Agree that friendship can be very complex. Much more complex than I used to think.

It’s partly because some people are very open and some dissemble and pretend all is well when it’s not. Also, some are very loyal (and slow to drop people) and some very quick to cut bait when the going gets rough. We often tend to assume our friends are like us in those respects, but often they are not.

I am more the loyal type (you seem to be, too), very slow to drop people. Almost never do it except for enormous reasons. Other people are quite different.

One good thing in your stories: at least you got some answers. That’s a plus.

One more observation, just a guess: friend number two sounds like she might be a borderline. See this.

I’ve concluded that friendship is a lot more complicated than we realize when we’re young — for all the reasons mentioned here — and also that it takes a very long time to get to know people fully and that just because someone is your friend doesn’t mean that what you learn over time is going to be positive!

One person I thought was a friend for life just started becoming unavailable — every time I was in San Diego I got in touch with her and every time she said she was too busy. Even when my mom died she didn’t drop by the house — she lived a half-hour away. I really expected her to show up then; she knew my mom, and had been very kind to her. Finally after about ten times over two or three years I asked her in email what was going on and she said she didn’t want to be my friend any more, no real explanation, just “we’re going in different directions.” Not sure what she meant by that, but clearly she doesn’t need me as a friend. Her life was changing for the better when she dropped me; I am sad that I didn’t get to hear the stories about her dream job. I have a hard time understanding why she cut me off. I would feel better if I could at least send her a birthday card and Christmas card every year, even if I didn’t hear back. But the last card I sent was returned, she had moved, and there was no forwarding address. Even though she was very nice about it, I will always be sad on her birthday. But I love her, so if she is happier without me in her life, I support that decision.

The other friend I lost recently — I think; she claims she is “taking a break” from the friendship, which I find quite peculiar — was completely different. Very dramatic and unpleasant. What’s odd is that about ten years ago I started disliking her. I wasn’t sure why. I just started getting really impatient with her. I felt like I didn’t understand her any more, that I didn’t like her attitude, that she wasn’t who I thought she was, etc. But I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. So I did nothing. That was probably a mistake. It might have been a good idea to discuss the situation at that point; but I had no idea what to say! I am very weak when it comes to addressing conflict. A new skill I need to develop in my old age.

So we continued to show up for each other on our birthdays, giving each other lots of gifts. Both our moms have died and neither of our husbands is big into birthdays, so this became a big part of our relationship. In retrospect it seems like the friendship died away from its core as the outer shell remained intact. We didn’t see each other very often.

A few years ago she contacted me via email and said she wanted to discuss our terrible relationship. She had a litany of awful things about me, and of course I got defensive about it. I remember one of the things on the list was that I didn’t like her cooking. I thought that was fascinating — how is it a character flaw of mine that I don’t like her cooking enough? I’m not particularly impressed by her cooking, especially since she’s a vegetarian and I’m not, but I don’t recall ever being rude about it. Clearly there was a long history of misunderstanding. After some annoying email exchanges that made me wish I had broken with her when she first started annoying me, I decided life is too short to have ex-friends and I told her let’s meet and discuss.

She was very happy — so happy to see me that she didn’t want to have the discussion at first! She wanted to just have fun! Apparently she was conflicted, part of her still liked me and part of her didn’t.

She is a very judgmental person and has a long history of cutting people off. First she puts them on a pedestal — of a certain type: they have skills and talents they don’t recognize, that only she can bring out, and so she sets out to make people realize how wonderful they really are. This happens both at work and in her personal life. Then the person turns out to be ungrateful for this assistance to be their best self, and then it emerges that in fact they are rotten after all and have been taking advantage of her or fooling her in some fashion and she drops them. I have watched this happen at least four times.

This is essentially what happened with me, too, it just took a lot longer.

When we met after her first burst of negativity, it went fine. She told me she was angry at the way I treated her the last time we got together, and when she explained why, I explained what had been going on in my head and her anger dissolved. It has just been a misunderstanding. Everything seemed fine.

