Tell me about the friendships you didn't want to end

The only one I truly wish I could've kept was someone who was too healed for me (younger me back then). She was incredibly self-aware, and great at boundaries. She was so gentle she never made me feel rejected when she set boundaries. She even dated my ex and I was truly happy for them. I've had my fair share of friendships that ended, but most of them were unhealthy for one reason or another. She's the only one that was a good friend from the ones I lost.

There's also my bff in college, who after 6 years vanished and we never heard of her again. That one was... Weird.

When I was 9 I had a friend that I would fight and hang out constantly. We were both middle children in broken families but we kinda clicked and understood each other. The summer after 5th grade graduation he,his mother, and little sister died in a car accident. I didn’t learn about it until the first day of 6th grade. He was the only person that understood me at all. It was a weird feeling when I was younger and I never feel like I truly processed it completely. At the time school was my escape from home life so it was definitely difficult to go to school for a while. I think the hardest part was my family had no reaction at all, which confused the hell out of me.

Unfortunately I am the reason why all my friendships ended. I wish I was better to people and could be better towards them.

Usually it all starts with someone disappointing me. No fault to them since I rarely disclose my personal preferences. Once they do something directly/indirectly to me that I don’t like I will cut them off hard. Trust may be my issue since I never trust or let people in. I’m scared they will see the person I am hiding from. Everything I do externally is fake and mostly to appease societal norms.

In the past, when I was younger, I was also seen as a shit talker. I always shared my opinions of how others behaved. Never faulted them until they directly did something to me. I always found loose groups to integrate with but never stayed long since I learned from my younger days that I am a horrible person.

At this point I feel that I should stay away from others since I mostly am trouble. I have nothing of value to offer anyone. I just want things to end as quickly as possible in this life. It’s hard being worthless.

Aw man. I'm still grieving some lost friendships.

I had one friend I'll call her Sarah. She was the first friend I made after moving to a new city after I graduated. I met her at an event, she worked front desk and she had moved from LA. She had blonde hair and ocean blue eyes. I fell in love with her the moment she walked down the stairs.

I asked her out. She said yes. But after we went on two dates. She wanted to be friends. She was the nicest most genuine fun person I've ever known in my life who accepted me as I was. With all my ugliness.

We were best friends, we would go to cafes. Smoke weed. Read books. Lay on the lawn. Went to events together. I loved her deeply truly as a person. I didn't even care that she didn't like me *like that*. She was just too much for me. She was too bright and not traumatized lol

But oh so accepting. The last time I saw her she dropped me off at the airport, we had a great conversation up until we got to the airport as well.

But she ghosted me after that and never heard from her again. I think my healing at the time and the person I had been was not fair to her. And it looked scary from the outside. So she left. I still think about what could have been.

I've never found someone so beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside.

I had a childhood friend of 23 years recently send me a short text telling me he appreciated our long friendship but he was no longer interested in being my friend or in my life anymore. Blocked me on everything immediately after. We were friends since kidnergarten, went through some traumas together, and always kept in touch and hung out whenever we could. We camped together last year. We texted earlier that same day memes to each other and laughed. We were both healing and growing in a lot of ways, and then out of the blue he just decided to cut me out.

I never replied to his text. I know myself enough to know I don't want someone in my life who could so callously drop me like I was some job applicant and not a friend of 23 years. I also know the times spent together doesn't guarantee a friendship but damn at least let me know you're okay or give me a call! It was so unexpected and it tiggered a lot of abandonment memories. Adds to the feeling that no matter what, people are bound to leave so why do I keep growing roots with them? Also goes to show you never truly know another person :(.

My childhood best friend finally got back in touch with me after almost 10 years.

To be fair, I am the one who avoided her for that long because she really hurt me.

At 14 she pretended to be a guy from our school and hit on me online and I found out and never really got over it. Later she moved schools and I didn't see or hear from her for a long time.

We finally got back in touch almost ten years later when Covid happened and locked everyone away. I learned she had kids; had many mental hospital stays and her life was basically super rough after middle school. I eventually planned on meeting up with her somewhere and starting our friendship over again.

Unfortunately, she got diagnosed with Covid and died in the hospital a few months later.

I cried like a baby when I found out.

It was just a misunderstanding of emotions for me. Started having feelings for a friend, and I didn’t quite know what to do. I thought it was best to let him know - to figure out if feelings were mutual, but to let him know I was fine being a friend. But, it all went sideways real quick.

The friendship ended horribly. And, all I can do know is learn from it.

