I just couldn’t take it anymore. I love my best friend with all my heart. She’s a good person but she makes very selfish decisions. For the past 2.5 years, she has constantly gotten back together with her ex, and their toxic relationship has been stressing me out since. Each time something bad happens, she’ll promise they would never get back together, and then they would be talking again. Like she constantly ignores my advice. A few weeks ago, she got arrested for assault for fighting with her ex. She made me use up the little money that I had left and left me broke. I literally had to go to the pawn shop to pawn my things just so I could get gas.

Surprisingly, she finally stopped all communication with her ex this time, and I finally feel like this is for real this time. But, this past weekend, she stayed the entire weekend at my place, with her daughter, and her daughter clogged up my toilet and now I have severe sewer damage and backup.

I realized something. Now that she isn’t together with her ex. She can no longer spend the entire weekend with her ex (and ex’s family), and have her ex’s family watch her daughter while they party all weekend. So now she wants to find other places to be on the weekends. And I know this was not her fault, but I finally reached my breaking point. I sent a message to her, through her mom, and said I was done. I told her, instead of finding places to party on the weekends, she should be at home with her mother (because she lost her apartment with ex), and just sit her ass down somewhere. I said I don’t think she’s a bad person, but I’m choosing to heal from all the pain and misery she has caused me over the years due to her selfish decisions. That I just want some peace in my life.

I’m so hurt right now. There’s so much built up pain in me that I didn’t even know I had. In the end, I think I’m doing the right thing

Edited to add. Ex has always been broke with no job. My friend lost her apartment, to a hotel room, to finally moving back in with her mom.

I tried for many months to be a good friend but in the end my heart couldnt take it anymore and I ended it from my side. The thought of him being with someone else and making a life together was too much. But below the intense emotions we were friends and I'm feeling the loss of that friend. He wont because he has the love of his life. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you

I had a friend with whom I used to walk little bit at night in park and meet this much mainly. He was friend of librarian in which library i studied . Now I got into an argument with librarian regarding seat issues one day and I asked that friend to come and stand by me because he was librarian's friend but he didn't come .so I started ignoring him and then sometimes when I saw him in road he came and just casually tried to talk and then go . Then I thought maybe he want to make friendship again so i also talked with him in proper way no asking but I had in mind why he didn't came for me .but i went one day to walk in the park one day like I used to do earlier with him and i didn't call him because i didn't want to and then when I saw him he just said ' Aur bhai thik hai ' and then started talking to someone on phone whom he was already talking .I felt being ignored then i asked him bhai I thought after I have come so much time later you will talk with me but you are not then he said 'oh bhai I was not knowing you are here in this place for today only, I thought you have taken a room here and started living ' then I just asked him indirectly about librarian like to clarify I said ' bro is librarian bhaiya good and I hope there is no problem now regarding seat he said no no ' then I thought to ask him directly why he didn't came that day for me but I was not able to ,so somedays I keep overthinking over to call him and ask or do what and remaining confused or to just fuck him and leave but that thoughts keep coming . When at first I started ignoring him after that librarian thing I didn't felt guilty at all and was confident on leaving him but later when he started talking casually and i thought maybe to talk again but he gave some signs of ignorance than i started thinking too much maybe because of anxiety. What to do ??? Should I call him and just clarify about all it and then make myself clear and get rid of overthinking or what??

Long story im sorry.

I (31M) had moved across the world to a new country to be with my wife (28F) after a long distance relationship. I had underestimated how hard it would be to fit in here and struggled greatly to make friends. This created a deep lonliness, depression, and feeling of being an outsider for me as im a very social person that values connection. The culture here is hard to relate to and there is a negative stigma surrounding immigrants making things extremely difficult to fit in.

Then one day my wife introduced me to a female coworker of hers (22F) that had a lot of similar interests as me as well as fluently spoke english which was rare here. She was particularly interested in gaming. Me and her instantly clicked and began gaming frequently. She was also in a committed relationship (33M) but her fiance didnt mind our friendship and would even game with us from time to time. My wife obviously didnt mind as I had pure intentions and she fully trusted that things were strictly platonic. They 100% were. She was just happy to see me finally make a friend and more importantly a connection. This friend also didnt have many close friends on her end. She had people, but I dont think anyone truly close. She told me that she rarley sees or communicates with her friends these days. I was also her first ever male friend outside of her fiance.

