I’D been miserable without my best friend while she was on a three-week holiday in Korea, so the day she got back to work I popped in to say hi.
But what happened next still haunts me five years later.
As I waited for my coffee in the cafe she worked in, I spotted her behind the counter, hiding in the fridge door.
It took me a minute to realise that she was waiting for me to leave.
While half of me still expected her to come over, the other half of me knew something was wrong.
Hoping for the best, I sent a message asking if she was hiding from me.
Her curt reply went something like this “Leanne, I would like to see or talk to you when I’m ready.”
I went home feeling sick to my stomach, I wondered what I could have possibly done to get such a cold response.
I wished her well and said to reach out when she’s ready.
I waited patiently for a message, but it never came.
Five years later, I still think about it often and what happened to our three-year friendship.
Having been in the dating pool myself, I knew all about ghosting – a term for when someone cuts you out of their life with no explanation, but I never thought it would happen with a friend.
Barbara Santini, a relationship expert for Peaches & Screams says: “People ghost primarily due to discomfort with conflict. They avoid difficult conversations, fearing vulnerability or lacking the communication skills to express their needs.
“It’s often a sign of immaturity, prioritising short-term avoidance over the long-term impact on the friendship”
But it seems I’m not the only one to experience it, as this week Jade Thirlwall revealed Jesy Nelson did the same to her and their fellow band mates, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock.
Speaking on the Louis Theroux podcast, Jade recalled the heartbreak she went through when Jesy up and left Little Mix without warning, or without speaking to the women who became like sisters while travelling the world for nine years together.
Five years on, Jade is still ‘grieving’ the loss of her friend and band mate as she admits the pair haven’t spoken since Jesy’s departure.
I’t’s a sentiment I can relate to.
She said: “Contact was so abruptly cut off, it was very hard to deal with and quite traumatic.”
Jade revealed Jesy instantly cut off contact with her band mates after deciding to leave, and they haven’t spoken since.
“I think that’s why I struggled with it is because we didn’t all get a chance to just sit together like we’d done for so many years, to just hash it out.
“There’s no hate there from me or from any of us, I think. It’s just all quite sad that it happened and I had to grieve that happening,” she added.
She revealed that shortly after, she was in the car with her partner, Jordan Stephens, and began to sob at the reality of losing Jesy.
She continued: “We were driving. I was being really short with him.
“Then honestly, out of nowhere, I literally bellowed like a f***ing whale or something.
“I’d never cried like that since my grandad died when I was 13.
5 Friendship facts
How many friends do you have, and how would you describe your relationships?
- People make hundreds of friends in their lifetime, but only 1 in 12 friendships will last.
- According to research, the average person currently has three to five very close friends, 10 to 15 people in their circle.
- People usually have no more than two “best-friends” at one time.
- Friendships and relationships are the number one key indicator of joy and happiness according to one of the longest-running studies on human happiness
- Data from 148 studies have shown that people with stronger social connections are 50% more likely to survive!
“I think it was all the years of love and everything we’d been through together — the good things, the bad things, you know, and enabling behaviours or being there for each other.”
I know the feeling all too well. My friend and I met while working together in the hospitality sector.
Long hours and busy shifts mean you often become close with co-workers quickly, and we were soon inseparable.
Not just at work, we often went for brunch on our days off, walks in the park or headed to the pub for a hazy night out.
I’ve had breakups that have left me in bed for days, but this was a punch in the gut.
Leanne Hall
We knew everything about each other and never stopped laughing, but it seems this was one-sided.
The connection we had was particularly important to me as I wasn’t in the best relationship at the time.
We both shared our troubles, cheered each other up and were there for each other in our hardest moments.
I’ve been ghosted by dates in the past and quite frankly, it’s never bothered me as I feel like they’re basically strangers who don’t owe me anything.
I’ve had breakups that have left me in bed for days, but this was a punch in the gut.
When serious romantic relationships come to an end, somebody has to initiate it being over, and while it can be tough you know exactly where you stand.
A friendship breakup is much more complicated; you don’t share the same bed every night, you haven’t made vows to each other, so I guess it feels weird if you’ve checked out to have a ‘closure’ conversation.
It might feel less confrontational to just try and slowly drift apart or ignore them until they get the hint, but for the person on the receiving end, it can be so much harder.
I’ve had relationships end and I’ve gotten over them in a normal amount of time, but I still can’t wrap my head around this one, given there was no argument or sign we were breaking off our alliance.
I spent months in a blur of anxiety, writing and deleting messages to her, hoping she would contact me or simply replaying every tiny detail of our friendship in my head to see where I had gone wrong and how I could make it up to her.
Going from incredibly close to being instantly cut out leaves you wondering just how bad a friend you are for years, and it generally impacts all other relationships going forward as you’re on your tiptoes hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.
Barbra agrees, saying: “This societal undervaluing of friendships can make ghosting seem like a less significant act, though the pain it inflicts is very real.
“Ghosting can feel even more devastating than a romantic breakup because of the lack of closure. You are left with unanswered questions, feeling betrayed and questioning your own judgment.
“This ambiguity prolongs the grieving process, making it difficult to move on. The absence of a clear explanation creates a void where self-doubt can fester.”
It’s been five years since our friendship ended over WhatsApp.
I even tried to reach out a couple of years ago, only to get a generic ‘we should see each other soon’ reply that never came to fruition.
Like Jade, I’ve spent a good amount of time mourning the end of that friendship, and while I don’t have any bad blood toward her, I still long for an explanation that I suspect will never come.