Then a year or so later she sent my husband a long letter about what’s wrong with him! He has serious emotional issues that led to him retiring from his job with a mental-health disability. He is basically fine now, on new medications and doing well with his personal growth. My ex-friend knew that but totally disregarded it, writing to him as if everything he is challenged by is a personal failing. So mean! And potentially very damaging, as he considered this person a good friend.

I got in touch with her about this to see what I could do to initiate a repair, and her reaction was purely defensive. Then she unfriended us both on Facebook. Then she wrote me my own letter about how awful I am. Really laying it on thick, with stuff she remembers from years ago that I don’t think she even has right. It was so odd. She said she wanted to take a break from the friendship. My thought was, what friendship? You seem to hate me!

Six months later we got together. Total disaster. She acted like we were still friends. I was flabbergasted. I was way too confused to have a normal conversation so we basically got into a fight, although it wasn’t even a real fight since we were so alienated. I keep remembering things she said — she would spit something at me like it was obviously bad, and I now I turn it over in my mind wondering what it meant to her! Total communications breakdown.

One of the things I said to her in that meeting was that this seemed like the same thing she always does, where she puts people on a pedestal and then gets mad at them for disappointing her. She didn’t recognize the pattern in herself — even when I named the people it had happened with, and some of the details, she denied the pattern.

She said at the end of that meeting that she was going to go back to being on “break” from the friendship until further notice. I felt I had behaved badly (I was out of my mind with anger and confusion!) so I sent a note the next morning apologizing for my behavior. I asked for a do-over — I was sincere, I think if I were prepared better I could have a good conversation with her. But she never answered.

A few months later I saw her number on my phone in missed calls, so I called her back, but it turned out she had dialed me by mistake. She was condescendingly nice about it.

I don’t like the situation but I don’t think I want to be her friend any more. A very odd situation for me because I almost never break with people. I did it once last year with a colleague who wanted to be friends, with whom I had developed an extremely negative dynamic. That’s how I’ve learned to describe it to the other people we worked with; it seems to me this person is crazy and possibly dangerous so I very carefully broke with her as kindly as possible. Only time I ever did that. (And in fact I saw that person this year, and we were civil to one another; she even said something nice along the lines of “I guess when stress is high sometimes the best people can do is just separate” and I said yes, sometimes that’s the best we can do. I felt better after that exchange and I hope she does too.) I’ve drifted away from acquaintance type friendships, and not followed up with former colleagues who wanted to be friends, but I’ve never purposely dropped anyone I considered a true friend.

I have a friend who had a friend who wanted to end the relationship and my friend wanted so much to keep it that she asked her friend to go with her to mediation. They went, and the mediator suggested some things they could each do to repair the relationship, and my friend was eager to try those things, but her friend didn’t want to and ended the relationship anyway.

Apparently friendship can be difficult!!

I like the circuit breaker analogy because it implies an inward-focused defense mechanism that causes outward effect, but it’s not motivated by an offensive intent. ‘It’s me not you.’

And what caused it to trip may not be readily identified, which again may have more to do with her wiring and perhaps extra-brittle capacity to process seemingly normal stresses of life.

“Circuit breaker” is an interesting way to put it. I think you may have something there.

Some people probably react to stresses by making a clean break. Like a more minor version of the proverbial guy who goes to the store for a load of bread and runs away to start a new life.

To run further with the circuit breaker analogy – again, really generalizing rather than speculating on your case – perhaps hers tripped over something she perceives as related to you rather than you.

For example, she might have connected you to otherwise normal questions you might ask or situations that come from interacting with you, neither with ill intent on your part, that are related to her upset that she would avoid altogether per her circuit breaker.

It’s like a circuit breaker.

Referring to you, but really generally speaking instead of speculating on your case, her behavior might have had little to do with any conflict with you or only superficially was related to you.

To run with the circuit breaker analogy, it may have been mainly caused by her wiring and capacity to process the ‘electrical load’ of life, causing abnormal responses to conditions that are otherwise normal, if not stress-free.

Your mistake is in thinking you have any friends.

That sounds cynical, but you could be right. My wife and I used to wonder why people whom we thought were friends, never write or call or visit. It’s always one sided with our so-called “friends” We call or write to them or send them little gifts, but they rarely respond. This used to bother us, but now we just agree that “The more we get to know people, the better we like our dogs.”