I had a friend from kindergerten and elementary school until the university. She got her first boyfriend at the 1st semester of uni and basically dumped me. She was never available for meeting with each other and eventually we had agreed to take a class together and she backed-off and took another class, I lost it, confronted her on chat that we never meet with each other and she’s not paying attention to me. In the meantime my mother got sick and even when other people told her that I’m in big trouble she never reavhed out to me. It was brutal, I definietly needed more than a year to get over but eventually I did. I have lost other friends on the way but now I take it more easily.

It was really hard to get her out of my life as we lived on the same street, studied in the same university and I knew her from forever. But in reality, she was not a good friend. It was also pissing me off that she got married with the guy almost on the same day when my mother died a few years ago. But I never miss her now and she had helped me also to realise what I don’t want in a friend.

I am sorry for what you are going through and for a while it will be bad but in a matter io few years it will be just a 2 sentence story in your life, trust me

Damn. I didn’t think getting ghosted hurt me this much until I read this post.

I’ll make it short. He was one of the few people that fully believed me about my trauma, all of it, and we spent many long hours on Discord studying together, watching movies, playing games. Then he developed feelings for me while I was in a relationship and felt it was best to ghost me because I didn’t see him that way. Although to be honest, I did have a lot of platonic love for him. I miss him so much and I never cried thinking about him until now. I will never hear from him again and it kills me. It's been four years.

It's hard for me to even talk about them, but this is a great post topic.

It's so sad, isn't it? So much loss on top of loss, stacking up and going as far back as I can see.

I want to say a lot more but the words are kind of hiding right now.

I made a really close friend a few years ago. She was there when shit got really hard then when things were getting better she told me how hard it was to be my friend and up and left.

She was going through a divorce and had her own crap to deal with, but I took it incredibly hard. She was cutting out other people too, I just didn’t think it would be me.

Her pride and ego drove most of her decisions; I believe her pride and ego made it impossible for us to reconcile. Once you were out with her you were out.

I’ve learned from this experience how important it is to have friends that do want to have the hard conversations. I don’t want every little conflict to have the potential to blow up a relationship.

Now how to find those people… idk other than trial and error which leaves me in the danger zone for getting hurt/left.

I dunno how to believe in friendships anymore either.

I sabotaged the most wholesome friendship I had. She was new at my school and had many traits of autism, and we bonded instantly. I loved being with her but I was told by my father that none of the teens my age wanted to be my friends. So when I passed to next year and she didn't bc of fer learning difficulties, I stopped talking to her. She had told me that she didn't try to be friends with people unless they talked to her, but I still took this as a sign she didn't like me.

Now I'm 22 and living in a different state, and diagnosed with ASD. I wonder what would've happened if I stayed in touch with her

I had one really good friend in undergrad. She understood me so well. We supported each other during rough times. We had so many fun memories together. It was the perfect friendship. After we graduated I tried to keep in contact but she ended up ghosting me for many months. That hurt like hell. When she finally responded it felt weird, and I knew I had to put up some boundaries so it wouldn’t happen again. I won’t put effort into the friendship unless she does, and so far she hasn’t. I still miss her a lot.

I loved him. He didn’t love me. My love persists in waves of the most intense grief. I heard he went to Venice with the boy he chose over me. We no longer speak.

Sometimes, I find myself speaking Spanish with his unique accent, although now I live in a different country. Somehow, I am still alive, and sometimes even happy.

Last year I had to cut ties with a friend who was diagnosed with bipolar and believes she doesn’t have it. I don’t know whether she does or not. I must say, she’s been one of the few people I could relate to on a level I haven’t been able to before.

Anyway, she’d push everyone she met and befriended away somehow. In practice it seemed like great boundaries, but considering it isolated her, I don’t think she was able to control the compulsion and would dress it up with psychology to justify it. She was very clingy, and couldn’t accept that I wanted to spend time more time with my partner than with her. Expressing jealousy for my partner, as she knew my level of care in my relationship was unrequited.

The dealbreaker was that she would bombard me with long messages of serious and intense emotional severity, oversharing and overwhelming me, despite me making it clear that I’d prefer that she ask before doing so.

When we’d talk, she’d tone her emotional needs down and make space for me. She could be very supportive and honestly a great friend. Although, she sometimes admitted she felt like that behaviour wasn’t coming from a genuine place.

I do believe she struggled with emotional self-regulation and had some concerning habits of finding broken men to fix. She was obsessed and had very complicated “friendships” with these men, sometimes in relationships, and called it limerence. Her neuroticism really surpassed her self-awareness in other areas of life too, and I didn’t want to deal with the aftermath.

