{"id":88798,"date":"2025-05-10T01:11:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T01:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/88798\/"},"modified":"2025-05-10T01:11:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T01:11:18","slug":"my-latest-friend-to-vanish-had-been-acting-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/88798\/","title":{"rendered":"My latest friend to vanish had been acting strange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Eric:<\/strong> Over the past few years, more and more of my longtime friends have vanished from my life.<\/p>\n

One sent a message reading \u201cI am retired,\u201d and when asked how she was enjoying her retirement, sent the same message repeatedly as her reply.<\/p>\n

One asked me to vacation with her, and when I replied enthusiastically, never contacted me for a long time, only to send a bizarre meme two years later.<\/p>\n

The latest was a woman I walk with occasionally. She began screaming at passers-by one morning and walked off. She did send me a message later saying, \u201cYou were upset.\u201d I replied that I was worried about her. I haven\u2019t heard from her since.<\/p>\n

Now I have no friends. We are all retirement age. Are they descending into mental ill-health as a result of the pandemic, or is it me? Am I running folks off because I am being inappropriate somehow?<\/p>\n

\u2013 Baffled Friend<\/p>\n

Dear Friend:<\/strong> This might be a perfect storm of multiple factors. It\u2019s possible that some of your friends are experiencing mental health struggles, while others are going through age-appropriate changes in their capacity for social engagement, and you\u2019re bearing the brunt of all of it.<\/p>\n

As folks get older and their priorities shift, it\u2019s common for some friendships to fade. (However, bigger shifts in personality or energy levels can indicate a problem, like depression or cognitive issues. So that\u2019s something to look out for.)<\/p>\n

Part of this may be a communication issue. You received rather abrupt texts from your retired friend and the friend with the meme. It\u2019s hard to read tone or intention over text sometimes. A call might be helpful in clarifying where you stand.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a good idea to get an outside eye on how you\u2019re coming across and how you\u2019re approaching friendship from a loved one or a counselor. You don\u2019t need to get too deep into it, if you don\u2019t want to, but a gut check or a simple \u201cam I missing something\u201d will put your mind at ease regarding the appropriateness of your behavior.<\/p>\n

Despite what\u2019s going on with your friends, I hope you\u2019re taking steps to avoid loneliness, which can be a major challenge for a lot of seniors.<\/p>\n

Consider exploring the programming options at a senior center or other community organization. You\u2019ll find people who are in similar states of transition in their friendships and people who are interested in investing time in building new relationships.<\/p>\n

Dear Eric<\/strong>: My cousin and his second wife moved to the small town where I live. My cousin urged\/asked me to befriend her, so she\u2019ll be happier here.<\/p>\n

She has everything going for her, yet she can\u2019t seem to stop complaining.<\/p>\n

When we get together, which is frequently, I am stuck listening to her complain and complain. For example, she recently groused about a cruise they\u2019re going on to celebrate a family wedding to which I was not invited. But there I sat, absorbing her beefs about the other guests (my relatives, mind you), and the itinerary she\u2019s been lucky enough to have already visited. Meanwhile, my cousin stared at his phone and didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n

It feels like in trying to become her friend, I\u2019ve become her dumping ground instead.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s an anxious person, and I understand that airing her griefs might be her way of processing anxiety. But I\u2019m not a therapist, so I lack the skills or script to shift her focus.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s starting to feel like this dynamic is the price of admission to see my cousin. My husband\u2019s no help; plus, she doesn\u2019t do this to him.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m running out of ideas and patience. So, I wonder, what would you do in my shoes?<\/p>\n

\u2013 Dumped On<\/p>\n

Dear Dumped On:<\/strong> What you\u2019re doing for your cousin and his wife is very nice. But niceness has its limits, and I think you\u2019re just about there.<\/p>\n

Friendship is a two-way street but if she\u2019s littering it with complaints, you\u2019ve got to take a detour.<\/p>\n

You can be direct in the moment by saying something like, \u201cI\u2019m sorry you\u2019re going through this. Can we change the subject to something more positive? It\u2019ll help both of our moods.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can even interrupt your time together by excusing yourself or cutting the visit short when you\u2019ve had enough. Being your cousin\u2019s wife\u2019s friend doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that you have to give her an unlimited amount of your time and energy.<\/p>\n

You might even consider getting together less frequently. I know you want to see your cousin, but if your time is being monopolized by his wife, how much quality time are you getting anyway?<\/p>\n

She\u2019s hyper-focused on the negative, you can be hyper-focused on creating parameters for this relationship. Decide in advance how much time you\u2019ll commit to complaints and when it\u2019s up, skedaddle.<\/p>\n

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram @oureric and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: May 8, 2025 at 2:27 AM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Eric: Over the past few years, more and more of my longtime friends have vanished from my…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[4869,4376,42250,216,42252,42253,42251,390,6171,105,218,2250,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-88798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-abandoned","9":"tag-advice","10":"tag-asking-eric","11":"tag-communication","12":"tag-complainer","13":"tag-dumped-upon","14":"tag-eric-thomas","15":"tag-family","16":"tag-friends","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-mental-health","19":"tag-retirement","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114480878907500656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}