Friends Are Ignoring Him

Dear Papabear,

I have a question, but I'm not sure what to think about it, I live in a small town in the mountains, and my friends live in a large city, now, they are only an hours drive away from me, which isn't that bad, a two hour drive to visit friends sounds like a good thing. But lately I’ve started to notice things aren't the same anymore. We used to hang out all the time, every weekend and have some fun, sometimes I would stay the whole weekend too. 

A little info on my friends, both of them are fairly new to the furry fandom so I helped them out a little bit, introducing them to sites like FA and even Second Life cause I knew there were more furs online and they could make more friends, I thought that was good for them. But now they are both online most of the time talking to these friends in other states more then me, and I never see them anymore. When I do they are both on their computers in their house. I want to say they are roommates as well.

It got even worse after they both got their fursuits (I don't have one) and now they go out of their way to drive for hours to go to a party or pick someone they met online up for some fun. I am starting to feel a little neglected now.

I guess my question is, what should I do, am I being paranoid about my friends, should I be happy they are getting so many new friends, or should I just kiss this friendship good bye? 

Sam

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Hi, Sam,

It was nice of you to introduce your friends to aspects of the fandom, such as the online communities out there. Papabear suspects that what has happened here is that your friends got caught up in SecondLife, fursuiting, and all that stuff. I know from experience that when you first discover these things you go, “Oh, WOW! Cool!” and you get really excited about them and they can take hold of your life. When I first found out about SL, I was totally carried away by it. I would wake up in the morning at 4am just so I could go on it for a few hours before work. I could be a bear there and party in furry communities, and for a while it was really awesome. After about a year of that, though, the novelty wore off a bit and I returned to the real world.

Same thing with the fursuits. I’m sure they were both very excited to have them and have gotten carried away. My bear instinct tells me they don’t mean to snub you. They have simply gotten self-involved by all this new, fun furry stuff and you have slipped their minds. This is not to excuse their behavior, which is selfish and rude, but neither do I think you should immediately drop them as friends.

Papabear suspects they do not realize how insensitive they are being to you. Have you talked to them about this? You don’t say that you have, so that would be the first thing to do: tell them you feel a bit ignored and you want to be included more in what they are doing. You don’t have to own a fursuit, for example, to accompany them on their furry outings.

Don’t give up on them yet. First, try and snap them out of their furry coma and wake up to the fact they have an IRL friend right there in the same room with them.

Good luck!

Papabear