I’m not a therapist so hearing about the same issues over and over again, was really draining. I felt incredibly stressed thinking about having to tend emotionally to her knowing that she wouldn’t hold herself accountable. I didn’t want her to feel like she was “too much,” but honestly, she was. I feel bad, but had to prioritise my mental health.

And the year before, I cut ties with another friend who developed an entire relationship/mentorship with a nuclear family member behind my back. She’d share details about me and our friendship with them, while omitting her relationship with them completely to me. I felt she used me to get to them. She was honestly a decent friend, so the betrayal and boundary violations were super shocking.

I fucking loved this guy, he was a great friend (I thought) and then this girl came in between us and it shattered my illusion. Still miss him tho.

I’ve only had a few really good friends in my life, one being a lovely girl who was a genuine friend, almost every other friend I’ve had has bullied me, backhanded compliments, exclusion, etc Not her, I was included in everything, her home, her family, her sleep overs, I was allowed to play with any toy I liked, she wasn’t possessive. Then my city had a really bad earthquake, the place was a mess and my school particularly was one of the worst and most traumatic outcomes of the quake, and then she left, to a new country with her family to avoid the constant aftermath of a disaster and I haven’t seen her in about 15 years

I see she’s doing so well now, so well, she’s beautiful and happy, she has a lovely relationship and great friends, her life is so sunny and beautiful, mine is cloudy and pain ridden, so we probably would have grown apart anyways, but I’m happy she’s doing well, she deserves it.

i have quite a few. im just not healed enough to maintain healthy friendships right now. however, i still feel incredibly guilty over one friend.

i loved him like a brother. his family loved me and made me feel like their own. he was there for me when my ex (his best friend) cheated on me. however, eventually, he got a girlfriend and started to distance himself. it was early in their relationship so they didn't tell anyone, but i noticed he was pulling away. i didn't understand why because i was completely unaware that he was seeing anyone. i thought he was leaving me like everyone else did, and i was young. i was in high school. i didn't know what to do. i didn't know how to keep him from leaving, so i did the only thing i could think of and offered to hook up. i was hyper-sexual from trauma and thought that sex might make him want to stay friends with me, at least. but i was wrong.

needless to say, his girlfriend made him stop hanging around me altogether because she saw the text. a few weeks later, i found out they were dating and it all made sense. but it still hurt so bad. i had no way to explain that i didn't actually want to hook up with him— i just didnt want to LOSE him... but that sounds like a total cop out. i dont blame her.

it killed me though. it felt like a slap in the face. i had already lost my biological brother and my biological family because of custody issues and toxic relationships, but then, i was kicked out of my found family because i wasn't actually family. i was just a friend. and love comes before friendship, especially if the girlfriend is uncomfortable with you.

i dont blame her, but damn, it hurt. it still does.

Nobody worth keeping in my life. I started in a shitty place with people who either chose to grow out of the shittyness or grow into it. Those who grew are still around. Anyone else can still fuck off

Imagine this. I am a gay girl, I have always had very intense friendships with women where I basically treat them better than most men have treated them (basically date them without them realizing that’s the title) I am fresh in college. I’m discovering who I am and my new people and group of people. I was adopted by the loud table and quickly became close with all of them. Our island of misfit toys was the best part of my days and getting close to let’s call her Darla. Darla is a spitfire of a woman who is loud and funny and sunshine. She is my ideal woman. The sound of her voice and laugh just brought me so much joy. Our time line starts in 2017 and ends in 2022 with an update for 2024.

So through 2017-2021 her and I are texting daily, always spending time and being emotional support and present for the other. Some say best friends but others know that level of “I am here for you” where you picture living with them and living a little cute life together. Her and I planned that as well which is ironic.

She starts dating this guy and right away I can smell it on him that he’s just with her for the stability. (I was right about that but I digress) I also was dating this person that wasn’t good for me and through circumstances we all four decide to live together. What a mess. Her and I are fighting which has never happened before. So much triangulation and fighting. He would keep us all awake by picking fights and I stood up for her on many occasions and I got told to stay out of it.

It broke my heart to tell her that I was losing her and that he was destroying her; it broke my soul to have him corner me and tell me yet again to stay out of it. I came home one night from work to have him and her both try and tell me that my partner was the problem. And while I am leaving out a lot of filler and context, my ex was playing a part, but I also could read the room and situation and I chose them and leaving the house over staying in the mess.

