What to do when our friends ignore us?

Friendships can change over time and, even though it hurts, sometimes it is better to let go. What should we do when our friends ignore us?

Do our friends ignore us, or at least that’s what we think? Friendship relationships are different between people. Some need to see or talk to their friends almost daily. However, for others, just being present at Christmas dinner is enough. However, when we ask ourselves this question it is because we feel that something is not right.

The truth is that relationships change. It doesn’t matter if these are friends, family or a couple. The reasons why this happens are several: experiences, change of residence, lack of contact… Therefore, we have to avoid mythologizing the beginning of a relationship: perhaps in those moments the most intense moments occur, however this does not determine that be the best.

Now, what we can consider is if the relationship has evolved to a point where it is no longer recognizable or has begun to hurt us. This thread of reflection will be the facilitator of an intelligent response to how we feel about our perception of the current relationship.

Do our friends ignore us or is it our perception?

Tough answer sometimes, right? We may think that our friends ignore us, but is that really the case? Let’s look at some situations that can make us choose this candy and start turning it over and over in our cauldron of thoughts:

We have a job that, far from fulfilling us, completely empties us: we get so bored and we spend so many hours at work that, when we leave, we want to meet up with friends. However, their schedules do not coincide with ours and we believe that they delay us or ignore us when, in reality, there is only a time incompatibility.We wait for them to take the first step: Maybe because we always say we should meet and we are tired of this being like this. But when we don’t say anything, there is a silence from our friends that makes us feel very alone.We don’t understand that they have other priorities: When our friends have a partner or start having children, the priorities are no longer meeting friends as much. Therefore, perhaps they do not ignore us, just the lack of time and their responsibilities mean that we are not a priority for them.

As the years go by, the word “friendship” changes for many of our friends. Their priorities begin to be different and we can feel that distance as a “they are ignoring me.”

The importance of expressing what we feel

Instead of drowning in a glass of water, regretting and feeling bad, Why don’t we instead tell our friends that we feel like they are ignoring us? Perhaps the response we receive will make us understand many of the circumstances we have mentioned above.

Read Also: Acceptance: the process of your personal development

Although, it is very possible that we will also encounter phrases like “I have made new friends” or “we have grown apart and the relationship is no longer the same.” However, we will have an answer and we can, as long as the other person takes their side, resume the relationship / update or decide to move on.

Does friendship have meaning?

With all this, let’s pay attention to those situations in which our friends ignore us because they no longer feel like hanging out with us since they consider that we don’t contribute anything to them, but they don’t tell us. For it, It is very important that we observe how they act from the moment we express what we feel. and they commit to meeting up more often or making plans at least once a month.

We have to understand that it is difficult to tell the truth. This also happens to us in certain circumstances, only when it affects us directly it bothers us that those people with whom we have had so much trust They don’t know how to tell us that the shared friendship is giving them little or very little.

Observing what happens will give us clues to decide whether to invest more in a relationship or, on the contrary, close it.. This ability is part of our social intelligence. An intelligence that, like emotional intelligence, has been ignored for a long time, despite how good it is as a predictor of our success.

As we have seen, communication, given the feeling that our friends ignore us, will give us enough information to use the intelligence we are talking about. In addition, being good at reading and interpreting each other’s communication well will make our task much easier. Finally, note that these meta-relationship moments (in which we think and talk about the relationship), well managed, often serve to stimulate and reinforce the quality of the bond.