i (17f) recently ended my friendship with a girl i’ll call N (19f). we’ve been friends for about 2.5 years, and while i do appreciate everything she’s done for me, i’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with how we communicate.
for context, i’m autistic and have ADHD, so i tend to be very direct with my questions and i prefer clear answers. N’s first language isn’t english, and i completely understand that communicating in a second language can be difficult. i don’t expect her to have perfect grammar or understand every single thing immediately.
the problem is that she frequently misunderstands what i’m asking, responds to something completely different, or seems to only register certain words in my messages instead of the actual meaning. this has happened so many times that it eventually became exhausting.
here are some examples:
#1:
we were talking about college applications, and i said:
“but if i get rejected im going to my safety school, then i’ll transfer to my dream school”
she responded:
“That’s so early they rejected u”
i was genuinely annoyed because i explicitly said IF. i was talking about a hypothetical situation, not saying i had already gotten rejected.
i understand that english isn’t her first language, but the word “if” completely changes the meaning of the sentence.
#2:
i was asking about her plans because i wanted to figure out whether we’d be able to see each other after graduation.
i asked whether she’d be in our state during summer break, where her parents lived, whether she could drive, and whether she planned to stay in her dorm during winter break.
when i asked:
“so will you stay in your dorm for the entirety of winter break?”
she responded:
“No I might go to [another state] toooo. It’s ok don’t stress out yourself it’s early”
the first part answered my question, but i was confused by the reassurance because i wasn’t asking her to calm me down. i was trying to figure out the logistics of potentially seeing each other.
i understand she might’ve thought i was worried about our future plans, but i was mainly looking for practical information.
#3:
this one was especially frustrating.
i was working on a story and asked N if she could share a difficult experience from her life. i told her she didn’t have to go into extreme detail.
she mentioned being stressed about homework and projects because she wanted to watch kdramas instead.
i asked:
“was this junior year?”
she said:
“Was good but I was sleepy every classes. The teacher gave us a lot of homework”
i clarified:
“ok but was this junior year after you moved here?”
she responded:
“I was ten I came this school”
i asked what she meant, and she clarified that she came to [high school] in tenth grade.
so i asked whether she moved there halfway through tenth grade.
she responded:
“Was good just hard to talk with people. i didn’t like to talk”
i tried again:
“ok yes but my question im asking you right now is: did this happen when you were a junior at [high school]?”
she said:
“Yeah I was but still I have to do a lot of projects”
eventually i asked:
“tell me the month and year you moved to this county”
she responded:
“When I came here I was in this county”
at this point i was genuinely getting frustrated
because i was asking WHEN she moved, not WHERE.
i tried clarifying her timeline again, and hours later she just said:
“forgot it long story”
i understand that she might’ve gotten tired of the conversation, but i had been asking the same straightforward questions repeatedly and still couldn’t get a clear answer.
#4:
this is one of the biggest reasons i became frustrated.
for context, we have a mutual friend i’ll call P.
at prom, P experienced a frightening medical episode and nearly fainted. N witnessed it and was extremely emotionally affected. she was crying intensely and was extremely affected by it and seemed really scared for P.
later, P went to a cardiologist and finally received an explanation for what most likely caused the episode.
P sent a message to our group chat saying:
“Hi guys i had a cardiologist appointment today and i found out the likely reason for my episode at prom. I have low blood pressure and pre syncope.”
she then explained what presyncope was, how it caused her symptoms, and how heat and crowded environments could make her low blood pressure worse.
N responded:
“Same here I went to cardiology and he gave me heart monitor for 3 weeks”
i was confused because P was explaining what caused her medical emergency, but N seemed to focus on the fact that they had both visited a cardiologist.
so i clarified:
“P was basically saying what caused the medical emergency at prom”
N responded:
“oh”
i initially thought maybe she just misunderstood the message.
however, later on, i brought this up during a conversation about our communication problems.
i explained in detail that P’s low blood pressure and presyncope were likely involved in what happened at prom. i also explained that heat and crowded places could worsen her symptoms.
i specifically told N that i thought knowing the explanation might bring her some relief, considering how scared she’d been during the emergency.