I miss her though I miss her and who she was before she met him. They later got married and have a child and I’ve tried reaching back out and being close but she doesn’t even have time to exist without it being about him or their child. It’s her choice to be in that and have that lifestyle but it hurts my heart to KNOW (from her also saying it) that she isn’t happy…

Oh boy. I’m more than overqualified to comment on this post because I ruminate about my ex-friends from high school constantly. For background context: I dropped out of high school in 10th grade and had already lost majority of my contacts at that point. Because of my social anxiety and avoidance I never got to make new friends irl so since then so I’ve been stuck with 1 friend who isn’t actually my friend anymore. The rest of my friends now are long distance since I met them online and I consider them actual friends and good people.

Now that that’s out of the way: To say I miss my old friends from high school is an understatement, but it’s their fault we’re not friends anymore.

One of them I realized awhile back is extremely messed up and ticks off all the traits of a covert nar cissist. She love bombed me into thinking she was a great friend only for her to turn on me and emotionally abused me. It was gradual but at the same time felt sudden. It’s hard to explain, but anyone who’s dealt with a covert n knows what I mean. The emotional abuse got to a tipping point when she physically assaulted me because she got butthurt over a joke I made about her. She then went on a smear campaign against me and tried to turn people I knew against me. I stopped being friends with her after that, but she’s made various attempts to contact me on social media since then. Every time she succeeded she always acted holier than thou and passive aggressive at the same time. The last time I messaged her I basically just told her she was a huge weirdo and to get over whatever her issue with me is. I blocked her after that. Despite all this hatred and nasty attitude she’s had towards me, I still miss her or maybe just the memories of when I thought she was my friend.

But the one ex-friend I miss even more was my other best friend at the time who was also friends with the previous girl I mentioned. This one blocked me one day when summer break came because she didn’t wanna pay me this money she owed me for an old phone I had sold her. She only had half of it left to pay and it was supposed to have been paid this one day that we were gonna hang out downtown. When the day came, I tried to message her to confirm the details, but that’s when I realized I couldn’t find her profile on my messenger app. I looked her up and she wasn’t showing up. So at that point I realized what had happened. I didn’t hear from her ever again until fall of 2020 which was 6 years later.

I received a message from a mutual connection of ours asking if I still remembered “that girl” because our mutual friend was hanging out with her at that moment and “that girl” was wondering if she could come visit me at my house. This completely caught me off guard. I was so happy and excited because I had been lonely for so long. So intially I agreed, but then I canceled because they said some other person I didn’t know was coming along and that made me uncomfortable. After that, our mutual friend said they were gonna go on vacation and that they would try to visit me again some other time but without the extra person.

Since then nothing official has happened. Since I never heard back from “that girl” I ended up friend requesting her 2 months later on FB. She accepted. She never messaged me so I messaged her wanting to see what was up. We had a very light surface level interaction and she said that we should catch up one day and I said yes. That has not happened. She only interacted with me a couple of times after that including messaging me laughing at a funny memory I had shared on my fb story. The message only said “lol she was such a hater” in reference to a story I recalled from school. I only replied with a short answer.

Since then she has not made any attempts to message me to talk or to set up a date to catch up. It’s been 3 years since I added her on fb. She watches my fb stories all the time but never messages me.

I know that most likely doesn’t mean anything (or maybe it does idk) but I just wonder why the fuck she had to try to come back into my life all these years later. I always wonder what she wanted. She’s the reason we stopped being friends and then all of the sudden just wanted to come back like nothing happened. She has not apologized or even acknowledged what happened btw. That’s what hurts me the most. It really fucking sucks because if she hadn’t done that we would either still be friends now or we would’ve become friends again. I’ve been so lonely and isolated for the past 10 years it’s completely destroyed my mental health and it’s been so hard to try to “reform” myself back into society now that I’m trying to get my life together.

I wonder if she even feels bad for what she did (I don’t think so but I still wonder). Everything is so confusing. I don’t know what the fuck she wanted me for after 6 years no contact. And then the fact that she was too much of a pussy that she couldn’t even message me herself that she tried to get our mutual friend to set the meet up. And then watches my stories now like a stalker and doesn’t even message me at all.

I know that technically part of this is my fault. I should just remove her from FB but it’s so fucking painful. I’m too traumatized now to let people go because so many people have abandoned me.

Fuck I really wish I had never met her.

The final tie-in in all this is that it’s so hard for me to let go of this considering my situation. I don’t have any friends nearby to meet up with so I feel lonely majority of the time it’s so tempting to not message that girl and ask her to hang out.