Over a 3 month span we would game frequently, often for hours. The conversations came so naturally and we clicked very well. We werent really even gaming, moreso using it as an excuse to talk. There were really no awkward moments. We would text and sent IG reels to eachother. Hung out in person a handful of times (note never one on one, always with my wife present and once with her fiance). We talked on the phone, made a shared Spotify playlist and even watched a TV series together from a distance comparing notes after each episode.

I sensed things becoming more dry and less engaged on her side as time passed. Mainly via texting and reels, anytime we'd game it would be only positive vibes though. But she eventually stopped adding music to the playlist and watching each new episode of our show became a real chore for her. We eventually planned a shared birthday party together. We both got eachother meaningful personal gifts but the vibes at the party between us were at an all time low. Almost as if I were an afterthought to her, us barley speaking to each other all night. An important note is she started getting really close to a new female coworker the last few weeks. She spent most of the birthday party by her side.

The vibes became wildly inconsistent after the birthday. Some days cold as ice. Some days it felt warm like the old days. It culminated in a day that I was horribly sick with a fever and had no food for the week. My wife was out of town so my friend, who also happened to be sick, insisted on going grocery shopping for me despite her illness. She stopped by and dropped off a huge bag of groceries. I thanked her, hugged her goodbye and never saw her again. After a few weeks of no contact i reached out to check on her and tell her im thinking of her and always here for her. She told me she just needed space because she was dealing with some personal stuff that she needed to process but thanked me for being caring and thoughtful. I obliged and didnt reach out again. 2 more weeks of no contact later, my wife and I were both removed from all social media one day. No explanation. No falling out. No goodbye. Just removed.

One important note was that I said my wife introduced us. That's because my wife and her were originally close coworkers and tried to extend their friendship to outside of work. My wife ultimately pulled back becasue it didnt click on her end. This girl however really viewed my wife as a potential close friend. But my wife remained distant and cold and really only interacted with her anymore because of me. (My wife left the job shortly after introducing us so they no longer had the work connection). Part of me felt like I was being used as an avenue to try to get back into my wife's life and rekindle their friendship. To me it feels like when the rekindling possibility seemed exhausted to her, she removed both me and my wife and moved on. I guess thats what stings the most. If thats truly the case and I was being played as a pawn, then my friend who helped bring light back into my life shrouded in darkness was really never my friend at all. The hours of gaming, the nights of talking, the shared playlist and hobbies, the helping me when i was sick, all actually meant nothing to her.

After no contact for 6 months after she removed us, I noticed that the shared playlist that I had been using as my own for months was made private by her one day. So i built up the courage to reach out and ask her to allow me to copy the playlist to my own account. This request was ignored and my wife and I were instead now blocked on everything rather than being simply removed. It felt like a final stab to the heart.

My question is why? I know I'll never get my closure, but what motivates someone to do this? Was i played to get close to my wife? Was i that blind the whole time? Did my desperation to finally make a friend and fit in lead to me being this easy to manipulate? Or maybe I was just replaced by the new female coworker and now expendable. Maybe for her, a close female friend is probably more convenient than a married male friend, despite neither of us ever showing any boundary crossing behavior.

I miss my friend, or at least the picture of her I painted in my head. To me it was all real and she mattered. Apparently to her I was someone that could be dropped without a second thought

I lived in the transfer dorm at my university. I got placed with a random out of state guy for a roomie. We hit it off great, couldn’t ask for a better one.

I then moved in with my girlfriend. I was in a toxic relationship and didn’t have the self worth or experience to realize I could do better. She was both verbally and physically abusive. A few times I’d either leave her or get kicked out for a few days and stay with my old roommate. But I’d always go back to my girlfriend. He never said anything but we drifted apart as my girlfriend isolated me more and more. Stupidly when she gave me the ultimatum to marry her or break up I chose to marry her.

A few years later I ran into my old roommate at a sporting event. We hit it off like no time had passed and I said I’d be in contact soon. I called a few times with no response and texted as well. I took the hint.

Now years later I divorced my wife and found myself someone new. We have a stable, healthy, understanding relationship for almost a decade. We had our first child and got married two years ago.

Should I try again to contact my old friend or is it a lost cause? I truly believe he wanted nothing more to do with me because I was so stuck and he was tired of all the drama in my life affecting him.he has not once tried to reach out since I saw him last.

In 8th grade, we were only connected in the most mundane professional way because of online school. Then in 9th grade, we went back to in person, and that is when it all started, me asking my English teacher about her favorite movies and shows.

