I recently reached out to an old friend who completely ignored me. I’m really upset about it for some reason. It may just be that I’m really bad at handling rejection. I also rarely reach out to other people, so it took a lot of courage for me to reach out to this person (even though reaching out is a normal activity most people can do seemingly easily.) I simply texted her asking if she wanted to get lunch sometime.

There’s a backstory with this friend (who I have posted about on here before). Back in December of 2017, this friend had sexual relations with our other friend’s boyfriend. It wasn’t a usual situation because she would have sex with the friend’s boyfriend secretly (sometimes while this friend was in the room sleeping). This caused all of my friends to completely ditch this friend. I don’t know if it was “justified” for all of us to ditch her. She did a very bad thing, but I feel it may have been a little harsh for her to become friendless. She was a very social girl who was apart of multiple friend groups. Every single friend group didn’t want to associate with her once they found out what happened.

I was friends with her for so long that it was hard for me to drop her as a friend. However, people were accusing me of supporting her horrible actions by trying to stay friends with her. I feel like I was the ONLY one who was hesitant to drop her as a friend. Everyone else dropped her instantly. At the same time, I was in an abusive relationship where my boyfriend kept me from seeing any of my friends. I was only able to see them in school as that was the only time he couldn’t completely monitor me. I could barely keep a close relationship with the friends I had, so it was extremely difficult to try to keep a close relationship with this specific friend after what happened. Despite this, I did try to reach out to her multiple times. I texted her twice after the incident to get dinner. We got dinner both times, but I wasn’t able to continue seeing her because of my boyfriend (at the time). He constantly needed to know where I was and I was very afraid of him. I wish I could have explained this to her while it was happening, but I was also very embarrassed and tried to make it seem like my relationship was “normal” and “healthy.” I kept the abuse a secret. However, I feel really bad for simply ditching her after we got dinner. She had no idea why I stopped talking to her but I just didn’t know how to tell her without admitting to the abuse. I was very weak during this time and am very sorry for hurting her. She texted me asking (afterwards) if we would continue being friends and I just didn’t answer.

I texted her a couple of times after that. For example, she would butt dial me and I texted her asking if she called me on purpose or accident. I was still with my ex and I wasn’t allowed to talk to her so I tried to at least text her over small things for that. Also, she texted my cousin in the summer and they agreed to hang out (although it never happened). She only knew my cousin through me. I thought that if she was open to being friends with my cousin, she probably didn’t have any harsh feelings towards me. In October 2018, I sent her a long apology text which she didn’t reply to. I apologized for not talking to her again after we got dinner. I tried to explain why I stopped talking to her without giving away the abuse. After that, I thought our friendship was over. I got out of the abusive relationship in November 2018.

My other friend named Sarah recently reached out to her for lunch. They met for lunch and talked about everything. They also agreed to hang out this summer as they would both be home from college. My friend even said that “she would be happy to be friends with all of us again” so I saw it as an opportunity to maybe reach out to her again. It seemed worth a shot. They met for lunch about 3 months ago and I texted her earlier today. She didn’t answer.

I don’t know why but it hurts me very badly. I understand the pain it caused her to lose all of her friends, but I was one of the only ones to attempt to reach out multiple times since the incident. In my brain, that is A LOT considering I wasn’t talking to/hanging out with anyone except my ex (except in school when I could talk to my friends at lunch. That was it). I don’t know. I understand that it is mostly my fault. Even though my situation was difficult, I could have tried way harder to preserve our friendship. It seemed as though I put absolutely no effort in at all, but I felt so trapped in the relationship. I was scared to reach out to ANYONE yet I still tried reaching out to her. I wish she could just understand that. It is my own fault for ditching her without giving an explanation. I was weak to try to hide the abuse.

What should I do. Give up? What are your opinions. Any advice on how to get over this? She was my very very good friend for years. I thought we were the closest out of everyone. Plus, I was the only one to reach out to her a couple of times until Sarah did only 3 months ago. Why did she ignore me… I’m really depressed about it although I understand I am to blame.