My first and oldest" best friend", Matt. We grew up together until he moved when I was 14. My dad always had a crush on his mom Martha but she never gave him a chance there. She occasionally would hint at the possibility of something if My dad lent her money. ( Which he did). My dad would occasionally pay her for babysitting. Matt's dad abandoned them, leaving Martha to move back to her very racist and old school Catholic parents with a mixed child and unmarried at that.. She ended up homeschooling Matt, but had a drinking problem.

We hung out at his place, playing video games and Legos.

The friendship was complicated by our parents religious and political differences, and thier arguments over money, and our own issues. For three years I wasn't allowed to see him because my dad was mad at Martha. Eventually they reconciled but then another argument happened and Martha reported my family to CPS when the hot water got turned off, and she let us use her bathroom.

Matt and I are friends on Facebook but he doesn't respond to my messages.

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Adam: Met in college, at a church group ( in my deeply religious days). He was the only other person on the retreat willing to hike 4 miles to see an old lighthouse ruin. We became close friends. Then he changed. He discovered a sexuality I couldn't agree with, then converted to Islam for a while and ended up getting STDs from his hookups. Then he ended up coming out to our church group. Then we ended up on opposite sides of the 2016 election and ultimatums were said. Then one day I realized that I didn't even recognize who he had become. And I cut him off because I couldn't handle the inner confusion of the whole situation and keep myself together to handle my classwork.

I’ve gained and lost friends throughout my life. Most I don’t miss since they were abusive (I didn’t know at the time I was stuck in fawn and ignored red flags). The two I miss the most I’ve lost in the last three years, so it might be recency bias lol.

One was a friend I had as kids but fell out in high school, then reconnected when covid hit. I developed feelings for them but they have NPD and I was still so early in my healing that I wasn’t equipped to handle boundaries yet, and the manipulation/gaslighting was too much at the time. I grieved that friendship but will always care about them, so I might reach out again in a few years once I’m better able to set boundaries.

The second friend was my closest friend I ever had. We had been friends for over 27 years. But they had lots of trauma that they hadn’t dealt with and they let that cloud their judgement/opinions on things. They fell down a youtube/reddit black hole of homophobia+transphobia+islamophobia which was completely against my own values (I’m against hating others for how they were born or their religious beliefs). It reached a boiling point not long after I came out as bi, and we got into a huge fight, never spoke since. It took months of grieving, but I’m at a point where I’m doing ok without them.

In middle school I became friends with this girl who was a fun person to be around. She never judged me (unlike most people that age) and was probably one of the only people I had conversations with. She asked me one time if my parents could meet her parents so we could hang out. I never did tell my parents this bc my dad worked 2 jobs and my mom doesn’t speak English. I guess in my mind I didn’t want to be disappointed when they said they were busy.

Despite that we still talked until highschool came around. She made new friends and we stopped talking. She even got a boyfriend. I was deeply saddened for a while that she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. Probably one of the worst heartaches of my life. It took me a while to get over it, I just recently blocked her off tiktok which was my last connection with her. I finally don’t care anymore (I’m 21 now btw so it took me 6 years) but you know her loss. Atleast that’s what I tell myself

It's so funny that you bring this up. There are friendships that have ended that when looking back, so ashamed and saddened that it ended, in reality, I really wanted them to end. Somehow convinced myself that "they rejected me". but hated the whole thing, saw all the ways it wasnt' working , but never in my life have I ever had the courage to end anything, I usually wait until something is crashing in all around me, I never "choose" , bad things just "happen". Then I feel bad, sorry , it's my fault, I"m a bad person, when the whole time i was miserable. It's shocking to me, that I don't know myself, what I need, what's working for me, and thinking i have to just settle for anything, have to agency, or choice. So bizarre.

On the other hand I have had friendships that ended, and there was nothing I could do about it, I didn't' want them to end, I was ashamed. It was when I was really struggling before therapy, waaaay, before therapy. I try to forgive myself, but it still haunts me.

Alcohol ruined my relationships with the people who actually cared about me. The ones who didn't, are the ones who supported my drinking. I've been sober for 7 months now, they're all still gone, and my heart is still broken.

I lost the love of my life a few years ago and don’t know if I’ll ever get over her. We were great friends at first and then whenever she found someone else she would start ignoring me and only hanging out with them. Then whenever they didn’t work out she’d come back to me and I’d take her back like an idiot because I loved her. I wanted her to start putting in the same effort into our friendship as she did with her other friends and apparently that was asking for too much. I tried to communicate my feelings and it ended up ruining the friendship.

