Letting go of old friendships?

Mitzu

I had a very tight knit group of friend in secondary school, we got split up when some of them went college while a few of us -myself included- were still in school. We promised to stay in touch despite being scattered across the country and for the first year we did, but then some drama happened.

Basically one of my friends (lets call her Sara) was acting like a bitch, and was becoming someone I didn't particularly like or want to hang out. But no one wanted to call her on its as it might split the group, so I generally kept my mouth shut. I couldn't help but have a bit of an attitude around Sara though, she almost certainly picked up on it.

Anyway I started college the next year in the same city that Sara and three other friends lived. I was looking forward to us hanging out, but I barely heard from them even when I tried to make contact. Then I started seeing lots of photos on facebook of the four of them, they were meeting up regularly without me. I was struggling to make friends in college and was feeling lonely and isolated, so finding this out hurt a lot. I decided to confront the other three. I accused them of leaving me out in because Sara had a problem with me, it got heated, they denied that these meet ups had been planned and I was basically told that they didn't have to invite me to anything so I had no right to be upset.

We all apologized afterwards but things have been off since. I've made an effort for the last few years to stay in touch, but its one sided and I'm not invited to hang out with the rest of the group any more. I forget about it most of the time but then I see pictures of my old friends together and its like a punch in the gut. I'd know some of these people for over ten years, we'd never fought or had any falling out before, so for a while it was hard to accept that they'd cut me out.

This whole situation is probably very trivial, but its just compounded several other another painful things from my past that I can't seem to let go off. I was bullied for years at school and I had an alcoholic in the family who was very emotionally abusive, but that never made me believe I was worthless or a horrible person. But this is making me think that. I just keep going back to Sara, she treated everyone like dirt and they still like her more than me.

I just want to be able to move on. I've tried getting away from it by hiding their facebook activity, deleting their numbers etc. but I feel like I'm being petty and I should be over it by now. I just don't know what to do, how do I stop being upset about this?

ananas

Oh OP you poor thing. Listen, the exact same thing happened to me. I had a wench exactly like Sara in my group of school friends. She decided she didn't like me and fell out with me. Thn all my other friends stopped inviting me out when she was there. The last straw for me was when I was invited out as she wasn't going out. I decided I'd rather be friendless than hang out with such vacuous, empty vessels.

At the time I was devastated. I was convinced I'd never have a group of friends again. 7 years on and I have great friends who want to hang out with me, regardless of what anyone thinks.

While it may be hard to cut contact and find new friends, never settle for people who make you feel bad about yourself. Life is so short and you're so young. Letting go of those people from my life liberated me so much. You will make new friends and be happy, don't worry! Make th effort at college, my best friends are my college friends and people who I lived with. Remember every time you see those photos or get a pang of sadness, think about how mean they are and how immature that they're stuck in their secondary school mentality.

LegacyUser

I find it easy to forget old acquaintances by forming new ones, people more like me who I get on better with. If you find yourself dwelling on it stop yourself. You can't change the past but you can change the present.

FiachDubh

You're using Sara as a scapegoat, you're putting the brunt of the blame on her when ALL your friends are guilty of it.
You shouldn't have let the problem grow, you should have nipped it at the bud.
Get over it, find new friends and forget about this shower that treat you like a leaper, no one disserves that.

That might be harsh to hear but self-pitying isn't going t make you friends fast.

freshpopcorn

I don't want to be harsh with OP but maybe your friends have moved on from you,
When you were still in school and your friends including Sara went to college their lives changed from being at home with mammy and daddy all the time to being college students and them being away from home for the first time in their lives.
How exactly did Sara change? People change as they get older and when somebody does change they might become happier and they don't want people to judge them on this. There is a change that Sara might have told ye're other friends that you were giving her bad vibes.
When you did go to college a year later you were a first year and they were second years so ye were slightly apart they might have being more settled in now and thought that you might like to do your own thing. It is very important when you start college to make an effort with your new class mates by attending class parties/events and not just going out with your old school friends from the start.
When you did confront them about not inviting you on nights out, often college nights out aren't planned people often just decide to go out at the last minute, its not like being at home have to get permission off your parents. Often when you don't plan a night out they can be brilliant. I often went on random nights out in college. I was going to college in Cork and had no plans for the evening at 9am and that evening I have ended up in Dublin, Limerick, Tralee, Waterford and one day we ended up the North shopping. One day we got on email on Thursday night to say college was closed on Friday & A group of girls in my class decided to go to London for the weekend in the space of 5 minutes. If you looked at all our facebook statuses you would have thought that we planned all these things.
Sometimes friends change and move on and it's up to you to make new friends.

