So I've seen several people talking about how they've reconnected with old friends this year since COVID has forced us all to stay home for extended periods of times, causing us to occupy our time with other activities.
I was expecting to receive a few messages from old friends myself, but what I wasn't expecting: my current close friends to stop messaging me altogether.
And when I say close friends, I mean I have 4 guy friends that I have known since 9th grade (I'm 23 now) and we have been hanging out every Saturday for years after highschool until March 2020 when COVID changed all of that.
We all agreed social distancing was the right thing to do to keep us and our families safe, so we stopped meeting up on Saturdays.
I texted our group chat every Saturday just to check in, seeing how everyone was doing. The third week in March, I only got one reply. After that, all replies stopped. 2 months later I had received a random minimal text from one of the guys who didn't respond further when I messaged back. A different guy reached out as well and said "How are you?" ( After 3 months of not replying to me) and then didn't even respond when I sent a response. One of my friends girlfriend reached out to me and has been more interactive than all of them.
I have always been the friend that plans everything, makes sure everyone is included, pays for my friends food if they don't have $$, gets birthday and Christmas gifts, etc. I am not trying to say I'm the best friend ever, but I will say that I go out of my way to make sure each of my friends is okay, and feels supported in our friendship. I am even sure to make anyone who is dating one of us feel invited and accepted when we hang out on Saturdays. I have gone out of my way to included anyone any of the boys are dating at the time.
Only one of the four contacted me (again, after months of not interacting with me and leaving me on read) to meet and walk through the woods a few times while distancing, and we chatted on a video call twice. We do have a slightly different relationship as he has been to several of my family events as the others have not, but they are all very, very close to me.
So my question is, why did they stop reaching out and participating in our friendship when the pandemic started? Was this pandemic a good excuse to stop hanging out / talking to me? Or am I reading too much into it and should I just accept what currently is? Looking for opinions on if I should hold out and wait for them to come around, if I should try to contact them all again, or if I should look for some new friends.
I have always been insecure and have thought that the guys I was hanging out with didn't exactly like to hang out with me, but liked that I always bought food for all of us and we kind of had a "situationship" from knowing each other from going to a very small highschool. So this kind of confirms my thoughts.
My feelings are hurt and I also don't want to throw away relationships that are so many years in the making. Looking for thoughts and opinions!
TLDR; My best friends have stopped talking to me during COVID-19 and I don't know if I should wait for them to come around or find new friends. Need advice.
Submitted July 20, 2020 at 03:58AM by upst8bro https://ift.tt/30u1g3B
No comments:
Post a Comment