It was all my fault, I should’ve just shut up and took the scraps that I was thrown, just like I was always taught growing up. I realized I can’t force someone to care about you as much as you care about them and that genuinely fucking hurts. She was the first person I’d ever let get close to me in my life and she pinky swore she would stay and she didn’t. That just reminded me why I don’t allow people in my circle and made it impossible for me to make friends or connect with others.

This is a really thoughtful post and I want to share. My childhood best friend of 16 years ended our friendship when we were 26 and didn't invite me to her wedding. I was devastated. She had been SA'd and not told me for 9mos and basically felt like she needed to rewrite her whole identity to cope. She did and she stuck with it. She did apologize and we tried to reconcile years later, but she ultimately didn't want to be close.

Then I had a mother figure/best friend for about 12 years. I was her housekeeper and nannied her girls. They were like my family. But I didn't realize how dysfunctional they were, I was very codependent with her. She ended our friendship when I supported her 19yo daughter in terminating an unplanned pregnancy. She was young, scared, and basically my little sister, of course I was going to have her back. We never recovered.

Then I had a male best friend of 3 years (a gay man) whom was on a healing path like me and I felt we were really self-aware and supportive of one another and held ourselves accountable to have a good relationship with each other. He ended this suddenly, via a text message, and we never had a conversation about it. I was heartbroken.

Then I had a friend I had rekindled a friendship with after we had both actively worked on our codependency separately for a couple years. I really loved and trusted her, and she also ended things suddenly, via text, and then moved to another country. That really messed me up, too.

I'm at peace with the relationships I've ended, but the ones where the other person ended things suddenly made a really big mark on me. :/ my last romantic relationship was a close friend, too. He also ended things via text. It's hard not to feel like something must be fundamentally wrong with me if the people I love and trust most would all do that. None of them had a face to face conversation with me.

It’s the incredibly deep friendships that we thought would last forever that hurt the most when they end. My best friend and I don’t talk anymore. Things aren’t what they used to be and I hate it and blame myself for it, even tho it’s not really my fault. It’s weird how we went from planning our dream weddings together and talking about how we’d invite each other and how we’d tell each other everything and how we were inseparable, to now, well, a dead relationship. Like a flower that died, idk. I honestly don’t know what changed between her and I, I can’t pin point what it was that made everything change, but it’s something that just happened over time. We stopped talking as much (well, she stopped wanting to go out and talk as much) we started drifting apart, and now, well, we don’t talk. Like you, when my mental health was at its worst, I needed her, I needed her support, not her dismissive attitude towards my mental health. “Stop overreacting, stop being such a baby! I’ll never understand how your parents can even deal with you.” I won’t forget when she told me that cuz that hurt a lot. I always thought she’d be there for me, and she always said she would, but then she wasn’t. And she was the opposite of supportive when I needed her. Like you, some days I think it’s better that she left, other days, I miss her so much. It brings out these intense emotions of betrayal and abandonment that are really difficult for me to deal with. I’ll be happy and enjoying something one moment, then see something that reminds me of her or simply will think about the memories we had and just get really sad and start crying. Like you, I wonder if I just wasn’t good enough for her, but I know that’s not true. For some time there, we were each others best friends. It just sucks that after being friends for so long, we don’t have a relationship anymore and that hurts and the feelings associated with that get so overwhelming sometimes. All in all, I totally get what you mean. I wish you the best and please take care!

I had a friend I had made in middle school into high school. Only real friend I’ve ever had, I dont think he ever understood me, no one did, but he liked hanging out with me. We had the same sense of humor and his group of friends sort of became mine by proxy. I was completely socially inept and he was an actual normal person, without him my school years would have been a lot lonelier. I was so thoroughly weird that no one else really wanted to be associated with me. And people did razz on him for hanging with me, I think he just found me kind of funny to have around.

He went to college, I came out and we never spoke again. Its like I never existed. I guessed it was unavoidable but Im still grieving over the loss. Ten years later I still find myself coming up with jokes to tell him or things to share with him.

I’m a totally different person now but I still can’t make friends. This time not for lack of ability, I can talk to or charm almost anyone, I just don’t trust and I can’t get the idea out of my head that I will always be the most expendable. It doesnt help that because of who/what I am, I literally am. I know I ought to look to other queer people for community but its hard to relate because my experience of being queer is radically different to most.

I've only had one ended friendship that I regret.