N responded:
“I didn’t mean to misunderstand and I’m sorry”
then i explicitly asked:
“yeah, the main thing i wanted you to get from the P example is that we finally know what most likely caused what happened at prom. so now that we know about the low blood pressure and presyncope and how heat affects her, does what happened at prom make more sense now?”
N responded:
“Yes I understand thank you”
so naturally, i assumed she understood.
but later, P directly asked her:
“Did you know my health diagnosis was vasovagal presyncope”
N responded:
“no”
P said:
“ohh ok, a little frustrated by that”
and N replied:
“most of the time i dont read the chat or im out”
this was especially frustrating because between me and P, we had explained the diagnosis approximately four times.
and N had previously told me:
“I will try harder to read your messages more clearly”
i understand that medical terminology can be difficult, especially in a second language, but we’d explained it repeatedly, and she had explicitly confirmed that she understood.
P was also frustrated because this concerned her own health and a frightening experience that N had personally witnessed.
#5:
another thing that contributed to my decision was that i started having trouble trusting N whenever she told me she wasn’t upset.
for context, my mom has this belief that when someone says “i’m fine” or “i’m not mad,” they aren’t necessarily telling the truth. sometimes people say those things just to be polite or avoid conflict.
i started associating N with my mom because i noticed certain similarities in their values, social expectations, and communication styles.
there was one situation where me and another friend, W, wanted some privacy. afterward, N seemed quieter than usual, even around other people.
i started wondering whether we’d upset her. when i asked N if she was mad, she said she wasn’t.
but for some reason, i had a really hard time believing her.
i kept wondering whether she was actually upset but didn’t want to admit it. and the thing is, i didn’t have any concrete evidence that she was lying.
i later discussed this with my therapist, who pointed out that i might’ve been projecting my mom’s worldview onto N.
basically, because i associated N with my mom, i was interpreting her responses through the same lens.
so when N told me she wasn’t upset, i automatically became suspicious that she might’ve been hiding her actual feelings.
i also noticed that i didn’t have this same level of distrust toward all my other friends. it was particularly strong with N.
i understand that this wasn’t necessarily fair to her, and i recognize that this was something i needed to work on myself.
but at the same time, i was becoming increasingly exhausted by the friendship.
not only was i frustrated by our repeated misunderstandings, but i was also constantly questioning whether she was being honest about her feelings.
i would overanalyze her behavior, wonder whether she was secretly upset, and feel the need to ask for reassurance.
i didn’t want to keep getting stuck in this endless rumination loop where i was constantly questioning whether my friend was actually telling me the truth.
and i also didn’t want to keep putting N in a position where she had to repeatedly reassure me that she wasn’t upset.
my therapist ultimately suggested that our friendship might simply be incompatible.
not because either of us was necessarily a bad person, but because our communication styles and expectations were different enough that the friendship had become increasingly difficult to maintain.
i genuinely appreciated everything she’d done for me, but i also didn’t want to keep spending so much mental energy trying to figure out what she actually meant or felt.
i felt like ending the friendship was better than continuing to frustrate each other and getting stuck in the same cycle over and over again.
#6:
another thing that really bothered me about N was how unpredictable she felt to me.
i often had trouble figuring out whether she was genuinely okay with something or secretly upset.
sometimes i felt like she would hide her actual feelings to avoid conflict, even when i explicitly encouraged her to be honest and not sugarcoat anything.
to be clear, i don’t actually know whether she was hiding her feelings. that’s just how i perceived her behavior, and it made me anxious.
there was one incident where me and my friend W wanted to talk privately in the cafeteria, so N left to give us some space.
