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When you’re a kid, but especially in your teens and early adulthood, your friends can feel like the most important people in your lives. They’re the ones that you want to spend your free time with, that you want to go on vacation and even sometimes spend the holidays with. They’re the first people you call when something important happens, and they’re the ones that help console (and distract) you when things go wrong too. They’re fundamental to your development as an adult, and going through life events together can bond you for life.

But as you get older, it’s likely that these friendships will get a little less intense to make way for other things in your life. Whether that’s career progression, a relationship, kids, or other projects, it’s normal that we end up spending a little less time with our friends as our lives go on. Why? Well because time is limited and our focus can be spread quite thin, and as the same is happening to your friends you naturally have less time to spend on shared activities.

Does that mean that you love your friends any less? No, of course not. Does it mean that you have to make efforts to actually spend time together? Absolutely.

The guy in this story is going through this transition, and it’s a bumpy one to say the least. And it’s being made even worse by his and his friends seeming inability to communicate about their feelings.

Read on to find out what happened here.

AITA for guilt tripping my friends?

I have a group of friends who I regularly play friendslop games (usually Lethal Company, Repo, and recently Mecca Chameleon) but we haven’t played together in over a month at this point.

I work long hours Monday through Friday, sometimes eleven hour shifts, but whenever I’m available on the weekends or if I get off early I go out of my way to let them know and see if we can play something.

As of last month, every time I ask I’m either met with silence, a maybe, or a yes (and when I ask what time do we want to play, there’s no response and we end up not playing.)

Let’s see what happened when he actually managed to get one of his buddies to play.

Last week when I asked I was met with a yes from one of my friends, lets call him Phillip. He said we could play. I suggested if we could get on within an hour. No response.

Deciding not to wait on them when no one said anything after the hour passed, I played another multiplayer game with randoms.

Nearly five hours later I see another message from the group chat from, lets call him Zack. “Are you getting on?” This was at nearly 11pm at night, and usually by that point we’re wrapping up for the night.

And no one said we were getting on at that time so I had no idea, otherwise I would have made myself available at the time. This annoyed me, but I kept my frustration in check.

So he decided to try again the next day.

The next day I asked if we could play something. This was at 2pm. By 6pm no response so I typed in the chat “Guess not.”

Almost three hours later, Phillip responds with “yes. A new game, but its only four players.” I didn’t see it till about thirty minutes later because I was busy doing something else.

When I saw the message I hopped on and saw no one was in voice chat, so I asked if they were in a different chat and was met with, “nah. No one else on. So we changed it to tomorrow.”

Read on to find out what happened next.

Admittedly I was a tad frustrated with this as I had spent the last two days asking to play something only to be denied after a month of being ignored and feeling like my friends had been poor with communicating to me so I was a tad passive agressive with my response.

I said “Well I’m not free tomorrow. So that’s cool.”

About thirty minutes later Zack responded with “you know what’s not cool? Guilt tripping.”

I said nothing in response to this because I was very mad to be met with this kind of response after feeling like my friends had negelected me for the last month. I know if I responded I would have said some very hurtful things.

Now, he’s feeling all kinds of things.

I don’t think I’m the ******* here.

My response was admittedly abrasive. If this was a once or twice sort of incident I wouldn’t have responded negatively, but this has been going on for a month without any sort of explanation or apology.

But I’m willing to listen to the masses. So was I wrong for leaving a passive aggressive message after being frustrated with my friends lack of communication for the last month?

AITA?

It’s really hard when the folk you’re used to spending all your time with (even if that’s online) grow up and get their own lives, as you are following your own path too.

It can feel like a strange transition for sure, but what this guy needs to realise is that his own long working hours are an obstacle to him, just as his friends’ commitments are to them.

Maybe everyone feels bad about it, or maybe some are just growing out of playing the games altogether, but it’s clear that some of them aren’t invested any more.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought that his ‘friends’ were a waste of his energy.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a friend group that’s split when one roommate backs out of their dream apartment.

While others thought they were treating him poorly.

Meanwhile, this Redditor gave them the benefit of the doubt.

The truth is, they’re all adults now and there’s a whole bunch of things that could be occupying his friends’ time. Outside of their jobs, which must take up a lot of working hours, they could be spending time with partners, raising kids, renovating their homes, caring for ageing parents, or even simply engaging in other hobbies or just chores in their valuable evening time. It’s not necessarily a slight on him or a sign they don’t care about him any more – but it certainly is a sign that if he wants to play more frequently, he should find others to play with.

And perhaps his friends are feeling guilty about the spread of their priorities and that’s why he was accused of guilt tripping them. But communication is the way forward here. Do they all want to play together still? If so, perhaps the best way to organise this these days is to book a slot in advance – maybe even a weekend slot weeks in advance – that they can all put in their calendars, the same way that you would book one another’s time in order to have a nice meal out with friends. Because time is precious as an adult, and they need to allocate it wisely.