Someone wants our advice! Yay!

I read your blog regularly and love hearing your thoughts on relationships and ‘other people’. I dunno if you’re accepting any advice requests, but would love to know your views on dealing with sudden rejection from friends. I’m not speaking of ‘drifting apart,’ but rather of long-time friends who abruptly stop returning phone calls, etc. This happened to me with a group of formerly close friends, quite suddenly, about four years ago; it started with one married couple, and gradually spread to several other people in this group. (Context? I’d recently made some significant changes to my life, changing jobs, joining a band, dating a new, much older partner. The rest of the group remains tightly-knit.) I have newer friends and acquaintances now, but continue to feel hurt by this sudden ostracization with zero explanation. Occasional efforts to reopen lines of communication are ignored or, in the case of a recent text message, met with an email request to stop contacting that person. (Wtf?)

I guess I’d like to hear your ideas about how to reframe what’s going on so that it doesn’t feel like constant, low-level rejection from these folks that I used to consider close friends.


-From a lovely and discerning reader (says Megan).

Comments

[K-sky]

Instead of considering it constant, low-level rejection, it might be better to think of it as punctuated high-level rejection.

"Reframing", from where I sit, would leave it at the level of constant anxiety. Mourn that part of your life. Embrace the new friends.

It's possible that there's room in there for one final "lay it out for me" confrontation, but that's hard to tell.

[Chris]

If it were me ...

I'd call up the one person in the group I felt I had the most rapport with, the one who would be most likely to give me a straight answer, and I'd ask. I'd frame the questions in "I" statements: I'm feeling left out here, did I do something to anger someone that I should know about?

Listen to the answer, repair if possible.

Sometimes it's not always possible to repair something, or you may not even get an answer.

In which case, I would need to forgive myself for whatever it is I might have done, and move on. One can only control oneself, not other people. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done.

How I tend to do that is when I find myself dwelling on it, I would say something to myself like "I forgive myself for whatever has caused this rift, and release myself from feeling guilty or bad about it. I wish the best for my old group of friends." Repeat as necessary.

I am also one to use some sort of symbolic ritual, like if something is hurting me, I take a tissue, rub my heart with it, tell myself I am collecting all my pain into this tissue, then I wad it up and throw it away. Others have written things on paper and burn it. Something to physically symbolize letting go. Repeat as necessary.

I also think some serious contemplation on what you might have done to cause this rift is in order. Self examination is important to see if you can discover a reason that you might need to be careful with in the future. My mom has what she calls "foot in mouth" disease where she has blurted out something that someone has taken offense to. Most of the time, the offended person does not say anything to her, but it has definitely changed some of her relationships. She could use to learn to be careful with what she says on impulse. All things are correctable if one is aware of it and applies conscious effort to correct it.

Then go cultivate those new friendships. Look at it as a chance to change things up, add new things to your life. Instead of looking back, look to the future. Think of it as an opportunity to draw new friends and experiences to yourself.