W was freaking out and immediately started worrying that she might’ve felt excluded, so he made me go after her and asked if everything was okay.
she reassured me that she genuinely wanted us to talk privately.
but then she said something along the lines of:
“i mean it’s only 2 weeks left and i’ll leave so like idrc”
at first, i didn’t think too much about it. but later, i started overanalyzing what she meant.
i wondered whether she was basically saying that she didn’t care about our friendship anymore because she was leaving soon. and that possibility genuinely scared me.
i started wondering whether she’d already emotionally checked out of our friendship but wasn’t telling me.
however, i eventually realized that i didn’t actually have evidence that she’d checked out.
it seemed more likely that she’d worded her reassurance poorly and meant that she wasn’t bothered by us wanting privacy, especially since she was leaving soon anyway.
but the entire situation made me realize how much anxiety i was experiencing in this friendship.
i felt like i was constantly trying to decode her words because sometimes the way she phrased things sounded completely different from what she apparently intended.
and because i already struggled with trusting her reassurances, ambiguous statements like that would send me into a rumination loop.
i know that my anxiety and tendency to overanalyze are things i need to work on myself.
but i also felt like our communication styles were so different that even ordinary interactions could become stressful.
#7:
this is what ultimately made me decide to end the friendship.
i have a very specific interest in a pre-prom assembly that happened the previous school year. i’m autistic, and this event became one of my special interests. i know it might seem unusual to some people, but it’s something i genuinely care about and enjoy discussing.
i was particularly curious about people’s emotional reactions during the assembly, especially whether anyone cried.
i had been asking different people about it because i was basically conducting an informal survey.
when i asked other people, some of them were confused and asked me why i wanted to know. i simply told them it was for a survey, and they responded with something like “oh okay” and moved on.
they didn’t necessarily understand why i was interested, but they also didn’t make a big deal out of it.
however, N responded differently.
she told me:
“I feel that’s a little bit weird because that’s was last year I think u should let it go”
this genuinely hurt me.
the thing is, i had actually been worried that N would eventually say something like this.
based on what i’d observed about her personality and how she approached certain social situations, i had a feeling she might find my continued interest socially weird or think i should’ve moved on by now.
but i really hoped she wouldn’t.
i wanted to believe that even if she didn’t understand my interest, she would at least respect that it mattered to me.
so when she actually said those words, it felt like the exact thing i’d been afraid of had finally happened.
it basically shattered the hope i’d been holding onto that she wouldn’t judge me for something i deeply cared about.
what especially bothered me was her reasoning.
she didn’t just say she was confused about why i was asking. she explicitly said she thought it was weird because the assembly happened last year, and then suggested that i should let it go.
i interpreted that as:
“it’s socially weird that you’re still thinking about something from last year. you should move on already.”
and that’s what hurt.
i wasn’t asking her to share my special interest. i wasn’t expecting her to understand why the assembly meant so much to me. i wasn’t even asking her to have an emotional reaction to it.
i was literally just asking a question for my survey.
other people who didn’t understand my interest simply asked why i was asking, accepted my explanation, and moved on.
N, on the other hand, went beyond asking for clarification and made a judgment about whether i should still be interested in the event.
to me, that felt unnecessary.
i also want to clarify that i wasn’t upset simply because she found my interest unusual. i understand that not everyone will relate to my interests, especially when they’re very specific.
what hurt was that she went from finding it unusual to telling me i should stop focusing on it.
later, when she explained herself to our mutual friend P, she said she thought i might’ve been emotionally struggling with the assembly because i kept asking about it.
she claimed she was worried about me and was only trying to help.
i understand that this might’ve genuinely been her intention. but from my perspective, her original wording sounded more like she was judging how socially unusual my interest was, especially because she specifically mentioned that the event happened last year.
and even if she was concerned, i wish she’d asked me whether the event was upsetting me instead of immediately suggesting that i move on.
the reason this became the final straw wasn’t just this one comment.
it was the fact that i’d already spent 2.5 years dealing with repeated misunderstandings, and now something i deeply cared about was being treated as something i should let go of.
i had already been feeling increasingly incompatible with her, but this was the moment when i realized i didn’t want to continue the friendship.
i don’t think she necessarily intended to hurt me, but i also don’t think good intentions automatically make a comment harmless.