Long story short is that Friend (who I was very close with) set me up to move in with their close friend. Like a month at most after I moved in, Friend expressed issues with Roomie. It was ugly and they were going back and forth for months. There were several points where Friend tried to use me to access Roomie (calling me and asking about Roomie's whereabouts, bringing up arguments with Roomie when they were over to see me). The whole thing was crazy exhausting and uncomfortable.

Friend and I texted a bit to try to resolve some things on our end, but I unfortunately dropped the ball and stopped responding. Tbh I didn't see how we could continue spending time together while Roomie and I lived together, just because of how friggin awful the fight was between them. I was worried about violating Roomie's feelings of safety, and worried that spending time with me was going to trigger Friend badly since I lived with Roomie.

I still don't really know what the disagreement was about, only have my guesses. I may reach out with well-wishes once I no longer live with Roomie, but am expecting understandably that Friend will not be interested. I just hope they're happy and have a safe group of people around them.

I tought I had a best friend for the last 12 years, but when he met someone he decided the best way to deal with me was to ignore me and hope I went away. Now he can say I was the problem.

We talked about everything. Literally everything. We had no secrets, one of the best things in our relationship was that we could be honest with eachother. And it was great until he met "the love of his life" and couldn't bring himself to talk to me about it and tell me. Because, apparently, he was afraid I'll make a scene and also he didn't want to hurt me. Spoiler alert, I was making a scene because I realized something was wrong and he wouldn't talk to me and I tought I did something wrong and I was panicking. Excatly the same way I did ONCE before, when he also didn't tell me something rather important. He then had an excuse to not tell me about other people he met because I was making a scene and was jealous. And I blew up, not because he was meeting people and falling in love, but because he didn't tell me. I can't deal with things I don't know are happening. I finally snapped and ended the friendship after it became really really obvious (even to me) that it can't go on.

I'm now the bad guy in this story, most of other friends sided with him because they know him longer than me.

I still cling to hope that we can go back to what we had. Most of the time I know that, even tho I reacted badly, I'm not the only one with issues and not the reason it all went to hell. That he also needs to get his shit together. But often I'm still wondering what I did wrong and how I could be a better friend and how bad of a person I must be to lose something that meant so much.

i had a friend who promised to keep contact with me even after we changed schools and shit. he left me without warning.

okay, i guess i was an asshole. i always felt infereior to him, felt like he didnt care for me as much as i did ( probably bc hes a male) and i felt like i was a burden to everyone. as a result, i didnt talk to him as much as the others. i had dificulty sharing things with him, to me, he was scary.

ig he thought i didnt rlly care for him either, and with my offensive humor aswell, he probably had enough. he ended up talking more with another friend of mine (we're a trio) and then got pissed. i started treating him with anger.

then he unfriended me, and ignored my presence.

now that it think abt it, he did care for me as much as i did, it was evident in his actions. but my paranoia got the best of me and made me lose such a beautiful friendship.

this was like, real recent btw.

I had a psychotic episode. My bestest friend witnessed me at my worst and told me they couldn’t be friends with me anymore. They became friends with my abuser whos gaslighting and constant assaults on my mental exacerbated it to that point. Rough. So, so rough.

She was my first friend since childhood. We met in our early twenties, both new to the city. I would go over to her place for dinner and she would make me soup and tell me about her day. I was quiet but a good listener, and she let me know she appreciated me. No one had ever said nice things to me like that before.

It was through her that I met my first girlfriend, now my first ex. The four of us were great friends: me, my girlfriend, her, and her boyfriend. One night we four got drunk. She turned mean. She was jealous of the relationship I had with my girlfriend. She was aggressive towards her, even though they were good friends too. My girlfriend was hurt and cut ties. I remained friends. Things never healed between them. My friend tried reaching out but my girlfriend would not accept.

The night my girlfriend and I broke up, I stayed at their place. Overnight, I had the start of a manic episode that would continue for weeks. They had to hop on an early morning call with my psychiatrist. They had to find me a pharmacy that could urgently fill my antipsychotic. They had to stay with me at a hotel until I fell asleep.

She was so kind, and so worried. The incident had stressed her out. We didn’t talk much for a long time, until months later, she invited me out to a football game. Soon after we met there, she asked how things were with my ex. I told her I still missed her and wished we were still together. She became furious. She had been resentful towards my ex for not accepting her apology, and for having gone through so much pain in the split. She was furious that I was still infatuated with my ex. She accused me of not putting in the work to get over her, when I had been doing so much.

