Thoughts on Being Defriended
This week, I received an email from another writer who reminded me that she had once defriended me on Facebook. We both belong to the same professional association (which meets annually) but we live in different States and have virtually no contact with each other (although we might see each other’s posts on forums).
While stunned that I had been defriended, I had totally forgotten about the incident until I received her recent note. The subject line read I’m Sorry.
My ex-Facebook friend wrote:
Irene, I’m sorry I defriended you last year after I felt hurt following some Facebook comments early last year. I’d like to think I’ve developed thicker skin since then…but I’m a human. 🙂 Anyhow, I hope we can work beyond our differences…
I can’t remember the specifics of the incident but I suspect we disagreed, like so many Americans, regarding the politics surrounding the last election. Frankly, I was taken aback that I was defriended by someone with whom I had only the most peripheral online relationship and who took my comments so personally.
Nonetheless, when someone defriends you, it is like having a door slammed in your face and that’s how I felt. It left little room for dialogue unless I wanted to take the conversation elsewhere. Under these circumstances, I didn’t.
Why does defriending occur?
Defriending is generally provoked by something you did or said, online or off, that has created distance and led to a breach of trust. As a result, your “friend” no longer wants you lurking or being privy to what she is saying or doing online. Here are some common examples of how it happens:
• You’ve had a misunderstanding or disagreement, online or off;
• You humiliated the person in some way;
• You used information against her or she fears you will;
• She’s learned information about you (perhaps, from your Facebook page) that is a deal-breaker (for example, you’re a liberal and she’s a right-winger or she’s an atheist and you’re a devout whatever)
• She’s annoyed that you post too often-and are too self-promoting
How can I deal with being defriended?
In an article in Sunday’s New York Times called “Defriended, Not De-Emoted” by Austin Considine, I commented that the emotions sparked by suddenly being defriended aren’t too different than those felt when someone is dumped offline. It hurts!
While it’s hard to get back in someone’s good graces once you’re defriended, you may realize for one reason or another that you don’t necessarily want to repair the friendship either!
But if you do—and you know what you did wrong, apologize. And apologize sooner rather than later because little misunderstandings can blow up quickly. If you’re not sure why you were defriended and it matters to you, write the person offline to find out if you did something wrong or annoying. If the person doesn’t respond, you might want to allow for a cooling-off period and then try again. Use common sense.
As you might guess, the rules of defriending in cyberspace are pretty murky since there are no commonly accepted rules on the etiquette of how to end face-to-face friendships!
One takeaway lesson: While the act of defriending is as quick and easy as hitting a key, the decision to do so can have long-lasting repercussions, both for the defriender and the defriended.
Here are a few prior posts from The Friendship Blog on the topic of defriending.
- The awkwardness of defriending
- Online friending and defriending patterns
- Getting over getting dumped
- Junior High School Redux: Bounced from a mom’s group
- How to handle a Facebook frenemy
- Leaving a friend behind
Category: KEEPING FRIENDS, Online friends
There’s this guy that I’ve been friends with for six years. The story is,I use to play in this area in the gym called Kids Action Fitness I met him when he first started working there and I was still a member at Kids Action at the time, He first started talking to me when I was doing an activity that I used to practice my karate on and I was done he came up to me and asked “do you do karate?” I said “Yeah I do” and that was when we both started talking and hanging out with each other we’re both one year apart (so like I’m 19 and he’s 20) so was were both easy to talk to and a couple years later I began working at Kids Action and I when I came in my friend was so happy and excited that I decided to work there and I that was when we both started interacting with each other and he was the one who started training me how work there as a coach. My friend was so good to me he always so nice to me and he was that one person who would always make you laugh, smile and I was comfortable around him. We both ended up being Facebook friends for a while but for some odd reason, he blocks me off on Facebook and I’m confused because in person my guy friend and I are so close to each other, we always get along really well and I’ve always felt that we close connection between us but for some odd reason he blocked me on Facebook and I’m confused as to why he’s doing it. Can somebody please help me out? I’ve got more story about me and my friend but I need somebody’s opinion or advice.
Yeah I get understanding me just starting out on facebook to you know tried repeatedly to friend someone I knew from a long time & she was always a nice person. I was blocked I don’t know what I did wrong cause they never did me wrong. Whatever I’m enjoying chatting with people on different topics.
