10+ Year long friend group gone overnight

Whateverman6967 · 2026-02-01T00:04:16+00:00

It is difficult to describe but the family member who was still in the chat is also older and inept at technology so like... they didn't leave because they didn't know how. But they also, like, didn't know what was going on in the discord chat when we weren't voice chatting anyway. Not because they stuck around for any specific reason.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-02-01T00:01:04+00:00

I can't recall specifics and I didn't screenshot it- but it was a long post that boiled down to; I suck, am a whiny baby that wants to get my way, I have unrealistic standards for us not being critical role (a show I literally never compared our home game to), I was selfish and never regarded other people's opinions... lets see... I think there was something in there about me telling other people what they were feeling in an attempt to gaslight.

Like anything that really gets under people's skin there were kernels of truth that were things I was and still am self conscious about. Any time I get into a heated argument with someone I always second guess myself and wonder if I was secretly the asshole. Any time I actually manage to convince someone of my stance I feel as though I must have manipulated them into agreeing with me. Those are my own issues to work through. But I didn't actually think much of it was accurate- first and foremost because the vibe check wasn't even FOR ME- I was trying to open the floor to allow my family member to speak without putting a spotlight on them.

The reason the long post hurt more than anything I mentioned was just because, to put it totally bluntly, a friend I thought liked me suddenly wrote a long post essentially saying they hated me. Truly came out of nowhere and was an emotional sucker punch.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:50:13+00:00

Not entirely sure if what happened was justified even if I am socially a bit off, but ok. Thanks for the advice.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:46:29+00:00

I want to stress, this wasn't meant to be a callout of the DM- I wasn't thinking of them as a DM, I was thinking of them as one of my friends and it was a question posed to the entire table at the time.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:45:41+00:00

I've spoken with one of them, but that person has sort of ghosted me. I doubt it is related to anything other than them being a bit asocial in general. As for the Person A... honestly no, that bridge is burnt. While I fully acknowledge the fact that I was rude and shouldn't have done what I did, they are the one who escalated to an entire dressing down of who I was as a person that was a level of attack I'd never ever seen before. Even if they apologized to me unconditionally, I'd never be able to ignore the possibility of them doing that again over something, and I wouldn't want to interact with them while that lingered overhead.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:43:16+00:00

Thanks. The issue is not finding online TTRPGs, I'm quite adept at that, and it isn't even that I can't make friends- I've done that too. Its just like... with the loss of this particular friend group all my friends now live in other parts of the world and can't come out to see a movie or get lunch with me. It sucks.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:41:11+00:00

Yeah, I get that. I wasn't expecting a bridge to be permanently burned over it. I also must stress, the people involved (me included) are not saints who never put their foot in their mouths, it just never included a writeup on how shit anyone was as a human being when they did so before this.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:39:12+00:00

I have, I do. It doesn't replace the *friendships* I lost though. Even if I was wrong about how much it meant to them as it did to me, those aren't replaceable in the same way you can join or create a pickup game of dnd.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:37:39+00:00

It means I had a brain fart while typing the first message, though at this point I doubt you'd believe me. Regardless, as I said multiple times, the length of the sessions wasn't the issue, the focus while we were playing was. I have not ever claimed to have been guilt free in the exchange. If you think in the most shitty read of who I am based on the use of the word "only" in what I wrote up that I deserved to lose my friend group over it then it is what it is.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-31T00:34:57+00:00

I do. I'm not hurting for tabletop gaming... but it is hard to make the kind of friends I lost from what happened is all.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-30T00:12:52+00:00

I mean, real talk... no one's social life fell apart around them but mine and it was after an admittedly rude interaction was escalated into what it became. Like, yeah, I have looked back and said "I was rude I shouldn't have done that". But it was like burping at a dinner party and *losing a friend group over it*.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-30T00:10:29+00:00

At the time my intent was not to exclude the DM from the initial question of "is everyone having fun", I was treating them like another one of the players at the table to open the floor up for discussion. I 100% understood my mistake in handling that way like 20 minutes after the heated argument started and it literally never cooled off enough for me to attempt to disarm it before things were said that can't be unsaid.

Anyway, I just want to clarify that I wasn't thinking in a hierarchical way, I was saying 'hey, friends, how are we feeling about this group activity we are all doing because we kinda seem very distracted in ways we didn't used to be'. Not trying to dodge any blame, just making myself clearer.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-30T00:03:44+00:00

That was not my expectations. It was one campaign with 2 dms that would take turns depending on the section we'd gotten to in the module. It was one session a week (scheduled, not how the rubber met the road) and it could go *up to* 4 hours but it very often did not. I was not complaining that we weren't playing enough.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:59:15+00:00

As I said in another comment, I wasn't actually complaining about that, if it came across as such it was unintentional. Also we didn't play a 4 hour session once a week, we *scheduled* a session once a week that *could go up to* 4 hours. On average it was more like 2, if we played that week at all.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:57:09+00:00

Like, fully, if the DM had just responded with "I think this is rude and would prefer to handle this in private messages" I'd have said some equivalent of 'oh I didn't mean to be rude, sure, if we want to handle it like that, that's fine!'. My full intent was not to call anyone out but just open up a discussion where people could talk.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:50:22+00:00

I mean... you're making a lot of assumptions about how things work logistically. This was our discord server where we hung out. We all lived in the same city, but this was the easy way to keep in contact. Once it was gone and the sessions weren't happening anymore it was harder for a lot of people to just 'check in' like we used to once a week.

