Agony of being Ghosted *
* That’s the cruel and growing trend — fuelled by social media — of being abruptly dropped by your best friend who disappears into thin air
the message could have been about anyone. But as Terri Neill read it on Facebook, she had a nagging suspicion her best friend was aiming a pointed remark directly at her.
‘It said something about how she felt that people were looking down their noses at her and how those people wanted to “keep up with the Joneses”,’ says Terri, 35, a married full-time mother from Billericay, essex.
‘Normally, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it — except that when I’d seen Louisa a few days earlier, she’d made a joke about me “keeping up with the Joneses” and so I wondered if that was about me and I’d upset her somehow.
‘I was taken aback. I didn’t recognise myself in her comments. I’ve never looked down my nose at anyone, let alone my best friend of 30 years. I loved her like a sister.
‘I sent a friendly text, asking if she was talking about me. She replied: “If you think it’s aimed at you . . . I didn’t use any names”, implying that I had indeed guessed correctly, but that was all she said.
‘I sent another text, asking if she was cross with me — if I’d done something wrong, I wanted to apologise — but didn’t hear back.
‘It was unusual, but we were such good friends I thought whatever the problem was, she’d be over it in a few days.
‘Yet, as the days passed, I kept texting, sending messages and even called several times, but each message went unanswered and each phone call went to voicemail.
‘It went on for weeks. I texted, saying: “I miss you and I miss our friendship”, but I was ignored. I was so worried I’d done something wrong, but I had no idea what.’ Terri had been ‘ghosted’ — a heartless and cowardly way of being cut out of a friend’s life.
Rather than confront the person headon, the ‘ghoster’ severs all contact, with no explanation.
They stop responding to texts and emails, ignore calls and often delete the unwitting victim from their social media account. They disappear like ghosts into thin air.
The ‘ disappearing act’ is nothing new — although it used to be considered more typical coming from a male cad when dumping his female lover.
Today, there seems to be an increase in women ghosting other women — with more than half saying it has been done to them and around the same number admitting they have ‘ghosted’ others. The emotional effects can be devastating.
‘We hear from a lot of women who have been “ghosted” and it hugely undermines their self-confidence,’ says psychologist Dr David Lewis. ‘It’s like fighting an invisible enemy — if a woman makes a catty remark, the other woman can fight back.
‘But if they’ve got a blank screen, they tend to write their own reasons for the fallout. And if their self-image is already low, they’re likely to blame themselves.
‘Women are good at ghosting as they understand how powerful communication — or lack of it — can be in female friendships.
‘Women who have been “ghosted” tell us they go through a grieving process of denial, anger, guilt, as if their friend had died.’
When Terri realised she’d been ghosted back in 2014, she grieved for many months.
she
says: ‘ Louisa and I had been friends since our first day at school when we were four. We lived close to each other and were born only a day apart, so we were like sisters, sharing birthday parties and sleepovers.
‘As we got older, we’d regularly go out. She married in her early 20s, and I went to university, but we kept in touch and saw each other when we could. She was the friend I trusted most and we confided in each other.
‘When I first started dating my husband, I wanted to keep it quiet until I was sure we were going to last, but Louisa knew everything.
‘When she became pregnant, she asked me to be godparent, although sadly, she lost the baby.
‘Like any friendship, we’d gone through stages where we’d seen less of each other, but we had never argued. The moment I was certain she didn’t want me to be part of her life was when I spotted on Facebook five months ago that her surname had changed.
‘ She’d married her long- term partner and never even told me. It felt like I’d been punched. I sent her a text, saying “Congratulations”, in the hope she might get back to me, but I never heard a word.’
Terri adds: ‘I remember crying so much at the thought I’d lost such a good friend. What was so hard was not even knowing what I’d done wrong, so I had no idea what to apologise for.
‘had I been boastful? had I upset her? I went round in circles trying to work it out, and even texted Louisa’s husband to find out what was going on, but he didn’t reply, either.
‘My husband told me to forget her. he’d heard via friends that she could be awkward. But I really thought our friendship was special.
‘It took me a while to get over it. We’ve moved to a new area and I’ve got a baby. But I don’t have many female friends any more. I find it hard to trust women and am wary of being hurt again.’
Female friendships are complex, and experts believe being dumped by a close girlfriend involves a special class of pain.
‘Part of the reason why this pain is so different is because it awakens long-buried memories that harken back to your earliest years, when you had so little control over things in your life,’ says Dr Jane Goldberg, a psychoanalyst and author of My Mother, My Daughter, My Self.
She says: ‘Your only weapon was to cry if you needed feeding or to be kept warm, and your whole world was your mother, who either responded or didn’t.
‘When she didn’t respond, your brain wasn’t developed enough to understand why she wasn’t coming at that instant. You simply felt abandoned.
