what do you mean exactly

So how do you know when you can believe what someone says repeatedly? You believe them until they give you reason not to believe them. There are no purity tests in friendship except years of shared experiences. And even then. . . I find in both friendships and relationships the more you obsess over whether things will last, the less likely they are to. Treat time spent with a good friend or a touching email exchange as a treasure you are lucky to experience even if you never hear from them again. Loyalty is certainly a virtue, but when you put loyalty on pedestal (as it seems you might) it becomes awfully hard for people to live up to your expectations. Hold on to your friendships loosely, but lovingly, and you might find you have more success in hanging on to them. Or else maybe you just hang out with a lot of jerks.

I sent an email to this person the other day & it came back "undeliverable". I'm going to stop you right there. That can happen for all kinds of reasons that don't mean that the person who owns the email address has deactivated it. All it means is that the automated process tried to send your mail to their mail server, and the other end couldn't be reached or rejected the email (rather than accepting it for delivery to their mailbox). If their email address is hosted by a big company (gmail or something similar) that's less likely, but certainly possible (could be a problem at your end, or an intermittent outage). I'd wait a couple days, then try to re-send the email, before you decide that the person has closed their account so as never to have to talk to you again.

Apart from the undeliverable mail message, you sound frustrated with the fact that some friends are just not as direct as you are...they don't mean what they say. And I bet you have seen this at school or the workplace as well. I found it a little less painful when I learned more about differences in conversational styles. Deborah Tannen's books (Talking from 9 to 5 and You just don't understand) helped me a bit. Now I don't have the urge to grab every next person who is "indirect" by the collar and give them a piece of my mind. I now know they feel exactly the same way about me and my "directness". It may or may not eliminate the frustration (therapist may help) but it certainly helped reframe things a bit. I have run into people at work who are exactly as described in 9 to 5 and before I read the book, I was just frustrated with interactions with these folks- why the hell can they just not say what they mean??? How hard is that anyway? After reading the book, when I am still frustrated by such interactions, sometimes just telling myself that "oh, this is the idiot Tannen was describing in chapter x" helps.

It takes time. Trust is built as time passes and you learn their real patterns of truthfulness or deceitfulness or politeness-masquerading-as-friendliness.

I think only part of the problem is that people's actions and words genuinely don'talways match up. The other part is how you choose to interpret those actions and words and measure them against your personal behavior/standard. There's abolutely nothing wrong with wanting and expecting reciprocity, but you don't really get to choose how other people do so, only what you are willing to accept. You say you are direct -- do you ever ask your friends why you don't hang out more, and what is their response? Does it satisfy you? I can tell you that feeling like my every action is being measured against some sort of friendship rubric would make me end one.

The "undeliverable" message could mean anything and not necessarily that they were trying to cut you off. If they DID cut you off like by cancelling their email address, then they're just weird, by the way, and being passive aggressive. More generally, I have run into a difference in expectations. For instance, maybe one person thinks friendship means 4 long, intense emails a week, whereas the other person only corresponds more than once a week with their lover or mom or whomever. They aren't being insincere- they just have an different idea of what a friendship looks like. When one person starts taking the other person's difference in expectations and making a story in their heads about what it might mean, hurt feelings ensue: A thinks B hates them, and really B was just busy.

I have a couple friends irl that tell me how much they love me, say how much I mean to them.... Though I hear these things from them, I don't see them very often. ... I hate feeling like I'm bugging someone, I don't know if the long space of not hearing from them for a couple months (after hanging out numerous times that previous month, this following a long period of not seeing each other at all for like 6 months which had been a cycle, I'd send texts now & again to say hi, but the conversation wouldn't go further to initiating getting together), indicates the opposite of all the things they say to me. You know, I have very good friends that I see & interact with quite infrequently*. This doesn't mean that I don't love them. And I'm always happy to hear from them again. Sometimes people just have different ways of approaching friendship & interacting with people; this doesn't mean they don't like you. * I may not email my BEST friends for months, or see them for years (if they live in a different state). But we are still dear friends.

5 months or so emailing a couple times a week (nice to have someone to share these things with) Given that you would like to have someone to talk to about "these things" (whatever they are), and your noticing a pattern of betrayal or abandonment, perhaps you should seek a therapist. We cannot tell you why your friends cut you off. And your friends probably can't be bothered to tell you honestly either, even if they perceive the situation as you do--which they probably do not. Why not call up and make an appointment to talk to a professional? They will be able to listen, ask questions back, and give you real insights into what's going on. And a real therapist won't move their office without telling you.

I find if the person gets to be a bit too clingy and corners me into hanging out with them everyday, it's too much. But that's just me. Everyone is different. I was in the same boat as you are. So, I just started to slowly talk to the ones who offered me genuine support and invited me out. I started making more friends that way. You could try that. I've ended a couple of friendships due to the fact, I didn't feel good around them. One guy was married with kids, was being too flirty with me and the other always pointed out my mistakes. It was unfortunate, because she was a funny girl, accomplished and what not but... too much. Didn't have proper borders and I felt she was using me for favors. Also, some friends have stopped talking to me cause quite simply we've grown apart. It wasn't necessarily that I was doing anything wrong. We just grew apart. I wouldn't know how exactly how you are. But, really, try not to jump to conclusions. You just don't know, until you know.