Santa Cruz

National school and secondary school friendships are not friendships. They are just groups of young people who happen to be thrown in together. I always remember one of my Leaving Cert teachers remark, "In a few years ye will be crossing the road to avoid meeting" and he was right.
Get on with your life and away from small town or small city suburb attitudes.

Stavro Mueller

Are you still in college or have you graduated? Have you made any other friends since you left school?

IrishEyes19

Hi OP, you need to cut Sara out of it. Yes she probably changed in college and yes Im sure her hanging out with the others without you, isolated you and bonded them, but thats a group effort, not just the work of one girl. You need to let these girls go and delete them off facebook if you have to.

I have one good friend from home from school, but all my close friends are now from my college and working life, not secondary. I dont have anything in common with those people anymore and thats ok, they would probably say the same. we all change.

Have you friends now other than these girls? Work on those friendships, care about those. If you are brave enough, delete them and move on. Who cares what they think. They dont make you or break you. Stop allowing silly girls to affect how you feel. you deserve so much better.

Mitzu

I accept I wasn't totally innocent, my attitude and the fight are obviously my fault, but at the time I'd hoped they'd realize what a rough time I was having and stick by me.

To freshpopcorn: Basically Sara made a load of new friends and spent every meet up going on about how great they were, about how we never do anything cool but her college friends are so 'random.' She became very elitist about education as well, she's make fun of a friend of ours for repeating implying he was thick, she'd joke that ITs weren't real colleges, that arts courses were a waste of time. And this was while some of our friends went to ITs and did arts. She became very obnoxious and insulting until eventually she ditched us completely. We didn't hear from her for months, then she had a big falling out with her new friends and came back to us all sweetness and light. I wasn't the only one who was put out by her behavior, but no one wanted to say anything.

Also at least some of the meet up I was left out had to have been planned: they went to three different colleges in Dublin, lived no where near each other, I doubt they'd bump into each other that often without at least texting first. I tried not to think too much of it for the first couple of months, but decided to say something when I saw pictures of my supposed best friend's birthday party.


Just to clarify this all happened a few years ago, I was in a huge course where it was initially very difficult to get to know people, things settled down after Christmas and I did make friends. I have gotten on with my life, I'm going into final year of college, I love my course, I love my friends. I use to self harm but I haven't for the past two years, I'm generally much happier and more confident these days. That's why I don't understand how this still upsets me. There's worse things from my past that I can usually shut away, but this one I can't seem to get over. I know I should move on, I just don't know how

Stavro Mueller

I believe deleting them off Facebook would be a very sensible thing to do. You're still harking back to the past and to how great things were. Perhaps these girls were something of a comfort to you when times were hard at home and at school and that is why you can't get over this. Cutting them off like this would give you power. At the moment you're the one on the back foot, feeling like crap because the others have rejected you. When in fact you should be saying it's their loss and consigning them to the bin .

freshpopcorn

Sara just seems like a snobby girl tbh or she could be only having banter.
I have experienced this on nights out with people from UCC/UCD/UL saying people from CIT/DIT/LIT are beneath them but most of the time their only messing and the arts jokes have being going around with years with people saying you'll end up working in Mcdonalds if you do an arts degree.
People can run into one another on a night out tough Dublin/Cork are small cities and generally people who are like minded end up in the same place.I nearly always bump into friends on nights out with out planning on it.
Anyway by the sounds of it you've moved on now as have they. You have other friends now and these people are your future!