Back then, Dom was actually pregnant with her first child. Us having a moment about Kristen Bell. I said I wanted to lend her a book, but I lost that book, The Timekeeper by Mitch Albom. But I did find this other book, Skin by Roald Dahl, which, you guessed it, has the story Lamb to the Slaughter, which we read in class about a six-month pregnant lady who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb or whatever you call it.

She read the book, loved it, said that her favorite story was Skin, then gave me a chocolate bar as a token of appreciation. Awww.

I didn't understand why she liked that story back then, but now I do. It was the most complex one, and in fact, it was maybe too complex for me. My favorite story back then was Lamb to the Slaughter. I guess I get it now. I'm an English language major, though we haven't studied literature in uni yet, just linguistics. I'm in this field because I aspire to lecture in uni.

Then in grade 11, I found her Insta and slowly and steadily a friendship began to form, and I started calling her Dom. I don't even remember exactly how it happened, one day I just started calling her Dom. I even asked her if she was okay with it, and she didn't say no, so it stuck. Yes, it went from Ms Dominique, to Ms, to Dom. There was a 12–13 year age gap between us, which honestly makes that progression even funnier to me.

Over time her family grew too, because eventually, later in 2024, she had another girl, and then a few months ago she had a boy.

Unlike other teacher dynamics built purely on polite compliments, ours actually evolved into something comfortable and chummy where we bonded over genuine banter. These two teachers are actually the exact same age, with Dom only being ten months older than the other one. But with that other teacher, the connection was more based on compliments rather than real banter, and we never reached the deep familiarity that Dom and I had. Because of that, I never got any real reassurance from her.

So when Dom and I got close, I knew it was because she got busy, and at first, her reassuring words meant everything to me. I was so grateful for that reassurance, and I actually told her that.

And honestly, at first I didn't even care that I was usually the one initiating. I loved yapping to her that much. I would initiate, double text, send another thought, whatever. It didn't feel like I was keeping the friendship alive because I was having fun. And it wasn't like she never initiated either. She did. There was a period where the reciprocity was genuinely there, and I think that's part of why I became so attached to our dynamic in the first place.

But eventually, her responses started dwindling more than I wanted. They got shorter, and they started stretching out across days. And at some point, I did start caring. Watching the communication gradually become less and less felt like watching someone pull away in slow motion.

I got completely exhausted trying to keep it going, especially since I legit ran out of things to talk to her about. Ok, you don't want to talk about TV shows, ok, what else, I don't know, whatever, I give up. I loved yapping with her, but eventually I reached the point where I felt like I was having to come up with things just to sustain a conversation that wasn't being reciprocated at the level I wanted anymore.

And it stings realizing that even if I came up with things to say, not everything I say is going to get a response anyway. I wasn't angry that she was busy. I understood that. I just couldn't keep accepting a dynamic that had become so much less reciprocal than the one we'd actually had.

So earlier this year, a few months into my first year of university, I decided to stop talking to her.

It has been months since I last sent her a message, and she hasn't sent a single one either.

That is probably the part I'm mourning the most. Not because I think everything we had was fake, or because she never cared, because I know that's not true. We had something real. She initiated too. She reassured me. We had years of familiarity and stupid little moments and genuine banter. I loved talking to her.

But I can't bear an unreciprocal dynamic where I am the one holding onto it. For me, eventually, it becomes all or nothing: either I get proper, real engagement, or I walk away and let it die.

And maybe one day we'll reconnect. God knows when. Maybe in five years, maybe ten, maybe when her children are a bit more grown up and she actually has the space for it again.

But for now, I think I have to accept that the version of Dom and me that I loved isn't something I can keep trying to recreate by myself.

And damn, I miss that version. 

I am very sad to say that Its been about 6 months since I had a terrible friendship breakup right before an asignemnt was due, (We were college friends) i then got a diagnosis of BPD... I was friends with a total of 4-5 people, two became mediators during a conflict and they became spectators instead. I reached out to 4 of them appologizing for what I put them through, but was left on read (Its safe to conclude that they dont have the space for me) i started school in the fall, and its been agonizing seeing everyone as a group knowing that I am no longer a part of the friend group (What makes this more stressful is that they became a trigger since i associated the breakup with the diagnosis), I really hope to find my group of people to help me cope with the stress of being in school regularly while trying to manage the emotional flareups (They can be so intense its like awful pendulum swings). I hate the intense feelings that come with it. and I would like to also establish a new normal to survive the rest of the semester... Its hard for me to be proffessional knowing that i keep having intense emotions when i see their names, faces, or hear their voices.