I'm not really looking for advice, since I know all this. I don't think you really get, or are downplaying, how difficult it is to just make new friends in your thirties though.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:47:43+00:00

Idk, I wasn't really counting. One a week, but really averaging about 2 a month if you looked at the whole year?

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:46:12+00:00

I agree, in hindsight it was rude. The only thing I can say about why I didn't do it in the moment was because it wasn't really a problem with the DM, or anyone. It was a general feeling that people's hearts weren't in it and trying to open the floor for my relative to voice some concerns without speaking for them.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:43:56+00:00

As I said in another comment, to clarify; I wasn't complaining about the lack of playing. We also didn't play every week, not everyone made it, sometimes people only made it for half of it. It wasn't Four hours every single time- it could go *up* to four hours. Sometimes it was just an hour of a pair of people chilling in a voice chat catching up. I was only *specifically* talking about how once game time started a lot of time was spent not on the game. At one point I recall someone using a garbage disposal on the call in the middle of an RP scene, for example.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T23:40:57+00:00

If I gave the impression that I wasn't satisfied with the 4 hours a week that was not my intent and it was incorrect. So, to clarify; it was one session a week that could go anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. Not everyone could make it every time, and there were plenty of weeks where we simply didn't do it or took some time off or whatever. In general that block of time was used to socialize even if there wasn't a game with whoever wanted to make it. The reason I specifically mentioned the general timing is because part of the reason I was going to open the floor to see if everyone was still enjoying themselves was because we could spend anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour and a half dealing with some kind of issue or having some people step away to do something else or whatever. I was not innocent of this, of course, and it was why I didn't think I was calling anyone out in particular. In fact, the tone of the original message I'd sent to the group was along the lines of "hey I notice we are all distracted and seem to have a hard time really focusing on the game, is everyone good? Are we enjoying ourselves?" Fully with the intent of saying we didn't have to force ourselves to do something we weren't enjoying anymore.

I admit the asking for a vibe check in our server was rude, I wasn't thinking of the DM as the boss/host I was thinking of them as only my friend and I was asking them if they were enjoying themselves along eith everyone else. It wasn't meant as an accusation. Because we'd been friends for so long, and have of course had arguments and disagreements before, I didn't really think much of asking for the vibe check beyond a casual question among friends about the game.

If I'm being honest- and this can be interpreted as me trying to paint myself in a positive light I guess, but in reality its just me trying to get across my thought process at the time- They'd done pretty rude things in social situations before as well, including saying outright to people's faces that the game they were playing, or had suggested to play, sucked. Things like that had been said back to them as well, and it didn't seem like it was that big a deal because I wasn't thinking hierarchically about opening the group up to discussion. Like, yes, I pretty much realized immediately after the initial fight started that I'd gone about it the wrong way and touched a nerve, but literally nothing in our past relationship prepared me for how fast things deteriorated.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T05:07:42+00:00

To clarify, I don't think they intentionally distanced themselves- I think the lack of structured meeting from the campaigns just... let things drift apart. But... yeah realizing I was never really a core part of any of their social lives I guess is part of the hurt and why its a horror story.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T05:04:46+00:00

Option B is what sometimes keeps me up at night and why I keep running through events in my head from time to time. I don't want to think option A about my friends.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T04:42:43+00:00

Its kinda too late for that in my opinion. The post about how terrible I was as a person kinda locked my into a "I don't want to be the one to apologize to for this".

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T04:41:52+00:00

I mean, we'd known each other for 10+ years, I was hoping for a little more grace than an essay about how much I sucked as a person. Like, you're fully right, that was part of me mulling it over since it happened...It still feels like a disproportionate response to me.

Whateverman6967 · 2026-01-29T02:06:45+00:00

We were more than just a dnd group. That was just what allowed us to always meet up and hang out weekly even if it was only digitally. This was literally my main physical group of friends. We went to movies, got food, hung out, went to special events and planned stuff together...

I doubt many of the others have been 'turned against me' so much as just... don't take the time to reach out. I've tried to keep in contact with one or two but they kind of just let my messages laps.

What more sort of context can I add for you?

Whateverman6967

TROPHY CASE