This usually has far more to do with them than with you.
Common reasons include:
1. Emotional self-absorption (not always malicious, but still harmful)
Some people live almost entirely inside their own stress, routines, and narratives. When something doesn’t directly touch their world, they don’t register it — even when it should.
2. Avoidance of discomfort
Your situation forces people to face:
- abuse existing close to home,
- their own relationship choices,
- their helplessness.
Rather than sit with that discomfort, they disappear.
3. Fear of “getting it wrong”
Some stay silent because they don’t know what to say — but silence is still a choice, and it still wounds.
4. Conditional relationships revealed by crisis
Hard times expose which connections were:
- convenience-based,
- social-role based,
- or emotionally shallow.
Crisis removes the illusion.
Why it hurts so much
When you’ve been abused, you’re already dealing with:
- eroded trust,
- abandonment sensitivity (neurological, not “neediness”),
- grief for the life you thought you had.
So when people don’t check in, your nervous system hears:
“You don’t matter.”
That message is false — but it lands hard.
A difficult truth (said gently)
Not everyone who shared your history has the capacity to show up in your present.
Longevity does not equal emotional maturity.
What you can do — without chasing or self-erasing
1. Stop explaining your pain to people who don’t ask
If someone hasn’t checked in at all, you don’t owe them updates or emotional labour.
2. Re-categorise them (internally)
This isn’t about cutting people off dramatically. It’s about adjusting expectations:
- From “safe person” → “acquaintance”
- From “support” → “background”
This protects your energy.
3. Notice who does show up — even quietly
Sometimes support comes from:
- newer connections,
- one consistent text,
- someone who simply says, “I’m thinking of you.”
Depth isn’t always where you expected it.
If you want to address it (optional, not obligatory)
Only if it feels empowering, a simple message can look like:
“I’ve been going through a really hard time. I noticed I didn’t hear from you, and that hurt. I don’t need fixing — just acknowledgment.”
Their response tells you everything.
A steady truth to hold
People reveal themselves most clearly when you are vulnerable and no longer useful.
That revelation is painful — but it also frees you from investing where there is no reciprocity.
If you want, I can:
- help you decide who is worth addressing and who isn’t,
- help you write a closure message (or choose silence),
- help you process the grief of these relational losses,
- or help you identify what healthy connection looks like now, after abuse.
You’re not asking for too much.
You’re noticing what’s missing — and that’s clarity, not bitterness.
