‘My friend of more than 10 years moved out of our flat-share abruptly and ghosted me’

Dear Roe,I’m really struggling to find closure in the aftermath of a shattered decade-long friendship. Until last year, this friend and I lived together in a flat-share alongside a third housemate. We were close, lived together for years, went on trips and chatted easily, while still having our own space and separate lives. Everything changed rapidly when she started seeing someone new. Within six months her new partner was basically staying over about six nights a week. Then it started with occasional working from our living space, doing his laundry, and it felt like he had practically moved in. Despite being there constantly, he stayed hidden in her bedroom and made zero effort with us. Over those six months I met him a handful of times, spoke to him for maybe 10 minutes total and still don’t even know his full name. Eventually, my other flatmate and I sat down with her for a gentle chat. We asked her to cap overnight stays at three nights a week and suggested he hang out in the livingroom a bit so we could get to know him – nothing major, just hang out a little so we could all feel more comfortable with other. She seemed to take it fine in the moment, and we even had a few laughs about it. But when I came back from a short trip away, her behaviour completely flipped. Suddenly, I was totally iced out. She avoided eye contact, gave short answers and subjected me to a cold silent treatment. When I asked if she was all right, she insisted everything was “fine”. Resenting being punished, I was stubborn and didn’t try to coax her out of it. Suddenly, the boyfriend vanished entirely, and within a month of that initial chat, she announced on our flat WhatsApp group that she was moving out. After 10 years of friendship, being lumped in as just “the flatmate” with no separate message or conversation was a slap in the face. Her sudden exit triggered a massive wave of administrative and legal chaos with our landlord that ultimately forced me out of my home, too. The legal battle isn’t her fault, but her utter coldness made an exhausting period so much more jarring. In her previous relationship, she did a similar disappearing act – that time moving in with an ex within six months and completely ghosting me. That ended horribly when he assaulted someone, and we were there to support her when she had to effectively move back in. I never called out her vanishing act then because she was in crisis, but seeing her repeat the pattern, after everything I’ve done to support her over the past two years, is a bitter pill to swallow. I know deep down that we aren’t meant to be friends – she proved she isn’t a good one – so I’m not sitting here wishing for her back. What keeps me brooding is just how quickly, quietly and disposable it all was. I felt like I did everything I could to handle things, but I’m still left running it over in my head. Did I miss something? What could I have done differently, and how do I let go when someone I backed for 10 years erased me without a second thought?I’m really sorry you have gone through this. It’s deeply jarring and hurtful when someone who was meant to care for you, someone who shaped your daily life and was a part of your support system, just abandons you without warning or explanation. When someone ghosts us or abandons us or breaks off a friendship without warning or explanation, it can cause huge confusion, upset and a sense of ambiguous loss as we try to figure out what happened in the wake of no clear explanation – and this search can often keep us stuck in cycles of guessing, obsessing, ruminating and self-blame. Because the person who has disappeared has given us no clear story to explain their abrupt exit, we keep trying to come up with a story, an explanation, an answer. And because they’re not around to explain, we start to locate that answer in the only place available to us: ourselves.So here you are, questioning your behaviour, wondering what you could have done differently, asking what you must have missed, searching for and locating the problem within yourself. And because she’s not around, you feel you can’t find closure, because closure requires answers.READ MORE[ 'I ghosted a friend nearly two decades ago – should I reach out and apologise?'Opens in new window ]But let me repeat a refrain I’ve written many times in this column: Closure doesn’t come from other people. Closure is a gift you give yourself.This woman may never explain herself. But you don’t need her to. You have all the information you need.This is a woman who you treated kindly, who you supported during difficult times, and with whom you tried to have gentle, respectful communication. This is a woman who has a history of ghosting her friends and completely centring her partners in her life. This is a woman who responds to gentle, respectful and utterly reasonable communication by shutting down, stonewalling and dramatically exiting the friendship without attempting to communicate her feelings. This is a woman who leaves a living arrangement so abruptly that it causes her friends to lose their home, and never even acknowledges that impact. And this is a woman who has not attempted to contact you since.I do want to leave some benefit of the doubt for her. Given her history, it’s entirely possible that she’s in an unhealthy relationship with a man who threw a hissy fit when his free housing started coming with conditions, and demanded they live elsewhere. Or maybe she was going through some mental health issues or other personal issues that left her unable to cope with this housing issue and attending conversations. Life is long, human beings are fallible, and few people in the world are moustache-twirling villains. But even with all the forgiveness and understanding in the world, she did not handle this situation well, or like a friend, and she hasn’t behaved like a friend since. You can feel hurt by that and grieve it without internalising that it was your fault. Remember that her treatment of you doesn’t prove that you were disposable; it proves that she has trouble holding on to friendships. The deficit lies with her, not you.[ ‘A friend who ghosted me before has flaked again. Should I cut her out completely?’Opens in new window ]And a very important rule of adult life worth remembering is that it is not your job to try figure out why a person is mad at you. It is the responsibility of adults to express themselves if they wish to be understood. If you suspect someone is upset with you, you can ask them about it, you can attempt open communication, you can offer them a chance to express themselves – and if they don’t take it, that’s their choice. It’s not your job to spend your time and energy trying to become telepathic in an attempt to balance out their refusal to communicate.What you need to do now is to give yourself a clear story, one that you can return to and repeat any time you find yourself ruminating and obsessing. Something that is factual, nonjudgmental, but boundaried and releasing, such as: “This woman was not willing to communicate with me, and a friendship needs to be two-sided. I wish her well, and let her go.”Grieve this loss, be kind to yourself, call on other friends for support. But don’t blame yourself. Don’t latch on to a bad story in the absence of a full one. Stick with what you know, and let that be enough.