I couldn’t help but sob. I felt like I was now losing my closest friend too. Eventually, she softened and asked if I wanted to leave. I said yes. She could sense, as we left, that something was wrong. She did not want me to go home alone. She was afraid I would hurt myself. We went together, and she stayed a little while, and I promised her I would be okay.

Thats the last time I saw her. She doesn’t respond to my messages any more.

Sorry for my previous long comment OP but I just wanna say I’m sorry for whatever you’ve had to go through with friends and thanks for letting me have a space to rant my delusional shit onto lol. I understand more than most people I think. I think I care about friendships more than I do romantic ones. I always struggled making friends so any people I ever got close to are hard to let go of. I send you lots of hugs and good energy towards you 💖🦋

Once I see the mask slip, I read them for filth to the grave.

the M in this post.

My best friend and I lived together in college. She didn't always understand me (sensory challenges, trouble in crowds and with social cues, I now know I'm autistic) but we got along so so well. We fell for each other while I was in a LDR and ended up getting together. At some point she asked me to choose between her and my partner. I was acting like we were together and that wasn't fair. It was an impossible choice but I chose my then partner and now spouse. I wish I could have asserted myself as poly back then.

I was 22 and still growing but I miss her a lot. It's been SO hard to forgive myself for hurting someone.

I believe everyone is better off without me, so I wouldn't want the friendship to last. I'm happy they're happy. The end really only sucks for me.

The only person that had cptsd too in my life decided to banish me from his life because "I was too much of a thread" (I never did anything to hurt him in any way !!! Hell, I even help him with unaliving ideation !!!) so yeah. What hurted the most was to understand where he came from and knowning that I worked to not concider him a thread but that HE didn't work on it.

When she told a mutual friend she wished I’d just get over it I was concerned. When she ridiculed my cousin for having a park named after him and brought out some racist logic to condone her rant I exercised a boundary. It felt so good. I miss her as my friend but I can’t live with that shit anymore.

I feel that my relationships end because of immaturity on both ends, including mine, but I will admit that I am not great at showing up for others. I don’t have a good excuse, but I am working on this.

I think part of me is scared of getting taken advantage of, and somewhere down the line I end up taking advantage of others. I soak up as much good I can get from others and then I fail to reciprocate. This is something I’ve spent some time being ashamed of, but, I cannot improve if I continue being ashamed. I see it as my inner child trying to get a need met. Doesn’t make it right, which is why I’ve stepped away from interpersonal relationships to heal for the time being.

It’s easy to point the finger at everyone else and it’s hard to admit when you may be the problem. Granted, I’ve def had bad friends, but I won’t act like I haven’t been a bad friend either.

She was older than me, we met through an online hobby group, and she ended up being a role model for me. I grew up in an abusive household and was a very shy, withdrawn kid. She was vocal, did whatever she wanted when she wanted, and spoke her mind. She was sassy and brave and so smart and funny, I admired her so much.

For me, deciding to be brave and speak up and put myself out there was a conscious choice, and I still remember the exact moment I made it. She'd asked me why I felt like I needed to be quiet, when nobody was going to stop me from being loud. It was like a switch flipped.

She met someone and it was 'love at first sight' and she moved to another country to be with him. Around the time she was moving the chat platform we used fell out of popularity. We both stopped using it and, eventually, fell out of contact.

I know from her perspective I was probably just a weird sheltered kid she gave advice to. I think about her all the time and I love her still, even though we haven't talked for years. I don't know what she's doing these days but I hope she's happy and eating fresh pasta in the Italian countryside. If we ever talk again I can't wait to tell her how she changed my life and planted that seed of courage.

Many plus the love of my life.

I met someone last year , they were very different from anyone I had ever met . We use to stay up all night and video call one another or wake each other and just talk . It was nice . My mental health started slipping . I went to the ward for a week . I expected there to be calls or texts but there was nothing . We had one video call and then I never heard from him . I don’t know what happened .

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My best friend. My first real one. The one who saw me through the worst of the abuse. When I got out, I started to tell them the truth. The abuse, what it did to me, how it crippled me. They couldn't understand me without understanding what happened. But they couldn't handle it any better than I could. Then it all broke. Haven't been friends in nearly a year, and probably never will again.

I won't ever heal enough to make up for what I've done or failed to do. I won't be able to fix what the adults in my life broke.

I needed them. All I needed, wanted, was them. But they were better off without me.

... I dunno. I'm still trying to recover from it. Trying to heal enough to try again with someone else. I don't want someone else.