So, I met this girl in college and we had a LOT in common. We become pretty close and talked all the time. Due to financial reasons, we both had to leave the college we were attending and go elsewhere, but never lost touch. We communicated frequently through FB and even hung out when we could. Fast forward to 2013. She tells me she went to this conference (of a particular hobby we’re both very interested in) and met a few enthusiasts who will be starting a group together. She wants me to be involved because it would be awesome to be in a “club” together. I agree and it’s all very exciting. This is a type of club where we are trying to better ourselves at our hobby and give each other advice. Well, I gave one of the members advice and they instantly become hostile towards me. Mind you, this was not “Do it my way or the highway” type of advice. It was a “I’ve heard this route might be better”. I ask my friend about this person and she insists they’re just a little abrasive and to not worry about it. For a few months there’s definite tension between us. It gets to the point where I no longer want to even talk in the group because I can “feel” this person seething on the other side of the computer.
In the meantime they are all hanging out after work weekly. The location they pick is perfect for everyone to meet… except me. It’s two hours away from where I work. I don’t have a lot of extra spending money for extraneous gas and the time when they started meeting was really icy and hazardous. I missed a lot of the meetups. I’ll be honest there. I was very present on the facebook group, but I just simply didn’t have the time/money to meet in person ALL the time (every week). Especially since my husband and I share a car and he works in the evenings. I could tell they thought I was making excuse after excuse, but they never really bothered to meet me half way or anything.
Fast forward again. I get a message from one of the members, not my friend, telling me I really need to be at the next meet up or the group is going to kick me out. The next meetup is scheduled during my cousin’s wedding. I tell them I won’t be able to make it and this person says they realized it was too late anyway and I should probably lay low. Without notice, I am removed from the facebook group. I should also probably mention, we never set any ground rules on having to be present at X amount of meetups or anything of that nature. Nor was I given any advance notice other than the one message from the group member.
I message my friend and ask her what’s up and she tells me the group and I are moving in two different directions. Basically says it’s “them not me”. Then she says she wants to remain friends and not let this have any affect on our friendship because we were friends first. I agree and we make plans to hang out. It was a very nice evening. We went to an art fair with our husbands. I could tell it was a little weird though, she couldn’t wait to leave.
I didn’t say anything about the group and I didn’t really even acknowledge that this whole event had severely hurt my feelings. I continued “liking” her posts and commenting on them like I always had. I was going to continue our friendship where it left off and I was damned determined not to let that stupid group ruin us! We make plans to get coffee and I tell her I’m free any weekend in October. She just has to pick one. The last thing she said to me was, “I’m sorry! I definitely still want to get together. I’ve just been so busy lately…” I told her I was too and we could pick a different month if it was better for her.
November 1, 2014 rolls around and I share one of her posts to my wall promoting her work. I go to tag her in it and I can’t. (I mean, this was literally in a matter of minutes!) I think this is weird and go to find her facebook page, but it says this “user doesn’t exist”. I literally just saw her post in my newsfeed! I try again and same thing. So, I ask my husband if he can see her and he can… I knew she had deleted and blocked me as a friend. I was so hurt! I asked him to send her a message on my behalf and she blocked him too.
So, in hindsight, I know she wasn’t the friend I had made her out to be. There was a lot of gossiping going on in that group and I guess I wasn’t one of the “popular” girls. My “friend” let six years of friendship be flushed away for nothing. She didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me what I had done wrong to offend her. Didn’t have the gull to be honest with me… and clearly thought nothing of our friendship because she BLOCKED me. Obviously she wants me completely out of her life, permanently.
Knowing all of this, how do I move on? It’s really bothered me and kind of depressed me. Here we are nearing January and I still tear up thinking about what I could have possibly done wrong. How does a person get over this kind of hurt?
I know exactly how you feel. A friend of 7 years blocked and deleted me a day ago without any reason. She was a mother figure to me. We had a age gap but that never was a problem for us. We both were there through good and bad times in our lives. I loved her with all my heart and I trusted her that she would never leave me as in the past I have always been bullied by others, backstabbed, and or left behind. We lived in different states so I can’t go knocking on her door and she changed her number recently but never gave me her new one. I suppose that should of been a clue there. All I have is her address since sent holiday cards every year. My fiance reached out to her to defend me and say please talk to her she is heartbroken and doesn’t understand what happened. She hasn’t replied back to him yet nor me. I just have this feeling of if someone so close to you has died and you feel hopeless. I just wanted to tell you that your not alone and I wish myself how to make this pain go away.
I can understand wanting to keep people from Facebook games at arms’ length, but I’ve had a couple of people whom I’ve subsequently interacted with outside the game, even to the point where they become friends.
As far as defriending is concerned, if someone is just a “friend” through one of those games and you have zero interaction otherwise, no big loss. Shrug and move on. If it’s someone with whom you have an offline relationship, that’s when it’s more upsetting.
I had a roommate who asked me to take down a photo I’d put up after he made a comment on it. I’d deleted the comment, but he said he could still see it on his iPhone. I told him no, then he blocked me. THAT really angered me, and we haven’t communicated much since then.
