I seem to have made a friend, then they're suddenly gone

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I seem to be the male version of you except in the antipodes

Although I might be stretching the truth if I said i had online friends

The thing that bothers me though is...what happens if/when my husband dies before me? I'll have no one then, I'll just be alone. I don't expect my daughter to support me, she needs to live her own life and have fun.

How do you get on with your neighbors?

They are mostly people renting their houses, so they change every few months. It was awful when I was a new mum, surrounded by neighbours constantly changing who didn't want to be friends.

We do get on with two permanent neighbours though. Our next door neighbour is the nicest guy, we take care of him and he takes care of us. And another neighbour has sons the same age as our daughter, they used to play together when they were little. I send Christmas cards to the nearest 9 neighbours each year, I put my mobile phone number on the first time so now I have a 'neighbours group' of a couple of them that I contact if there is a power cut or something.

I'm glad you at least have that.

It took a bit of effort but as the years have gone by, I've found some good neighbours. When we move house I'll be sending Christmas cards from the first year and making an effort.

You were smart to keep at good graces with your neighbors.

Yes. It's for safety. I am here alone all day usually and I want to have people to turn to. I learned my lesson when I was alone looking after a tiny, sick child for years and didn't have anyone to turn to. It was very scary indeed.

A man drove his car into our gate and broke it last year, and our neighbours all rushed out to tell him off and defend me. It was so reassuring.

I'm glad they came through for you.

Do you know if that driver got any sort of penalty for what happened? Did he/she offer to pay for the fence he/she crashed into?

It sort of goes to show: there is good and there is bad in life. To feel that the bad outweighs all good can be destructive.

I didn't call the police because I was scared of them as they'd just murdered a woman. But the driver offered to and did pay for a new gate and fence. Despite the fact the builder he sent round tried to tell me that the gate and fence was broken beforehand and we didn't need a new one. It wasn't. So we didn't use his builder. We used my husband's boss's brother instead.

Next time however I will be calling the police immediately! The builder bullied me, because I was a woman on my own. He changed his tune when my husband stepped in!

Same here. I have a story of my own.

I started college right after facebook became huge. My incoming college class had a facebook group where soon-to-be students could get to know each other. The summer before college, I ended up getting a friend request from a fellow incoming freshman. Let's call him Kyle (not his real name). We would chat on facebook a lot throughout the summer (and many times, he would be the one to initiate the discussion).

Fast forward to move-in day. We ended up running into each other in person for the first time. He acted totally uninterested. I chalked it up to the fact that he might have been exhausted from lifting all the move-in boxes.

I was willing to give Kyle another chance. Once the semester was underway, I went to a campus football game with Kyle and his roommate. When my back was turned, Kyle and his roommate skedaddled without even saying a word to me.

At this point, I stopped trying entirely with Kyle. I ended up making plenty of other friends at college; the fact that friendship didn't work out with Kyle wasn't a huge deal.

Then at the end of our first semester, Kyle blocked me on facebook. Incredibly strange, seeing as I hadn't spoken with him (on facebook or in person) for several weeks at that point. I could see unfriending me (since we clearly were not true friends). But to block me?

To this day (more than a decade later), I honestly have no idea what I did to alienate Kyle.

Oh gosh that sounds so familiar. Sorry that happened to you too.

Similar things have happened to me in the past, even recently. One recent friend I've had for 3 years or so, we talked about everything. Our kids, our partners, our lives, our health etc. We always tried to be there for each other.

Then I noticed that she suddenly started cancelling our coffee dates, then she said 'let's meet up again sometime, I'll check my schedule' and that was the last I heard, 3 months ago.

I suppose it's been the school holidays, maybe after those finish I'll hear from her again. But really, this has happened so often to me that I don't chase after people anymore. I just let them go.

Maybe friends aren't meant to stay long, maybe they just move on quickly

Sweet Pea hugs

This of people disappearing happens to everybody, I think. I know many people who just don´t care about it, of others not wanting to keep in touch.

Once when I was 15 I told my best friend that I was in love with her. I thought we could speak about that . I would like to have an adult conversation with her even if I knew something could go wrong. She disappeared.

Once in a while, it would happen that contacts just didn´t work, that ideas did not combine, and the other person or I just stopped investing, which is quite normal. I have a best friend in my native country (15 years very close to each other). I am not sure if keep the other friend that I have for 21 years as a friend. I am diminishing the contact until it fades by itself, like most people do and understand as lack of interest without anything personal about it. If he asks I will answer him why and how things came to this.

I think it´s weird when people disappear at once if there was something very deep between both parts. It´s childish to just disappear in these situations. I don´t think it´s ok.

In the country I live now, there is only a couple that live in another city that I meet occasionally, that are friends but there is no contact outside these twice a year meetings . I think people in here are "colder" than what I was used to, in my country, and I need to take this into consideration, which I do.

Not impossible, though difficult.


Or ... you have to join a group that makes a specific point of being friendly to newcomers and making it easy for people to make friends within the group.

Such groups do exist, and it's possible to build such groups.

I suppose I'm just tired of trying and trying and trying and not getting anywhere. I thought I had 2 good friends locally but they have disappeared.

And tired of thinking friendships are going well then suddenly being told, 'I hate you because you said XYZ' and me not having a clue what they are talking about. It so often seems I said 'something awful' a few months ago and now the 'friend' hates me for it. They rarely tell me what I'm supposed to have said, and if they do, it's always a misunderstanding. But it's too late by then. I've been written out of their lives.

I think I'm going to follow Cyberdad and KraftieKortie's philosophy and keep people at a distance.