Approaching past friends

[Cazza]

I drifted away from a close friend I had from primary school because we went to different high schools. We used to hang out in early high school but by the end of high school we hadn't seen and spoken in over a year.

I had been busy with study then it dawned on me I should really hang out with then. I gave them a call and said It's been over a year from last time we spoken. Been busy with school blah blah blah. We should hang out soon. If they were a good friend they will say yes.

 

[Joccaren]

A few times.
One friend I saw on the bus after 6 years of being out of contact, and we basically just got off at his stop, went over to his house and played some Wii games whilst I tried to help him work around his firewall issues on the PC.
Another friend invited me to her birthday after a couple of years from the point where I quit the job we both worked at. Apparently I'm still one of her 3 favourite people in the world, so not so awkward there.
The only awkward 'reunion' I've had is with another friend from that same work who used to talk with me a lot, but running into her at a couple of parties and on the bus now chooses to mostly ignore me, so I do the same.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I thought this was going to be one of those "haven't seen them in years and live hundreds of miles" away deals. You see this person in school? Just say hello, ask how they're doing etc. Might be nothing clicks again and you've lost nothing, but if you don't you'll never know and you'll probably regret that, maybe not much but it'll probably niggle at you like it's doing now. Once you leave school you'll probably never see them again so you might as well give it a go.

Well, I do see her at school all the time, it's just...we haven't said a word to each other in two years. I'm not even kidding. We just kind of...stopped talking to each other. It might be an embarrassment for both of us if I just suddenly and randomly said "Hi" to her for the first time in ages, as we're just passing each other in the hallway, and I wouldn't be surprised if she just pretended to not hear me. Not that she has anything against me (I don't think, at least), but, like I said, we're both shy people.

Well, if you don't even acknowledge each other when you see each other, it doesn't sound like you were the closest of friends to begin with.

I have this one friend, who I've known for over a decade now, who I've hung out with on and off throughout. Right now, we're super close again since all my other friends went off to their individual universities, but it's never like we forgot about each other's existence. During one of the gaps where we wouldn't hang out, we'd always stop if we passed in the street and catch up for a couple of minutes. Maybe that's just what happens with bestest buds, but whatever.

Though there is this girl I used to talk to, and a couple of years ago we had fallen out and stopped talking to each other. I don't really want to be good friends again, but at least say hi if we ran into each other. I've thought about going up and telling her we should stop ignoring each other, but I'm pretty sure she still hates me.

I'm not entirely sure where I was going with that, but basically just strike up a conversation with this person and hope for the best. If it's massively awkward and stays that way even after several long chats, I'd give up and move on.

Well, we were really close friends. We'd been friends for, like, three years, and always went to the park together, and tell each other secrets. Sometimes I blame myself for us drifting apart, because of the fact that I stopped sitting next to them on the bus, and months beforehand, I'd told her twice after a few arguments that she was oversensitive (which was remarkably hypocritical of me to say). Sounds pretty silly, but I tend to do that to myself.

The reason we don't say a word to each other anymore is because...it's just that we're both quite shy people. Another friend that I've kind of drifted away from still says hi to me and I say hi back, but that's because she's more confident than the other girl.

Okay, I actually wasn't going to post anything about this because my experiences with reconnecting with old
friends have been radically different from the situation you described, but now that you say this....
Find a time when you can walk up to her and ask for a moment of her time. Take that moment, and tell her
that you have been re-examining your life/past lately and you feel that calling her oversensitive was very
hypocritical of you (be sure to phrase this in such a way that she understands you blame only yourself).
If she accepts your apology, then start acknowledging her when you see her, and look for an opportunity
to strike up a conversation. Even if she doesn't accept the apology, you will have *given* the apology,
which is definitely the right thing to do. Apologies are free, I don't know why people are so stingy with
them.

Hmm?maybe. I?m not even sure if I did apologize to her about those comments before we drifted away from each other, and she might not even remember it, but?I might try it. I?m definitely not stinging about it; I just don?t like awkward conversations like that. Even people that I?m sort of acquainted with but not quite friends with yet, I tend to refrain from saying ?Hi? to them until they say it to me first. I?m just socially awkward like that; have been since I was about 13.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Well, I do see her at school all the time, it's just...we haven't said a word to each other in two years. I'm not even kidding. We just kind of...stopped talking to each other. It might be an embarrassment for both of us if I just suddenly and randomly said "Hi" to her for the first time in ages, as we're just passing each other in the hallway, and I wouldn't be surprised if she just pretended to not hear me. Not that she has anything against me (I don't think, at least), but, like I said, we're both shy people.

Why would that be an embarrassment? And even if it was, will your heart fail? Will she commit suicide out of shame? Will you be mocked forever by your peers for having said "Hi" to someone? No.
I meant purposefully go up to her and say Hi, not say something as you walk past each other. If she walks off then at least you'll know you tried. It's not as if this is someone you don't know. Stop trying to talk yourself out of it and do it.