‘When similar events happen, such as a girlfriend no longer being available, these unconscious memories can come to the fore.’
It doesn’t even have to be a lifelong friend for the pain to be intense. Gill Akers, a 41- year- old events manager from essex, admits she was mortified when she realised her close friend of five years, Maxine, had unceremoniously dumped her.
‘Maxine and I had both been store managers for a coffee chain when we met in 2007. We hit it off immediately,’ says Gill, who lives with husband Ashley, 45, a builder, and son Riley, six, in essex. ‘She was fun, bubbly
and, as neither of us had children in those early days, we’d hang out a lot, going out for drinks and dinners, sometimes just the two of us and sometimes as a foursome with her husband.
‘She was kind and generous, and we’d confide in each other.
‘For about four years, we had great fun together, until I got pregnant in 2011 when — for obvious reasons — I couldn’t drink and stopped going out as much.
‘But even then, we were still great friends. I remember she lost her nan and I raced over to her house, despite being heavily pregnant, and was a shoulder for her to cry on. She’d always do the same for me if I was ever upset.’
But after giving birth to her son Riley, Gill noticed her best friend began to distance herself.
‘Maxine was the first friend I called after having my son to tell her I’d had the baby, and she was thrilled,’ says Gill. ‘But over that year, I was aware we were not seeing as much of each other. I put it down to the fact that I was a new mum and I was so tired.
‘When I asked Maxine about it, she assured me we were still friends. But I realised I was being cut out of her life when she texted me to say she wasn’t coming to my son’s first birthday. Instead, she sent her husband with presents.
‘Later, I was relieved when I was invited to her 40th birthday, but from that date on, she didn’t make any effort to contact me at all — and I was devastated. She ignored my texts and phone calls, so I never got an explanation.’
What made the ‘ghosting’ even more unbearable for Gill was that when she returned to work after maternity leave, she would bump into her old friend.
GILL says: ‘When I got back to work after maternity leave, she blanked me, as if I wasn’t in the room. I was inconsolable the first time it happened and had to run in the opposite direction in tears.
‘I kept asking mutual friends what I’d done wrong and they had no idea, either.
‘She was promoted before I got back to work, so perhaps it had something to do with work politics. I would never say she was jealous of me starting a family.
‘But what she did to me has made me so much more wary of making female friends. It’s affected my trust in people.’ Author Jo Merrett, 44, grieved for two years for a decade-long friendship that ended abruptly.
‘Erica and I met in the late Nineties when she was my nextdoor neighbour, and we were so close we were like sisters,’ says Jo, who lives in Woking, Surrey, with her husband Chris, 46, a company director, and their children, Amelie, 13, and Tiger, 11.
Jo says: ‘She supported me when I had a miscarriage, I was a shoulder to cry on when her marriage broke down. Apart from my mum, she was the person I always turned to for advice when I finally had children. We had babies within a month of each other.
‘I loved spending time with her and I thought she did, too.
‘When she met her new partner and moved across town with him, we saw each other as much as possible, and when I had my son in 2005, she was one of the first people I told.
‘But it was during that year that she started not returning my calls. At first, I wasn’t too worried. With good friends, you can go a long time without speaking.
‘But when six months passed and I’d left messages on her house phone and mobile, I began to get worried something had happened with her partner — perhaps he was cutting off friends and family.
‘So I went over to her former in-laws’ house to check she was OK. They told me she was fine. At one point, I sent her a long message through Facebook, asking her why she’d hurt me.
‘You can see when someone has read your message so I knew she’d read it, but she didn’t respond. I was so upset, it was like grief.’
The wall of silence that greets most victims appears to be one of the hardest things to deal with. For Jo, at least, a chance confrontation helped lay her own ghost to rest.
‘About two years after I’d last heard from her, I saw Erica in a shop,’ says Jo. ‘At least she had the decency to look embarrassed, but there was no way we could just ignore each other.
‘She said: “Hi, how are you?” — and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass. We were with our children, and so I asked my daughter to take the younger ones outside. That’s when I asked what happened.
‘She couldn’t answer. She looked everywhere but me and there were lots of “I don’t knows” and stuttering, which is when I got angry.
‘I felt I needed an explanation, so I shouted: “Just say it!” and she said: “This — you’re too full on!”
‘I can be full on, but we’d been friends for so long — why wasn’t she able to tell me at the time?
‘To cut me off like that was so cruel and, even now, I don’t know if she gave me an honest answer. After that, I stopped feeling sad. It was closure and I didn’t feel anything towards her.
‘It’s taken me a long time to trust women again, but I do have some very good friendships now. I used to blame myself when a friendship went wrong, but now I think it’s their problem, not me.’ Some names have been changed.