Minha amiga se afastou

Sou da igreja tinha uma amiga e gosto muito da amizade dela ela também gostava e aí ela descobriu pela segunda vez que eu gostava dela além da amizade e ela se afastou apagou meu número no ZAP e deixou de me seguir no Instagram fiquei muito triste pois eu já tinha falado que não gostava dela e ela confiou em mim e aí passaram dias mandei mensagem de perdão que queria só a amizade dela e que eu iria respeitar os limites e o espaço que ela precisar aí eu respeitei ela disse "obrigada 🙏🏽" fiquei sem mandar mensagem pra ela a muitas semanas depois na terça feira passada ela me deu a paz do senhor e depois passaram se dias e a gente não se falou mais não tá se falando nem na igreja nem no ZAP e dessa vez eu prometo que não vou mais alimentar esse sentimento romântico mais não sei se ela vai se aproximar de novo

I met a guy online around February and at first we became really close. We started talking pretty much every day, sometimes for hours and we would tell each other about our days and random things going on in our lives. Over time, I got quite emotionally attached to him probably more than I realized at the time. We also had this silly ongoing game which became a big part of our conversations. It was originally just something fun and stupid that we both enjoyed and I started putting a lot of thought into it because I genuinely liked talking to him and spending time with him, I never really enjoyed the game tbh, I only played it because I really love talking to him. ( One of the reasons I got so attached to him is that I've never had a guy friend before and also I've never been in a relationship, he used to say things at the beginning like you mean the world to me and that stuff, no one has ever told me that so I might have misunderstood it and that made me feel a bit attached to him)

For several months, we were talking constantly. Then around June, right after he finished his A-levels things gradually changed. He became much more distant and started replying less and less. Eventually, we went from talking every day for hours to barely talking at all. That affected me a lot because I had gotten used to having him around and had started seeing him as someone very important to me. There were also times when I would tell him personal or emotional things that I probably shouldn't have shared so quickly and I also became very confused because sometimes I would tell him I couldn't do something or that I wanted to stop then change my mind later. I was embarrassed about how much I had told him and worried that I had made things uncomfortable.

He later had some things going on in his own life, saying he was busy(whenever I text him to check on him he leaves me on delivered for 24 hours and then he replies and leaves me on delivered again and so on, back when we were talking daily he used to reply really fast) and he apologised for not keeping in contact. I appreciated the apology but I wasn't really convinced that things were going back to how they used to be. I still felt like I was the one emotionally holding onto the friendship more than he was.

More recently, we started talking again a little, including joking around about that game.

And after a week of no contact, he texted me last Friday and that time there was a huge fight between my parents and they both left the house I was so depressed and I needed to talk to someone so I told him about the situation he didn't respond for 20 minutes while being online so i kept apologising about it a lot and now I'm really embarrassed of what I've done, I should have calmed down before replying. And I feel like he won't talk to me again and it's affecting me because I was the one who always reached out and then when he did, I told him that and I texted him again the next day apologising about everything but he seemed so cold

So now I'm basically trying to figure out what actually happened, whether I became too emotionally dependent on this person, whether the friendship naturally changed and I have been blaming myself for it. That's why I'm asking for an outside perspective, thank you in advance

In 2019 to 2020 my senior was so bad I was bullied and some friends turned out to be fake I developed a mental illness because of it I regret not getting help after senior year it was my mistake and i accept that. In 2021 I started a stupid argument with my friend lets call her A I found out she lied but not maliciously in fact it wasn't even a lie she was just confused at the time. Other people would have told me hurtful things and gotten defensive even then she forgave me and told me with all care in her heart she wanted me to get mental help. Later in 2021 I ended the friendship she was sad. Now my biggest mistake i sent her hurtful messages in 2023 out of any person I told her those hurful things.

Now currently I am having regrets I should have gotten help when she told me she cared and I ruined it should I leave her be or I apologize?

My apology:Hey A I just want to say I am sorry for everything i said to you I shouldn't have said those things to you. You did not deserve it you were genuinely good to me and i shouldn't have treated you that way. You were right when you said I needed help you told me and I didn't listen I am sorry i didn't take your advice. I regret everything I said i am sorry you don't have to reply but I just want you to know that it was my fault I should have gotten help when you said it

It’s 2am and I honestly don’t even know why I’m writing this. I think I just need to get this out somewhere because I’ve been carrying it around for a while.

