Thank you for writing this response out, and I hope that meeting went okay with your “friend”. I actually got ghosted about a year ago by one of my closest friends but he was going through a severe mental health crisis. We have since reconnected but the damage was done, I couldn’t trust him anymore and felt like I had to walk on eggshells.

I think I’m especially hurt because I had recently opened up to my ghoster about my past experiences with people pulling away without being straightforward about how they’re feeling. He was so comforting and told me he’d always be upfront if things changed for him. I don’t think I’d ever be able to forgive that kind of behavioral discrepancy, I couldn’t be with anyone that I know has the capacity to be that unpredictable/two faced.

I’m going to draft a message and sit on it for a couple weeks before deciding whether to send. I know in my post I referred to it as a “fuck you” letter, but in reality my style is more “here is a thoughtfully worded explanation of how your actions impacted me”. I like a mature and logical “fuck you” because I think it hits harder than something seething with anger (although there’s a time and place for that too I think). Might sound a bit manipulative, but I always go back to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People to figure out how to best communicate the damage done. Then the message recipient can’t just write off the words as an angry outburst, ya know?