Friendly Relations

Chang Duong From Unsplash

In the past, I didn't understand the concept of ghosting and getting ghosted and it was a huge trigger for me. The times I met new people and made new friends whom I vibed with very well during the physical meeting, and the next logical thing to do, according to my mindset that period, would be for us to continue the friendly relations online but many times as soon as we stopped meeting physically and the only option to reach out to each was through the Internet, the vibe goes off.

This didn't happen with one person but several people and it used to make me wonder what exactly happened and I used to overthink the whole situation while doing my best to reach out and bring that spark back but all I got for my effort were cold responses at times or the usual ”I'm so busy with school" and other types of excuses. It was not easy to understand that I wasn't liked enough by them and that was why they didn't want to continue the friendship, and that it was also okay. It didn't mean that I was a bad person, or they were bad friends at all.

At that time, I didn't understand that though.

It got me worried because a lot of the people I met in the course of moving on with my life in my late teens were actually great people with wonderful personalities that I'd like to associate myself with and now that those relations didn't work out, who knows how they might have turned out to be and how they might have affected me.

Today, I understand fully that many times the people that we meet and become friends with for a while only come about as a result of proximity. It means that some certain friendships exist because we're constantly in the same space with a particular group of people for a limited time and because of that proximity and the bond that is created(though temporary or permanent in some cases) can lead one to believe that one has found his or her BFF.

There are really great stories where people become best friends and even partners as a result of working together, but in other cases it doesn't really work out and that has been the story for me but now that I understand it better, it doesn't hurt anymore. A very good example is the university and the people who are your coursemates who you happen to be very good friends with. In my experience, I'm friends with some of them to an extent and that is because I realized early on those friendly relations only exist as long as we're in school for the semester. During the semester we all meet, greet, catch up with each other and help out when needed but that ends with the semester as during the semester holiday, the people that I have friendly relations with, do not know what it means to reach out online via text just to catch up knowing that we all live in different states in the country and you'd think it's because they're so busy, but no. They're always viewing your stories and seeing what you're up to but never reaching out and that's just crazy to me.

Fortunately, it will come to an end soon and everyone will go their separate ways amicably.

I don't think I have outrightly ghosted anyone and that's because I believe in letting the person who I would not like to be talking to anymore know that it is my wish not to talk to them anymore and why that would be happening. This might sound like a whole process, but it doesn't happen often and even when it does happen it is usually in a civilized manner. And if the individual persists, the individual gets blocked.