You and your friend can say many bad things to each other. Still, the worst happens when you stop talking at all.
What could possibly go so wrong between two people who enjoyed a close and warm relationship so that they stop talking?
Is this reaction specific for certain personality types, or does anyone make such a decision just as easily depending on the cause?
Like any other relationship, friendship also matures over time. It is not unusual for two people to develop and mature at different paces.
These differences can easily affect their friendship, but not necessarily in a bad way. It takes a lot of experience and skill to balance a friendship through all the stages of life.
If your dear friend decides to stop talking to you for whatever reason, you have to know that this kind of reaction implies that they feel deeply hurt.
The one who abandons is typically the one who feels abandoned. Luckily, nothing is forever unless you believe so.
There are many ways you can try to fix your broken friendship, and we’ll describe some of the most effective ones:
Apologize sincerely
Regardless of whether you feel guilty or not for the split in your friendship, you must show that you are honestly sorry for causing the pain.
If someone decides to stop talking to you, it means you said or did something that deeply jeopardized the core values of another person.
To apologize does not mean to admit the mistake, but, more importantly, it should mean that you never wanted the other person to feel bad.
Write an email
It can be hard to apologize if your friend does not even want to talk to you. Writing an email where you explain in detail what your intentions were, compared to what your actions showed, you may win a chance to talk with your friend in person and share more of how you feel about everything.
But, bear in mind that this way, you have no control over how your friend will react upon receiving the email from you.
They might simply mark it as spam. So, before you choose this approach, consider how likely your friend is to read the email. They may not be the reading type.
Stay persistent
Sometimes, your friend may need confirmation that you are still willing to invest in friendship and needs to see that you are ready to put some effort into winning their friendship back.
Although they don’t talk to you, you can still show up, show that you care, invite friends regularly for meet-ups, and write emails that show that you are thinking of them.
The point of this approach is to show that you are not giving up at any cost.
Make a break
In some cases, time is the best cure. Maybe both of you need time to process what happened and see how life feels without the other.
Some conclusions can only come to you when you are on your own. Time will give you the chance to understand what caused the friend to react in such a way to stop talking to you.
Your friend will also get a chance to cool off and better overview the situation and your role in it. But don’t let too much time go by, as this may look like you’ve already given up.
Make a grand gesture
Think carefully about what your friend likes and what you could do to surprise them.
You could show up at their door with that rare book they always wanted to have, tickets for the event you wanted to go to together, and with whatever you know would mean to them.
The point of a grand gesture is to show that you are willing to go above and beyond to preserve to friendship you once had.
Try couple’s therapy
Close friendships share a lot of similarities to marriages, and couple’s therapy is not reserved for marriages only, so if you believe there is a way to make your friend participate in something like this, give it a go.
Merely by proposing it, you’ll also show your friend how invested you are in your relationship with them, which may be a huge step towards reconciling.
Ask a friend to help you with the friend who stops talking to you
Sometimes, conflicts can be much more efficiently resolved with the help of a third person who is not involved in the reasons behind the whole situation.
If you two share a friend who loves both of you and would love to see you get along again, ask them to mediate. It is hard to see the situation from every angle when you are in the middle of it.
Someone with a cool head and good intentions can be all you need to open the path for communication.
When someone, of all the things that they can say to you, decides to stop talking to you, it says that they believe what you did to them is unspeakable, or that’s the way they learned to handle when someone hurts them, its simply a behavior pattern they adopted.
Some people hold such high expectations of others that they are not able to forgive even the smallest mistake and are ready to punish the other person by eliminating them completely from their life.
The message that the person who stops talking to you sends to you is – you don’t matter, your words don’t matter, I don’t want to hear you.
You’d had to do something really terrible to deserve such treatment. But, more often, the problem is the other person’s incapacity to deal with conflict, go through it and understand the mistake.
These people usually have trouble admitting they are hurt, as well as admitting what exactly hurt them. It is way easier for them to just erase you from their life than to face what makes them feel weak.
Wrapping It All Up
If you miss a friend who stopped talking to you, think carefully about what type of person your friend is and choose the most effective approach accordingly.
What works with a demanding perfectionist will not work with a capricious extrovert, for instance.
But, we are sure this brief list of suggestions will give you an idea of how to approach your estranged friend. Good luck!