#8:
this connects to the final straw i mentioned earlier.
before N actually told me to move on from the pre-prom assembly, i’d already been worried that she might eventually react that way.
i even imagined a hypothetical scenario where me, N, and W were hanging out in my basement.
in this imaginary scenario, i started crying because i was emotionally moved by the assembly, and W started crying too.
then N came back downstairs, and i imagined her telling me to move on because the assembly had happened so long ago.
in my imagination, i became extremely upset and asked her something like:
“do you even care?”
i want to emphasize that this scenario never actually happened.
it was something i imagined because i was already worried about how N might respond to my interest.
i think part of me was anticipating that she’d eventually find my continued fascination with the assembly weird. and that’s why her actual comment hurt so much.
when she eventually said:
“I feel that’s a little bit weird because that’s was last year I think u should let it go”
it felt like the exact reaction i’d been afraid of had finally happened.
i know that imagining a negative interaction doesn’t mean someone will actually behave that way.
but in this case, her actual words were very similar to what i’d feared she might say.
and that made the comment particularly upsetting.
#9:
there were also some smaller issues that contributed to my frustration.
for example, N was sometimes late to our hangouts.
me, P, and W all found this annoying because we preferred people to arrive around the agreed time.
i understand that people have different expectations around punctuality, and cultural norms can sometimes influence those expectations. however, i don’t want to assume that her lateness was necessarily because of her cultural background.
regardless of the reason, it was another area where our expectations didn’t always match.
another issue was that N was frequently unavailable on weekends because she had work.
i completely understand that having a job isn’t something she should be blamed for.
but because she was often busy, me, P, and W would sometimes make plans without her.
i was also disappointed that she couldn’t attend my birthday celebration.
and i was worried about whether she’d be able to attend my graduation.
for context, N attends a college approximately 1.5 hours away from where i live.
she doesn’t drive, and her family lives in another state.
so attending my graduation would probably involve complicated transportation arrangements and potentially an expensive rideshare.
i also thought she might travel to visit her family around that time.
i know these circumstances aren’t necessarily within her control, and i don’t think she should be expected to spend a huge amount of money just to attend my graduation.
but emotionally, i was still disappointed by the possibility that she wouldn’t be there.
this contributed to my realization that maintaining our friendship after high school might become increasingly difficult.
between our different schedules, the distance, the transportation issues, and our communication problems, i was starting to question whether the friendship was sustainable.
looking back, i don’t think there was one single reason i ended the friendship. it was a combination of things. the repeated misunderstandings made me feel like i constantly had to explain myself. the situation surrounding P’s medical diagnosis made me frustrated because something important had been explained multiple times, yet N still didn’t seem to understand or remember it. the ambiguous wording made me anxious because i would start wondering whether she was secretly upset or emotionally distancing herself. and the comment about my special interest hurt because i felt like she was judging me for continuing to care about something meaningful.
i also recognize that some of my anxiety came from my own tendency to overanalyze and project my mom’s worldview onto N. that’s something i discussed with my therapist, and i understand that N wasn’t responsible for managing all of my anxiety. but i also didn’t want to continue a friendship where i felt constantly frustrated, confused, and uncertain. i know N wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt me.
i genuinely believe she cared about me, and i appreciate the support she gave me during difficult periods of my life. but i know that you can care about someone and still want to end things between them. i didn’t want to keep resenting her for things she might not have been able to change easily, and i didn’t want to keep putting myself through the same cycle of misunderstandings and rumination. so i decided to end the friendship.
AITA for ending this friendship because of all these accumulated frustrations even tho i know some of the problems weren’t entirely her fault?