There’s a certain kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come with screaming arguments or dramatic exits — it comes quietly. It creeps in when you’re constantly trying to reach someone, and they always seem to have a reason not to reach back.
They’re always too busy, too tired, overwhelmed, or just not in the right headspace. And at first, you might understand. Life is hectic. We all get exhausted. We all have those weeks (or even months) where we feel pulled in a thousand directions.
But when it’s consistent? When it becomes a pattern rather than an occasional reality? When the excuses stack higher than the effort?
That’s not bad timing. That’s intentional avoidance.
What it’s really saying:
- You are not their priority.
Hard truth: If someone wants to talk to you, they will. Even in chaos, even in fatigue, people make space for those they value. A simple text, a quick call, a “thinking of you” — that’s all it takes. The absence of that speaks volumes. - They may be emotionally unavailable.
Some people simply cannot meet you where you are emotionally. Whether it’s fear, unresolved trauma, or a lack of maturity, they put up walls instead of letting people in. But it’s not your job to climb those walls endlessly. - They like the control.
Keeping you dangling — reaching out, waiting, wondering — gives them a kind of power. It’s not always malicious, but it is self-serving. They don’t want to give more, but they also don’t want to let you go. So they keep you in limbo. - They’re avoiding uncomfortable conversations.
Ignoring you might be their way of avoiding conflict or intimacy. But instead of being honest — “I can’t give this the energy it deserves” or “I’m not in the same place emotionally” — they hope you’ll take the hint and back away quietly.
Here’s the painful but freeing truth:
People make time for what matters. You shouldn’t have to beg for basic connection, or constantly question your worth because someone refuses to show up.
If you’re always the one reaching out, always the one trying, always the one making excuses for their excuses — step back. Not as a punishment, but as protection.
You deserve reciprocal energy. You deserve to be met, not avoided.
Let their silence speak for itself. Then, choose your own peace over chasing their presence.
You are not too much. You are not too needy. You are simply trying, and that is something to be proud of — not ashamed of.
Stop knocking on a door that’s bolted shut. Walk away with your dignity intact, and your self-worth held high.
Because the right people? They won’t need reminding. They’ll show up.
When I walked away from my best friend, my world fell apart: I cried for days, felt emotionally numb, believed I was fundamentally broken or damaged because nearly every friend I had left me because I was too much or didn’t give more than I could. I currently have no friends, although I have my family, but if I told them that I let go of my best friend, they would tell me that I was the reason for failing to keep the friendship going. I wish I had someone tell me that its okay to move on, that its going to hurt horribly, to feel supported in my choices of leaving, but doing so made me grow up and have a clearer lens of what kind of friends I would value and what kind of friend I need to be after the tears stopped.
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Good morning, Plans2Action.
I’ve been reflecting on your message, and I must admit—it left me with a few questions. You mentioned walking away, yet also shared that every friend has left you. That’s a powerful contradiction, and it makes me wonder what you were really feeling in those moments.
If this is a recurring pattern, perhaps it’s time to pause and gently explore your own role in the dynamic. Not from a place of blame, but from a place of curiosity and growth. Otherwise, the same story may keep repeating itself, just with different people.
You mentioned that this choice has made you “grow up.” That’s interesting—growth often comes with discomfort, but it doesn’t have to mean isolation. I’m also curious: why do you feel the need for external validation for your decision? What kind of support are you hoping for?
If there’s even a small part of you that wonders whether walking away was the right choice, maybe there’s still space for a conversation with your friend. Sometimes clarity comes not just from the decision itself, but from understanding what led us there.
So, the real question might be: Is this friendship worth salvaging? And if it is, could an honest, open-hearted dialogue shift things—either toward reconciliation or peace?
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I thought that this friend was different compared to past ones, like in high school. My high school friendships had made me believe that I wasn’t worth keeping around if I didn’t give more or if I didn’t share my thoughts, emotions, or struggles to people who said, “why tell us your problems if you don’t like our answer?” I went into this 10 year long friendship, years after graduating high school, with a more unsure perspective of what a real friend is because I didn’t know. I still don’t. I would make plans and ask if anyone would like to hang out, but every friend would say they were busy. I understood, until t hey would share right in front of my face, how they all hung out at the beach, the pool, or at each other’s houses and no one ever invited me. I never confronted them because I was easily outnumbered.
I didn’t have anyone to talk about my concerns with; I was afraid to tell my family because they used to tell me that every failed friendship was my fault and I internalized that. With this person, he was the one friend that made me feel seen, heard, and didn’t run or think something was wrong with me when I lost my temper. I shared things with him I never told my family, and vice versa, we shared similar interests, but I started to question our friendship since last year.
My family had been attacked, killed, and hospitalized by their neighbor during a typical family gathering. I wasn’t present when it happened, but when I found out, everything changed. When I told my friend what happened through text, he never replied back for 2 weeks. My boss and a coworker reached out when they saw the news, but not my friend and I shared this news personally with him.
Even when we hung out this year at an event, he would stick to his girlfriend more than want to hang out with me. She’d have to make opportunities for us to hang out, but he’d wander off to find her like I wasn’t safe enough or reliable in an event we’ve been to before many of times. I was hurt, I felt angry, like I wasn’t good enough, and I couldn’t help but think I really wasn’t. I always had low confidence and self esteem, that I needed a lot of reassurance that my friend, or anyone, could do more than tolerate me and would be patient when I lacked the right words to say or messed up.
But those events, with him not showing up after sharing what happened to my family and not taking me seriously when I mentioned that I felt like a third wheel while hanging out with him and his girlfriend, he just told me to make new friends. He also lied when he said that he sent me a Christmas gift last year, I told him it didn’t arrive for over a month, and he said that he kept it for himself instead.
If that was how things were, then that was the last straw to me putting up with feeling like an inconvenience to my friend. Maybe I was a horrible friend, maybe all those times he’d call me in the dead of night because he was drunk, high, scared, or having a crisis wasn’t good enough. Maybe I lost my temper or complained one too many times, maybe the books I found useful was a slap to the face to him, I don’t know, but I still felt horrible. I couldn’t even share that I buried my grandpa this month or share that I’ve finally pursued a project I talked about for years without thinking about his silence from last year.
I was realizing that our dynamic changed and, when I brought it up to him when he reached out asking to hang out only because his girlfriend was hanging out with her friends and they were in town, I snapped. I told him that I didn’t want to hang out, that I felt uncomfortable hanging out with him, that I didn’t feel like a best friend, but I would only hang out with him just to have a face to face than just telling him through text. He said that I gave him mixed signals and he needed to think about things and that I had to think about things too. I told him I had a lot of time to think since last year to now. We haven’t spoken since and I accepted that if a person I considered a friend doesn’t take anything I’ve shared seriously or nothing once considered the things I mentioned before, then I’d rather be alone than to keep a friendship that, in hindsight, we always competed with each other, had one sided success stories, and that I wasn’t part of anything he shared with his other friends. I felt like what happened in high school was repeating.
I’ve been reflecting a lot since our last interaction, its been over a month now; I’ve been trying to figure out who I am as a person, what my values are, and what matters to me most. I’ve been focusing on my family, even when I moved out this year, been working on my writing, on my jobs to get out of debt, just trying to figure out what did I do wrong and how I could be better. I’ve just moved on from this particular friendship, the only one I chose to walk away from, instead of being walked away from. Hopefully I was able to clear up some misunderstandings and sorry for the long rant.
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