I don’t use the unfriend button often. But when I do it is always within good reason. I had a frenemy once, who at the time I was trying to decide if It were me with the problem, or if she actually was a frenemy. So I poured my heart out to a friend who was a NEWLY mutual friend to her. About two weeks later my friend who I had been friends with for years tells me that the frenemy admitted that, we were not cool like that and that we were NEVER Friends. So without a blink of an eye I unfriended her. That answered my questioned after all the years I had known her. That she never thought of us as friends. Well guess what we don’t need to be friends on facebook either and you dont need to know anything personal so you can continue to try to one up me and outdo me. So delete and block. And now she wonders why I don’t respond to any thing. Now that she knows nothing about what I do, she can no longer plan similar girlfriend trips, find jobs similar to mine, happen to be at hang out spots, or do the same certain activities. She will only hear it through the grapevine.
After being on FB for a few years, I deleted nearly 200 people from high school that I have no interest in seeing or hearing from in any capacity. If FB never existed I would never have anything to do with them, nor would they with me. In this context, FB serves as nothing other than a nosey neighbor, a gossipmonger, or an annoying boaster only serving their bad habits. I don’t delete people I actually know and like, regardless of whether or not I agree with their political and/or religious posts. Suggesting that people have to “stay” freinds with all these people is absurd. I am so sick of all this phony baloney. Be real, like those you actually like, delete the ones you don’t.
So true.. i had friend requests and when I granted them, ll they did was access my boring page. After the request was granted, they unfriended me. They were part of a fan club that I belonged to and were very clicky. It took me 10 years to decide that it was pointless of me to try and have a good time with the people that I liked and they liked me. The “bad” fruit went out of their way to ruin my convention experience, even to the point of a room mate deleting my travel photos from my camera. Fortuntely I had transferred them to my password protected labtop.
I did unfriend my brother. He refused me twice and I sent a message stating that I wish I had known of his attitude when I spent lots of moen y on his kids. he friended me, but refused to answer my posts or my messages. Even the one that told him his brother had terminal cancer. My youngest brother said he left a message on his answering machine. He didn’t want to leave that kind of message. He asked that he call him back. My brother refused to call his brother who was told he had 6 months at the most with out chemo. My brother did not last 5 months with chemo.
His attitude towards me and the fact that he did not call his brother made me mad. His youngest brother, the baby of the family AND he was the favorite uncle of his kids when they were growing up. I remember him showing the kids how to water slide on on plastic sheet laid on the glass. They all had fun. But I am not surprised. He was OK with his wife kicking me out of the house and saying I was not family. He was OK with his wife delebrating the death of his mother by taking a family photo and changing the name to her name the day our mother passed. he was OK with his wife telling his mother that SHE WAS NOT FAMILY ON CHRISTMAS EVE AND ….TO GO TO HER ROOM!!!!!! This was after my brother and his wife convinced them to sell their place and the downstairs would be turned into an inlaw apartment. It never was done. AND they got thousnds of dollars from the sale to start up a new business for my brother and his wife.
Ignoring our baby brother was the last straw. He made it very clear I was not wanted, even thoug I did congratulate him when his daughter came in the top five for the state contest for Miss USA.
It hurt me to look at his kid’s family photos, knowing that he has several grandchildren and did not tell me.
AND the other thing that hurt, was the phony wedding invitation. I bought a nice dress nd shoes and was looking forward. They even said there were hotel reservations for those who did not want to drive. It was a mean scam. His daughter had been married for years and had several children.
I saw a book years ago about toxic friends. I had never heard of that, but there are family members who fit that.
I think people think of Facebook friends as status. The more you have, the “better” you are. THAT IS RIDICULOUS!!!!
If people ask and I know them I say OK, but they are jsut nosy. None of my 60 plus friends like or say anything to me. They are just nosy AND think that “snubbing” your posts “makes their day”.
They obviously have low self esteem that the only time they feel good about themselves is when they are putting down someone else.
Those who say snubbing/ignoring Facebook is OK ARE people with no respect for themselves.
You should definitely exercise caution – online and off. Hopefully, all he wanted to do was talk dirty. Irene
I accepted a seemingly funny guy as a friend.
After months of chatting- he started talking dirty.
So I blocked him. He knows where I live. Do you think I should
be scared?
Hi,
It sure sounds like your beau’s radically changed directions about wanting you involved in his Facebook life. It’s understandable that it would be baffling to you since he’s given you no explanation. If he is unwilling to discuss it, I think you have question whether this is someone you can continue to trust.
I’m so sorry this happened but go with your gut!
Best,
Irene
Dear Irene,
I had a very strange incident occur recently.
