This person's friend is starting to become a bit distant.

Hi!

It sure is worrying when someone that you have been constantly contacting every day begins to change in the ways that you've mentioned. However, you don't have to be worried that they don't want to be friends with you anymore or hate you.

There are some factors why they began to respond less or leave your texts on read. You've mentioned one of them; something might be happening on their end. Something might be going on through their lives at the moment and they might be overwhelmed with whatever that is at the moment. They might have chosen to refrain from replying to your texts to avoid from snapping at you or replying to your texts half-heartedly.

It's the same thing that I would do if something is stressing me out. The only texts or chats that I would reply are the ones that are urgent. When I'm stressed out, I get annoyed easily and that tends to influence the way I text as well so to avoid myself from hurting people, I reply texts when I'm back to normal.

Leaving texts on read is something that my friends and I do to each other from time to time but it's not because we don't want to be friends anymore, but it tends to happen when we're busy. We opened the text to read it and then something else came up, forcing us to abandon the text and sooner or later, we forgot that the text even exists.

What I think you should do for now is to leave some room for them to breathe. You can drop a text telling them that if there's something going on, you're there for them and you'd leave some time alone for them to deal if they want. And in a few more days or next week, you can hit them up again and ask if everything is going fine.

However, if they still ignore you after some time, don't be disheartened. As much as it hurts, some of our relationships are not just destined to last. If that ever happens, you can try asking them the reason behind everything but if you never get a straight reply, it sucks but you'd have to slowly move on.

I hope you're staying safe during this pandemic.

Wishing you luck,

The Advice Column Team