

I asked Jacob if there was a problem with me, and it took 3 attempts of asking and he said it was moreso the wider friendgroup too and the dynamics but he admitted he felt tired of me (he didn’t word it like that, but that was the summary). I said how I missed him and the friendgroup and how they were like family to me, but he said that just isn’t and will never be our dynamic. For context they all have very close families and I come from a shitty home. Jacob said he knew I had issues but he felt like he had to fix me all the time.

Then, after the conversation, he just stopped responding to me.

I found out from our mutual friend, Finn, that Jacob had decided to cut me off but didn’t say goodbye.

It’s been 8 months now and I just feel numb. I think about him every single day. Jacob and I were childhood friends and we met again when we were 14 and became super close. We’re both autistic (I was diagnosed a lot later) and I felt like I could truly be myself around him. I was able to be completely and utterly vulnerable with him, and until that point I thought he felt the same way.

I just cannot move on. No matter how much I think about it, journal about it, talk about it, I just feel utterly shit and it feels raw still.

If I could go back in time I wouldn’t even know what I’d change because he just wasn’t upfront about the problems. The friendgroup has since dissolved and even our mutual friends don’t understand why he ghosted me. Looking at conversations with Jacob, they all thought it was an extreme reaction.

I still feel like a monster of course. The person who I was truly closest to didn’t even say goodbye. In one of his last messages he told me he wasn’t going anywhere in the future and that he was just stepping down from being active in the friend group. Then just gone.

Nothing feels the same without Jacob. There’s so much we had in common and now he’s just gone. It is literally like he died suddenly.

Our mutual friend Finn hasn’t spoken to him much since he left, but he can still message him.

I just don’t know how to move on.

If I had done some big heinous betrayal I’d know what I needed to work on, but all I know is that I was just tiring for him. I’ve asked our mutual friends to be honest with me if I am a manipulator, or if I’ve done something that’s upset them, but they are as confused as I am. I wish he had just told me when I did something that’s upset him. Up until the ghosting he was the most mature person I knew.

I just feel like my self worth is in the gutter. I do not want to make new friends because I can’t trust them anymore. How can I be vulnerable when something like this happened? I’ve had to awkwardly explain to multiple people that he just ghosted me and we don’t talk anymore, and of course they assume I must’ve done some awful thing.

I go from resenting him, to hating him, to hating myself. I spoke with a therapist about this and she said he wasn’t communicating properly and I shouldn’t carry the burden of his decision to ghost me but I just feel like an imposter.

I just feel hollow. This has affected me so severely that I don’t like myself anymore. I’ve gotten a lot of reassurance from people that I did nothing wrong but deep down I don’t believe it, as why would he ghost me? But then when I try and reflect I just draw blanks.

Do you have any advice? Any way to just stop hurting this much? How to stop fixating on the past to this extent. I do not exaggerate when I say I think about this every single day. If I valued his opinion less then I don’t think I’d be this ruined, but Jacob was the mature person I knew and I honestly looked up to him and valued his opinion the most, and his opinion of me was that I didn’t even deserve to know what I did.

I feel like I’m clearly not emotionally mature enough to handle something like this and just want to feel like/be a better person