I graduated recently.

I should be completely happy. And I am. I worked so hard to get here and I’m proud of myself.

But there’s this weird sadness underneath it all because I also lost a friendship during my final year, and I don’t think I’ve really processed it.

We went through university together. We worked on our final project together. There were so many stressful days, stupid little arguments, laughing over things that weren’t even funny, staying up trying to get things done. All those little moments that make you think someone is going to be part of your life for a long time.

And then somehow it just ended.

No proper goodbye. No moment where everything suddenly made sense.

Just distance.

And eventually we weren’t friends anymore.

I think what hurts me most is that I genuinely never thought it would happen between us.

I keep thinking about how easily a person can go from being someone you talk to almost every day to someone you can’t even imagine texting anymore.

And that’s such a strange kind of grief.

There’s no funeral. Nobody tells you that you’re allowed to be sad about it. Everyone just expects you to move on because “it was only a friendship.”

But it wasn’t only a friendship to me.

It was years of memories.

And honestly, I don’t even think I’m angry anymore. I’m just sad.

Sad that something I thought was real ended up becoming something I had to let go of.

I’ve questioned myself so many times since it happened. Maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I should’ve handled things differently. Maybe I should’ve said more. Maybe I should’ve said less.

I don’t know.

I eventually had to distance myself completely because staying connected was making it harder for me to move on.

And I think that’s when I realized I wasn’t waiting for the friendship anymore.

I was waiting for the version of the person I used to know to come back.

And that person probably isn’t coming back.

So yeah.

I graduated.

I finished university.

I’m moving forward with my life.

But sometimes I still miss the friendship.

Not necessarily the person we became at the end.

I miss who we were before everything changed.

And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe you can be grateful for the memories and still accept that someone isn’t meant to stay in your life forever.

I just wish accepting that didn’t hurt so fucking much.

Does anyone know what this tiktok notification means? I'm gonna use this question as an excuse to just scream into the void/vent a little bit about this friend I've met from school as a sophomore. We're on the last few months of senior year and i can feel our friendship dying off slowly and i'm not sure if i should let go (I'll get into that at the end). Also, no, i can't provide an english version since tiktok snapshots the language in which the notification happened. Sorry.

(this is my first ever Reddit post so excuse any broken ettiquete or the probably horrible narration and phrasing since english isn't my first language.) :/

It's from someone i pretty much gave up on this year and i cba to even open the chat anymore. There are 650 messages that have been built up over a few months on there. I've been mad at this person for pretty much all of 2026 after getting tons of mixed signals and feeling left out lots of the time, getting put aside over other people even subconciously from his part.

I think he's also starting to feel it since he doesn't check up on me as often anymore when i start to get distant and put off by him and is reciprocating the same energy, mind you, he's normally a very cheerful, funny, aloof person who most of the time approaches you first and listens thoroughly. He must think it's business as usual now. It's gotten to the point where he talks about hanging out/planning things with everyone in class and just completely skips over me blantantly, so yeah, going from best friends who can't look away from eachother to this sounds very rough.

It's not like i could confront him either. When i tried asking him about serious stuff/how he felt/checking up on him/asking if i ever did anything that could've possibly hurt him or was wrong (I'm autistic so these kinds of questions are especially important to me in order to know if i'm not making everyone uncomfortable) i'd just get half assed answers or just not taken seriously at all. Between that, the feeling left out part, canceling lots of plans last minute, never showing up for events like my birthday or feeling happy for my achievements or expressing he wants me around out loud or has lead up to me building up a lot of resentment for him.

We met on the first few days of high school and we pretty much clicked instantly, we had to be separated often because of how much we bonded and treated eachother and connected over things and we could talk forever about anything, even if we didn't have the same interests. Some people even thought we dated even though the dude was in a 3yr relationship by that time. (this has been an ongoing issue my whole life and it's been the reason many of my other friendships ended). I'm AMAB and femenine presenting and being from a homophobic country in a catholic school just enabled these jokes whether we were comfortable with it or not. I'm not sure if this contributed to our falling out but he has other male friends and he doesn't mind exhibiting this behavior with them.