DoozerT6

Yeah, our schooldays can be quite intense, especially secondary school as we do a LOT of growing up between the ages of 12 and 17/18. Friendships can also be quite intense, as basically for 5 or 6 years you probably spend more time with your friends/classmates than you do with your own family. Lots can happen and bonds can be formed which are very strong. I look back to my own schooldays and hand on heart, after being joined at the hip during our schooldays, after a couple of years I wasn't in touch with many of them, and by my late 20's, I wasn't in touch with any of them (bar one). I notice on Facebook that lots of girls who would have been good friends with each other in school, and are still living in the same (large-ish) town I went to school in, are clearly not in regular contact with each other, just friendly contact via Facebook. We would have all gone to college, graduated, some got married, had families etc, and ended up moving back to their home town after several years. But their lives had moved on.

Honestly, unless you and your friends never left your home town after your Leaving Cert and all got jobs in the same place, things like this are BOUND to happen. People also change as they are exposed to a whole new circle of influences when they leave home, start college or work, and sometimes people don't change for the better. I would move on from this group of people, accept that this happens and that they have moved on too and it doesn't necessarily have to be anyone's fault, and simply put it out of your mind. I imagine you're only in your early 20's? In five years or so this will be a distant memory and you will (if you make a bit of effort with people) have a whole new group of friends who will accept you for who you are.

Just let go. Cut them out.

I had a group of friends from college who were doing pretty much the same thing - meeting up and not letting me know about it and basically just treating me like an afterthought. We had been drifting apart for a while due to having less and less in common and that was resulting in us not getting on as well as we had. Eventually I decided to just stop bothering, as I was the one making all the effort, and lo and behold, they made no effort to contact me. I decided to give the one I had once been closest to one last chance and e-mailed her on Facebook to say Hi and ask what she'd been up to. Months went by with no reply, all the while she was updating her status every week, posting silly chain messages and playing Farmville. That told me all I needed to know about where I featured on her list of priorities. I deleted her and haven't thought about her again (until now). She wasn't a friend. Random acquaintances I'd met a handful of times had more time for me than that, ffs.

I've made a point of not being the one to do all the running since then - basically found some self respect. I'm not going to beg for scraps when there are plenty of people who actually really like me and are happy to hear from me! I suggest you do the same. Delete and move on.

LegacyUser

Mitzu wrote: »

Basically one of my friends (lets call her Sara) was acting like a bitch, and was becoming someone I didn't particularly like or want to hang out. But no one wanted to call her on its as it might split the group

Well done you. I've seen a similar thing happen with a bunch of friends and rather than stand up to the guy in the wrong, they ditched the other guy -they just didn't want confrontation.

Having standards for friendships is important. You made a brave choice and suffered for it.

ynul31f47k6b59

OP even if they all turned round to you right this second and apologised and asked you out, would you be delighted and happy or would you still spend hours looking for proof that one or more were going behind your back?

I was in a similar situation and I just cut them all out of my life, I have three very good female friends now and it's more than enough, I value each one very highly. You'd be better off a million miles away from the drama, if you find it hard to make friends could you go to a volunteer thing, society, or something else?

It's not easy to move on but despite what bloody facebook may say, people aren't always as close as they seem to be.

freshpopcorn

Maybe your group of school friends have moved on from you OP. Whilst they are still people you know and you could talk to them if you bumped into on the street they might consider you more of an acquaintance now. You should do the same.You have your new friends so focus on these relationship and if you bump into your old friends in a shop/bar ye can have a little chat.

LegacyUser

Hi op, this same thing happened to me. I was well into my 30s when it happened and found myself getting pushed out of a social circle that I had been part of since my teens. All because one 'queen bee' type person decided i was out. This is more common than you would imagine.

It was so difficult to deal with but Over time i have come to realise that this person was a bully and that my so called friends were just sheep. Unfortunately alot of people are and will just follow the path of least resistance.

It took me a while but in the end I decided to just cut all contact with all of Them. It reached the point where I was so bitter that i knew that even if all my old friends came back and tried to bring me back into the group i would never trust them enough to be close again. This gave me the courage to get out into the world and start again, which I did.

I recently ran into the wife of one of my old friends and she stopped me on the street and told me how he always regretted losing contact and it would be great if I would take his number and phone him. I said, and I meant it, I have zero bad feelings about what happened, i genuinely hope he is well but i have no desire to see your husband.

As i walked away, i thought to myself, what happened back then made me the person I am today and had that not happened I might not be as happy as I am today.

My only advice to you is forget these people, let them go, move on. You are better off without them. The sooner you cut all contact the sooner you can get on with the rest of your life.