Ever been ghosted by a friend? Then you might want to read this.

I'm starting this column with a red bus.

Sorry, that was a 'typo' – not a red bus, a rebus.

A rebus is what the Collins Cambridge Oxford Merriam-Webster English Dictionary defines as, 'a puzzle that combines pictures and letters to depict words or phrases.'

Here is my rebus. See if you can guess what it says:

If you guessed, 'Spooking Harry apple'd soup calendar flying-man heart-crack arrow Dumb and Dumber why do we need ears?'... then you have an awesome imagination, but you're wrong.

If you guessed, 'Ghosting Haz cores'd miso March flipping heartache over the years,' then you're right, and you deserve a well done sticker just like this one.

Why am I starting this column with that rebus?

Because ghosting has caused me so much flipping heartache over the years, and I’m not just talking about when it was done by a potential love interest. 

I’ve been a broken record whingeing about how my three younger siblings are all married or married with kids, blah, blah, blah.

But what I’ve not talked about is how every single one of my friends – male and female – also got a serious girlfriend or boyfriend before me, got married before me, and had kids before me.

And when each of these developments occurred, most of them dropped me like a sack of potatoes. 

Aka ghosted me.

The catch-ups stopped, because the phone calls and text messages stopped, because the memory of my existence stopped. 

This stung badly at the time, but left me in good stead when it came to a recent conversation I had with a 'new-ish' female friend who is going through the same thing now.

I'm going to call her Skye (not her real name), and precede her opening quote by relaying that – despite only being in her late-20s – all of Skye's friends are coupling up, marrying or having kids.

"Things have changed big time," she told me. "I don't see them or hear from them at all anymore. It's like they've moved to other side of the world.

"I keep calling and messaging, but they never reply. And I can see they have 'Seen' my messages, but they never message back."

Every one of the occurrences she detailed felt all too familiar to me, particularly the one in which she described a friend who did respond and apologise, but whose "every message since has begun with the word ‘sorry,' to the point where I don’t actually think she's sorry at all."

Skye was annoyed, and had every right to be. But the more she shared, the more it became obvious that annoyance was just the tip of iceberg, and there were many more poignant thoughts and feelings she was dealing with, deep below the surface.

"I keep thinking that all the girls are moving forward in their lives and I'm just standing still. I'm getting left behind, and they're happy to leave me there. I mean, it shouldn't come as surprise. No one who's ever winning something reaches out to the person who's coming last to see how they're going. They might think about it but eventually they realise they shouldn't allow anything to distract them from winning."

She gave the example of her best friend finally messaging her back and the two of them organising a time to catch-up, only for the best friend to cancel an hour before they were supposed to meet.

"I went to all of the effort to reschedule, and we did, but then she cancelled on me again.

"I had something to look forward to, and then 'whoosh,' it was gone – twice. She's my best friend, she didn't give a reason, and I haven't heard from her since."

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief were definitely in play. Maybe not all five, but definitely some, and I felt obliged to help Skye – just as someone had helped me – see that she would, at some point, reach the final stage of acceptance.

Not acceptance her friendship with her best friend, or any of her friends, was over, but that external influences cause our friendships and relationships to strengthen and weaken across the course of our lives, and that that's okay. And that while she may feel friendless, she isn't alone.

"It's important to feel everything you need to feel," I told her. "Feel angry or upset. It's normal and it's allowed. Loneliness sucks, and friendship is definitely a two-way street.

"But occasionally it's important to put ourselves in our friends' shoes, so that we understand it's also very normal for a person's focus to change when responsibilities within their life change. Be that the protection of a new love interest, the heightened love that flows organically after marriage, or the immeasurable demands that arise when a child is born.

"That's not to say those lucky enough to experience these milestones can use them as an excuse to ignore their friends. They're just simple truths that enlighten the rest as to what will be their new normal for a while, so that when the distance between them and us widens, we understand why.

"Funnily enough, while their focus changes, ours, as single people, stays the same – we focus on remaining the bigger person, and being the best person we can be. Not that that's easy.

"I can promise you, at some point, that friend who cancelled on you will fall on hard times and reach out to you, and you'll feel like punishing them by ignoring them. But you won't, because you'll remember you're the bigger person, and the better friend, who's kind heart rises above everything, no matter how many emotional thuds of rejection or cancellation it is hit with."

My words of support helped change her perspective, and subsequently lifted her spirits. But she did have one question.

"Have you ever told a someone they're being a terrible friend?"

The answer to that is yes, and I almost cost myself the friendship because I didn't approach it in the right way, as I told Skye:

"No one responds well to being told they're being an ordinary friend, even if it's delivered in a gentle, sensitive and articulate way.

"Judge whether the relationship is strong enough, whether the person is mature enough, and whether you are emotionally intelligent enough to broach it as an issue. And if you don't have a clear 'yes' on all of these, then it's probably best not to.

"I don't have a short fuse, but I do have a tendency to take things personally. I may have unbreakable confidence I'm not going to take things personally before a conversation like that, but if the friend indignantly responds by saying something to me like, "you always overthink things and always overreact," then it's highly likely I will.

"If I wasn’t being a good brother or friend, then I’d want to be told, so I could change. But, in this case, if I had my time again, I'd have just left it, not confronted that friend, and put all of my energy into supporting somebody else."

It seemed these lessons I'd learnt, and spoke of, resonated with her, and sparked an idea.

"Like you!" She said. "I'll put all of my energy into you. And we can be lonely together."

It was an option I said I was happy to explore as friends. So long as Skye knew – and wasn't disturbed by – what I do to keep myself entertained when my friends aren't texting me back.

"What?" she asked.

"Just a little bit of singing," I responded, without replicating the video below.