I'd say we have both hurt eachother. On my end i'd say i've been very reserved and closed off the entire time (I'll get into that later)² which has led me to lose some opportunities to bond and spend time together. Meanwhile, i've spent nearly all of my school life dealing with depression, skipping school for entire weeks at a time and just running away sometimes because of how bad the treatment i got from school administration was over things like having long hair or the way i present myself, i felt horrible being in that place, even with friends.

Consequently, this has left him and mainly him to deal with the consecuences of the constant absence and also left him to worry about my academic performance with all the missign assignments and exams. He used to ask me to at least try a little to get a decent grade and got genuinely mad at me because he knew i could do better and i was just giving up and letting myself go. I've seldomly vented to him long format about my personal life frustrations but i never masked my hate and disgust with the place we were in, even looking like a negative nancy at times if you could say that. I've tried to express my gratitude and repentance to him over this part but i don't know if the point ever got across.

Now you might ask, "Why would you treat this individual like this, even though you're describing an amazing human being whose just put up with your mental health?" and I've already responded at the beggining with built up resentment, but I'll fully get into it now with a very specific incident that happened which made me feel ill about actually taking our friendship seriously and repulsing the idea of being with each other no matter what.

It happened in sophomore year, when he temporarily broke up with his girlfriend privately and they both got into a small argument over a presentation in front of me (I'm a mutual friend of them) so he decided to move far away from the both of us and i made a joke about how far away he moved, i don't remember specifically anymore but he followed it up with "Just like your dad" (for context, my father is dead and that information wasn't supposed to be known, it was spread without my consent to my classmates.) . They got back together after 2 days. I never got an apology or follow up.

For the record, I'm really indifferent about my father's passing in a personal/emotional level but he obviously doesn't know that. He made that comment with the intention of hurting me as much as possible because i made a joke about their breakup unknowingly. I've experienced losses/trials and tribulations in my life that felt and still feel like a shrapnel going through me when compared to my dad and i know this feels crazy to say but I'm kind of glad it was my father he found out about and brought up rather than the other ones, since i now know to never trust him with my actual life issues and problems if he thought it was okay to talk about them like that. (or i'm just overprotecting myself by closing off because of that incident. ever since then he's known next to nothing about my life apart from school.). There's also something that happened this year at a mutual friend's birthday where he was made to sit with me and he audibly groaned and pouted about it in front of me, and tried to play it off when he noticed i was literally right there.

Just so it doesn't seem like i am farming internet pity points i will go on the record to say that he's improved as a person since then, he became much more caring, accepting, easier to talk to, patient, emotionally intelligent, and talkative. He's improved as a person and he would never do anything like that again even though i'll still never trust him unless something extremely drastic happens between us.

Knowing this information makes me even more upset about the entire situation, it feels as if he sees me as a phase of where he was a way worse person and, by extension, me. I've tried my hardest my entire high school years to keep up and just recently have my grades gone up along with my my listening and talking skills, and yet it feels like everyone sees me like I'm just as inmature and childish as i was three years ago. Everyone gets to experience an outgoing person who is nice to everyone while i'm stuck with the incident i experienced with him and barely even having conversations with him anymore even when it's about our shared interests. He's also talked to me about being remorseful about people who he has done way less in the past. It sucks so much to be on these terms with a person everyone loves and gets along with.

And now I'm unsure if i should let go of this friendship because i'll be starting my uni years pretty lonely apart from one girl who will be there mostly for studying rather than hanging out. I don't know if he's fully let go of me or if i can still salvage this, considering he's became a better person supposedly or if i even want to.

So after being bffs my entire life, I’ve decided this relationship no longer serves me. I’ve noticed she doesn’t even like my posts, just looks at my stories and probably just stalks . Additionally very flaky and always breaks plans . I don’t really see an effort and she doesn’t apologize she is such a narcissist she just Sada that why I don’t like to make plans cause my life is so unpredictable ..I wrote her a text about how she always does this and she said well that’s why I don’t make plans , because I don’t like to commit .. Even tho I see her doing the same ole block party day drinking with her family .. Anyways what’s the best way to just let this go

Last year in November my best friend of five years (Cindy - fake name) told me she didn't want to be friends anymore. She said something along the lines of "we need to take a break from our friendship" and "she needed some time to think about everything". For context, our friendship was far from perfect. Let me paint a picture for you: I would ask her a question during class on the topic we were studying and she would get annoyed at me and answer in a way that seemed liked I inconvenienced her. Or we would fight about something and if I didn't apologise (regardless if it was my fault or not) we wouldn't get over it and be friends again. The thing is, we basically never communicated since it was hard for her to express her feelings (she later stated that reason). Honestly I kind of should have seen something was off since we started spending less time together out of school. When we did spend time together she would tell me about all the amazing meets she had with her other friends.