 

[Kae]

I've never done it, I tend to not keep friends around, but someone did it to me, when I moved back to this town around January an old friend started visiting me because my mother told her I was in town, it was kind of annoying at first and I really wanted her just to leave me alone but in the end it was kinda nice it's not so lonely anymore -_-' though now when I think about how I was in 2011 seems very sad, I mean I even didn't talk to anyone even on the Internet[footnote]Mostly because I didn't have any...[/footnote] during that year.

But anyway try it, she may not appreciate at first, maybe even be annoyed at you but if it works it'll probably be worth it.

 

[Angie7F]

I have tried a few times because I have a serious tendency to drift away from friends.
facebook has definitely been useful, and unless you had some kind of fallout people are surprisingly receptive.
I think the awkwardness comes from both sides, and someone has to break the ice

 

[Patrick Buck]

Yeah, I tried it about a month ago, it turned out really well. We hadn't talked for about 5-4 years, but now we're chatting again every now and then, and we're good friends again. It doesn't help that we live about 20 miles away from one another, and neither of us can drive, but we're managing.

 

[eatenbyagrue]

I tried once, and it seemed to work for a while, but it wasn't going to last: I'd changed a lot in the intervening 6 months, and found my old high school friends unbearable to be around. That, plus they did something that pissed me off enough to completely cut all ties to them.

 

[Bat Vader]

No, I have not tried to approach past friends. My family moved about six times when I was a kid that I have no idea where any of them are or what they are doing. My friend from middle school did contact me on Facebook but I didn't accept his friend request. Mainly because I was getting ready to shut down my Face Book account.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Well, I do see her at school all the time, it's just...we haven't said a word to each other in two years. I'm not even kidding. We just kind of...stopped talking to each other. It might be an embarrassment for both of us if I just suddenly and randomly said "Hi" to her for the first time in ages, as we're just passing each other in the hallway, and I wouldn't be surprised if she just pretended to not hear me. Not that she has anything against me (I don't think, at least), but, like I said, we're both shy people.

Why would that be an embarrassment? And even if it was, will your heart fail? Will she commit suicide out of shame? Will you be mocked forever by your peers for having said "Hi" to someone? No.
I meant purposefully go up to her and say Hi, not say something as you walk past each other. If she walks off then at least you'll know you tried. It's not as if this is someone you don't know. Stop trying to talk yourself out of it and do it.

Because...well, I'm not even sure I actually want to, or care anymore. It's not that a big deal. It's just sometimes, when I get deep into thoughts about myself and my life (which happens a lot of the time), she occasionally crops up. But I don't know what it is, I just get really nervous over even the smallest and simplest of things.

 

[CleverCover]

I still have all but one of my friends from high school as friends in college. The perks of living in a city filled with nearby colleges. I have no idea how to approach the last one though, but if someone does come up with an idea I'd like to know. It would be nice to have someone to geek out about videogames other than LOL with.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I don't go anywhere or do anything, and I'm far from my high school as of right now. SO I've never had the misfortune.

 

[hurfdurp]

I've done this with two different distant friends and one was a failure and one was more successful. I've been warned to not expect too much, or to assume it will instantly be the way it had previously been. The way you remember people is not necessarily how they are, especially if some time has passed. The friend I reconnected with, it turns out was just too afraid to get in touch with me, despite wanting to, so I don't think it will hurt to try.

 

[The_Waspman]

Nope, burn all my bridges behind me. That way, I'm always moving forward.

The way I look at it, everything is finite. Friendships included. You may spend time with a person, or a group of people, and for a while (could be weeks, months, years) you're lives will be on the same track. But sooner or later there will come a point when your lives will diverge, to the point when you don't realisitically have anything in common anymore.

This happened to me recently. Most of the people that I know have started families, and nothing kills your social life quite like having kids. I'm never going to have kids. I don't like kids. I don't want to talk about kids. And I particularly don't want spend time with kids.

So you just move on. Never look back. Don't have regrets, because everything is finite.

 

[Mr Fixit]

I'm actually getting together with an old friend sometime this week, I have not seen her in years & she just found me online a couple of days ago. Could be quite awkward seeing her again, we kinda have a half assed romantic relationship going on.

 

[Dethenger]

I've lost a lot of friends over the years, but it was more like me pruning a tree than losing a friend, because to be perfectly honest I've only ever lost contact with people I could no longer stand to be around. There's only one example in my life of a person who I grew away from that I bear no ill will or resentment towards, and how exactly it happened is beyond me. I moved to a different elementary school, and when we met back up in middle school, we were just... different. Incompatible.
That lack of common ground kept us at bay, and eventually I guess we both just went our separate ways. It kind of sucked at first, and I used to dwell on it a lot, but I've been doing that less and less. I guess it's kind of like having a hat on so long you forget you have it on.