It took five months of back-and-forth messages and making plans, only for her to cancel at the last minute for the eighth time, for the penny to finally drop. When she axed our plans to get-together due to a “gym injury” the morning we were supposed to meet, I sent a message of concern, joking that we would manage to conquer our diaries eventually.

I waited for a response. And waited, and waited. My finger hovered over our WhatsApp chat so many times as I wondered whether I should send just one more message, or even muster up the courage to make a phone call. Perhaps it was unfriendly not to, I argued with myself. But the longer I waited, the more I realised how tired I was of chasing down a plan that was never going to happen. Two years later, I’m still waiting for a response – though to be honest, I know it will never come.

At the time, I felt foolish, like a child trying to make someone hang out with me in the playground. I vacillated between anger at the way I had been treated, sadness at losing someone I genuinely cared about, and shame – the kind of hot-around-the-ears humiliation that comes with social rejection. When I told another friend about what had happened, she nodded sagely and told me I’d been “phased out”. It sounded, to me, like a kinder way of describing ghosting.

My story may sound familiar to anyone who has experienced the gruesome merry-go-round that is the modern dating scene, where apps are abundant, swipes are never-ending and ghosting is rife. According to one study, a huge 85% of dating app users have been given the silent treatment by a romantic partner – whether in the early stages of talking, after one or two dates, or even a couple of months. I’ve been ghosted several times in the past by dates and, after sending the odd follow-up message, I’ve eventually moved on. So why was this particular vanishing act so protracted? Why did it take me nearly half a year to realise that I was being ghosted? Because it wasn’t a love interest I was gradually losing – but a friend.

I’m not the only one to experience this. A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships shows that 39% of people have been ghosted by a friend – and that the experience can hit even harder than being stonewalled by a romantic partner. There is a deep sense of shame that accompanies friendship ghosting, likely stemming from the mythology that friends are for life (even though research suggests that people lose about half of the friends in their social network every seven years). This state of flux is only exacerbated by the so-called ‘splinter era’, which can kick in towards your late 20s and sometimes sees friends choosing different life trajectories in terms of getting married, starting families or buying homes.

We naturally gravitate towards those with whom we have the most in common – and when friends head in different directions, the chasm between their new lifestyles is sometimes too much to bridge. “I used to be great friends with a girl from school, but we’ve mostly gone our separate ways now because we’re in such different stages of life,” says Frida, 31. “She’s married with two children and has moved to the suburbs, whereas I’m single and working all hours at my job in London. We do meet up occasionally (when she can find childcare, which often falls through) but it doesn’t feel like we have anything in common anymore.”

“I would have called time on this relationship if it was with a man”: the reality of being ghosted by a friend