I met a man while on vacation and he asked to friend me after the romance had started. We coniued to see eachother intermittenlty while back home, Nothing serous but we were getting along. he is divorced and lives in New Jersey. With kids and friends and family (23people) on his Facebook page. This includes his ex. in Israel. His picture is of Amy Grant. We recenlty became more intimate and he told me he would have to defriend me because he does not permit gilfriends etc on FB. I did not believe him (stupidly) but that is what he did. I NEVER posted anything inappproriate or indicating a relationship of any sort. I am totally baffled and okay…I see this as a move to shut me out I have told him this and bascially as far as I am concerned its over.
Any thoughts? Anyone.
Thanks
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This topic is so interesting that I’ll probably post about it again!
I have two comments on this post, which really got me thinking, thanks!
I often prune my FB friends, exactly as the first comment noted. I only have people as FB friends if they actually talk to me, whether by liking one of my comments, posting a message occasionally, or sharing their own lives with me. I don’t keep lurkers on my friends list.
Also, I periodically defriend people after friending them, and often feel terrible about it afterwards! However, I do it in the spirit of keeping only true friends (ie, people I like and care about, and who like and care about me) as my FB friends. I will often accept a friend request from a friend of a friend, or perhaps from someone at work whom I’d like to get to know…but if a deal breaker such as those described in this post arise, particularly concerning religion or politics, I have no qualms about defriending them.
I want to be able to log on to FB and see true friends there, not a thousand people whom I barely know or like.
It seems like she blocked you because she had no intention of owning up to her unethical behavior. You’re truly lucky that there’s a healthy distance between you. Sounds like she wasn’t worthy of your friendship, online or off!
Best,
Irene
Great point—many times it isn’t personal but it still may feel like that to the person defriended. Thanks for your post!
Irene
The five listed reasons under the heading “Why does defriending occur?” are great. But one reason – a reason far less personal – didn’t make the list. What if someone simply has a change of heart about Facebook (not about you)?
I know someone who has pruned her friends-list at least three times. Each time, she picks off individuals whom she hasn’t had any contact with in the last year. It’s a preventative measure to (just like real pruning) keep the list from getting overgrown.
It’s nothing personal, nothing against the people being defriended, and is not tied to anything they did. It’s simply a way of keeping the list relevant. It’s a way to keep it limited to those still involved in her life in some way, and eliminate the people who turn out to be completely out of orbit.
On a sidenote, I await the day when spell check acknowledges “defriending” as a word and doesn’t insist on red zig-zagging it. 🙂
A friend of 30 years did some extremely unethical and harmful business dealings with two of my friends — contract fraud, basically.
I tried to talk with her, but she was always busy, didn’t return calls. Then I sent her an email about it, saying I did not understand what she did, and was horrified by her actions.
Instead of responding, she BLOCKED me on Facebook — as if I were some stalker. I’ve never talked negatively about her — I always made excuses for her behavior — and wouldn’t start now, so it was quite a shock.
But the most amazing thing happened — I love it. I love NOT being the friend of this scheming person who thinks nothing of using and harming anyone in her way. I love having zero contact with her. If she ever tried to re-friend me, I’d re-send her that email and maybe add a few paragraphs about other breaches of trust I’ve learned about since I sent it.
My life is so much better without her. I suspect she is trashing me right and left, but I figure those mutual friends are smart — they might figure it out. If not, it’s their loss.
Took me a bit, after the shock — but I truly love that FB has that blocking feature, and that she used that “nuclear option” to end our false friendship. My life is MUCH improved –
I am not referring to the situation in the previous post, that certainly makes sense. A stranger is a stranger. However, I find it interesting that someone would “friend” me but then be annoyed when I post something on their wall or “like” what they like. Why “friend” me if that is the case. Why should I have to monitor interaction to know whether or not my comments and/or friendship is wanted? You can ignore a friend request without hurting anyone’s feelings. What I find even more frustrating is that there is no real communication taking place. Most of the people on your “friend” list are not really your friends. They are old acquaintances who may or may not have moved on with their lives. My best friend from childhood told me that she likes me better in person than on fb. Huh?! I’m the same person. What is she really saying about our friendship? There are things I like about fb (easy email, access to photos, keeping in touch with relatives in Europe), but I don’t know if it adds anything fundamental to my life.
I have FB friended some folks at the request of others to be Farmville “neighbors”. The point of this is to exchange Farmville gifts and be able to level up as you add neigbors. Now mind you, these are people I do not know at all. Yet some are repeatedly commenting on my posts, my personal life and I find it intrusive if not rude. You would think they would know that our relationship is only about this Farmville thing. I am at the point with one woman of de-friending her-I do not know her, I do not like what she says, and it is unpleasant to see her constant “likes” and comments. I think this is a interesting Facebook friend topic to explore. Thanks-great posts.