When a good friend ghosts you during a crisis
This advice column is a public service by me, Kat Vellos, author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. I’m a certified connection coach and have been facilitating community groups for almost twenty years. I regularly speak and lead workshops on the topics of adult friendship and cultivating healthy work teams. If you’d like to work with me, reach out on my booking contact form. If you have a question that you’d like answered in a future blog post or newsletter, instructions are at the bottom of this post.
Q: Hi Kat! I appreciate your platform and have benefited from your work on building stronger friendships. Thanks you for being you! I'm reaching out today as there was a woman I befriended in college and we stayed friends for several years afterwards…
A couple of years ago one of my sisters passed away and I reached out to this friend to let her know. It was a very upsetting time and I had expected more support from this friend who has several sisters and I imagined could empathize with the loss I was experiencing.
Not hearing from her several months after my sister's loss, I asked her if all was okay and she said yes, just busy with holidays. I wished her a happy Thanksgiving and have not heard from her since that time about two years ago.
I miss her friendship but maybe I'm missing what I think it could be or was, rather than the reality of what it is now? What are some ways I could consider reconnecting?
A: First off, I'd like to offer you some empathy for your losses — both of them. First with the loss of your sister, and secondly with the loss of closeness with your friend. I hear that you really want to reconnect with this friend, and I admire that you're aiming to be objective when you say, “I miss her friendship but maybe I'm missing what I think it could be or was, rather than the reality of what it is now?”
Oftentimes, friendships that were held together by the glue of circumstance (e.g. school, jobs, living situations) fade away once that circumstance changes or is removed. Despite the fact that you kept in touch for several years post-college, it's possible that this friendship would have faded away regardless. It's unfortunate and painful that this friendship-fade happened in conjunction with the loss of your sister.
What we know for sure…
The part that's most concerning to me about this is how your friend responded (or more aptly, didn't respond) when you brought up something vulnerable and painful, and either directly or indirectly requested her emotional support.
It's no surprise that busyness gets in the way of people maintaining friendships. But in a time of acute need, such as an emotional or tangible crisis—we need to show up for our friends and our friends need to show up for us. And when it's not possible to show up literally or figuratively, the compassionate thing to do is to say something kind, supportive, and explanatory.
If she didn't respond at all to you sharing the news about your sister, and deflected when you made contact with her several months later—that's two connection opportunities that she's let fall to the wayside. That doesn't sound like someone who's motivated to cultivate a committed friendship, and it doesn't sound like the kind of friendship that you need or would be fulfilled by.
And on the flip side…
In the interest of fairness and acknowledging that we don't know what's really going on for her, I'd like to offer one speculative perspective: I want to hold space for the remote possibility that your friend does want to keep your friendship, but she flubbed up, big time, twice—and she doesn't know how to repair it so she's hiding.
Some people are deeply uncomfortable with the topic of death and will shrink back from any conversation about it to protect themselves from that discomfort, even if doing so means that your feelings will be inadvertently hurt. If this is what happened, she might be feeling some follow-up guilt about the way she clammed up and shrank into the hedges.
When you reached out a second time, it's possible that she again lacked the communication skills to express her guilt and sorrow about letting you down, so she shielded herself with an excuse of busyness, and again, was at a loss for words and tried to fade into the wallpaper. Then, two years went by.
You share history so you know her personality and tendencies better than I do. If you think this may be the case, it's worth reaching out one more time to try to reconnect. You can invite her to reignite your friendship, letting her know that you're willing to overlook those past hurts because it would be worth it to have her back in your life again.
If she drops the ball again, it's not a third strike. It's the third walkout. And you get to decide whether it makes sense for you to continue trying to commit to someone who's not committed to you.
Hope that helps. ❤️
XO,
Kat Vellos, author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships
What to read next
Not sure how to take a break from a certain friend? Instead of Pruning Friends, Try This
When your besties are frenemies: What to do when your besties don’t like each other
Check on your people: 4 Different ways to ask a friend "How are you feeling?"