Unfriended

This time last year (give or take a few weeks) I was unfriended by someone on social media. 

I've been unfriended before, but it's been by distant acquaintances who disagreed with either something I said, or the company I kept (on social media). No big deal. 

This time was different. A person from distant past had got in contact. Tentative greetings turned into social media connections and an ongoing dialogue. The one thing I asked was that they were open and honest with me.

We rediscovered shared memories and shared common interests. It got intense, with multiple messages every day. Like this advert only without ever meeting.

And then, like the advert, it went from one extreme to the other. And when someone drops out of contact, you want to check they are ok..... especially where you know someone has been through difficult times in the past. I got monosyllabic responses. Now if someone is having a tough time, I get it. They don't want to spend time explaining it to all and sundry. All this person had to say was "I need some time"; but they didn't. 

A few exchanges later, they unfriended me on social media - which seemed like an over-reaction and kind of dumb given I also had their email address. But hey, they were sending a message - I heard it loud and clear (though I confess I made my opinion clear before I left them to it).

Since then, on and off, it's bugged me - what happened before what happened happened ? Was there some kind of trigger for this volte face ? Was it something I needed to learn from ?

And it's taken til now for the penny to finally drop (hey I'm slow sometimes).

It wasn't about the sudden change from hot to cold and how they handled that (badly). This person had *lied* - repeatedly, consistently and about multiple things. And despite being connected in social media, they seemed to forget that I could see all the other things they were posting. Over time those lies became more and more exposed.

I shouldn't be fretting about whether I did anything to cause them to step away..... I should just be thankful they did so. I don't need liars in my life.

Postscript: 

Since posting this I realised it's 10 years since the Lying Cheating Toerag went his merry way (and I found out he was a lying cheating toerag). Talking to someone today the usual point came up - how can you trust after that ? And yet I did, at least for a short while, let myself be taken in by another liar. I think it is fair to say that when you are feeling fairly bad about yourself, life etc then even if logic says the nice things they say are just words with no basis in fact, it is like a short term "fix" to the way you feel. No different to comfort eating, which is a vicious circle - the blatant flattery is like the sugar-high you get from a doughnut. You know it's bad for you, but for a brief moment it feels 

good. I guess I need to get better at saying no to doughnuts.