DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend whom I very much treasured has ceased to be my friend.
After 12 years of travel adventures, Saturday afternoons at markets, deep conversations over coffee, visiting each other several times a year (after she moved 1,000 miles away) and helping each other with projects, she started distancing herself from me.
I asked her what was happening, and she would only say there was nothing wrong and that nothing had changed. She acted like I was imagining things.
I received a card in the mail from her a few months ago where she mentioned, almost as an aside, that she had moved back here. I called her immediately and asked how I could have missed that she was moving back. She laughed and said she’d been here for six weeks already.
I felt crushed, though I didn’t express that. The friend I had known would have called me the day the decision was made. Actually, she would have called me before that, to talk over the pros and cons. We would have seen each other at least a dozen times in those six weeks.
Instead, we have only seen each other once in the four months she’s been back — for 30 minutes, to watch a parade. I have reached out since then to invite her to coffee or lunch, and those messages have been returned with silence.
I honestly don’t know what happened. Should I simply acquiesce to this radio silence?
GENTLE READER: Yes, unless you want to have one more go at facing the problem directly: “Clearly we have grown distant, and I am at a loss as to why. You say that nothing is wrong, but you cannot deny that our friendship is not what it was. If I have done something wrong, please let me know so that I have a chance to correct it and make amends.”
If your erstwhile friend continues to demur, Miss Manners is afraid that you will have to accept the loss and move on. And then decide whether or not you want to avoid her at the grocery store.
(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, [email protected]; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)