WHY HAS MY FRIEND GONE COLD ON ME?

Dear Coleen

I’ve become friendly with one of the mums at my daughter’s school. We’ve had coffee and play dates a few times and I always thought we got along really well.

However, she’s stopped replying to my messages and when I saw her at school the other day, she totally blanked me!

I can’t imagine what I’ve done to make her react like this and it’s such as shame as our girls are really good friends. I don’t want to seem desperate or as if I’m stalking her by sending any more messages.

Any ideas on why she would behave like this and what I can do?

Coleen says

I don’t think you should feel bad about yourself and, actually, her behaviour might have nothing to do with you at all. She might be preoccupied with other things or just really busy.

Maybe your daughters have fallen out and she doesn’t know how to approach it, so she’s just avoiding you.

I don’t think it’s stalking if you grab her in the playground and just say, “I haven’t seen you in ages, I hope I haven’t done anything to offend you.”

But if you don’t get a satisfactory answer, then you just have to accept it I’m afraid. The most important thing is not to give yourself a hard time about it.

A similar thing happened with me and someone I thought was my best friend.

She cut me off with no explanation and I was left very hurt and also frustrated. But I’ve made peace with it by accepting, for whatever reasons, she wasn’t in the right place to have a friendship with me.