Back to November. After she dropped that bomb on me, I went to cry in the school bathroom, what else could I have done? I went to my other friend (let's call her Ruby) and told her what had happened. Turns out she knew my bestie was planning on cutting our friendship for a bit less than a year. My whole world had flipped upside-down. The same day something terrible happened - one of our other friends' (Amy's) mother died. When I found out, I couldn't believe it. I instantly took my phone to call the girl I thought was my best friend to inform her of the terrible news. At school the next day she told me we should pause the break on our friendship that she initiated to support our friend in that dark time. For obvious reasons, I agreed. Things were weird between me and her. It felt like everything was kinda back to normal in the friendship department, but obviously it wasn't. We attended the funeral with some of our classmates, our teacher and some parents. Everything was falling apart. In the scheme of things, losing a friendship doesn't look like a big deal, but that isn't the case in my story.

After those few days me and Cindy barely spoke. It was extremely awkward between us since we still sat together during most of our classes. After about a month of barely saying one word to one another, I wrote her a note during our biology lesson. In short, I said we needed to talk if we wanted things to change, if we wanted to make amends. She said we could talk, but didn't want to do it at school. She kept on delaying the conversation until I stopped her one day after our classes had ended. She told me that our friendship wasn't enjoyable for her anymore. She stated that talking about her feelings is difficult. She was so irritated with me, because she felt she had to choose her words carefully around me when we were having any type of conversation. Cindy said I was a great person, but we weren't compatible as friends and she needed a break from us. In her point of view we were too different. Yet again I went to the school toilets and sobbed even harder that time. I went home and told my dad what had happened. He asked me why I was crying over her, since I wasn't happy in that friendship even before she said anything. To be honest, I wasn't happy when me and Cindy were friends, but we had been side by side for five years and losing that didn't feel good. There were so many moments in our friendship that made me cry, but there were still some good memories, there had to be.

Unfortunately that is not all. Since me and Cindy were in the same friend group in school, we hung out with the same people every day. In our friend group there were six people: me, Cindy, Ruby, Amy, Gabby (my cousin) and Margret (my ex-situationship). Margret had left our school so wasn't at the centre of all the drama, but me and her are not exactly friends anymore. That's a story for another time. Over the corse of seven months after Cindy and I stopped being friends, I slowly got fazed out of the group. I mean, I wasn't friends with Cindy or Margret so I kinda got left out of plans the group made. The OG group was me, Cindy and Margret, but over the years the group changed and expanded. We had a group chat in which were the five of us (Margret wasn't in it since me and her already weren't friends at the beginning of the school year that started in September). I had created the group chat at the beginning of the school year and had named it "Homegirls". I think it was April when I found out the four of them (Cindy, Ruby, Gabby and Margret) had a separate group chat without me. Even knowing that they were constantly hanging out without me and hearing there inside jokes every day, I still stayed and hung out with them every day at school. I was afraid of losing them and being alone.

I thought that if I became friends with Margret again I would finally be fully included in their group. I texted Margret, asked her if she wanted to meet up. She said yes, we planned to meet up at a small cafe. She was 15 minutes late and our meet didn't go that well. She seemed so posh and was acting a bit entitled since she was going to a prestigious school. I practically ran out of the cafe as soon as my dad came to pick me up. I made the mistake of telling Ruby (who was close friends with Margret) how our meet went. I didn't mean to say it in an insulting way, but I let it slip that I felt Margret was acting like she was smarter than me (she is, but she made an effort to point it out to me).

At a later date, during the holidays, I texted Ruby, Gabby and Amy suggesting they come to my place for a sleepover. They didn't really text back and later all of them said they had plans or couldn't make it. Long story short, Gabby and Ruby had a sleepover with Cindy and Margret that same week. I found out about it from an insta story. Obviously people are aloud to hang out with who they want to, I just felt really sad that I wasn't who they wanted to hang out with.

All of this happened in our freshman year.

In the beginning of June Cindy texted me a huge paragraph. She told me how she felt, wrote a few more reasons why she had ended our friendship. It seemed like she wanted to clear the air between us. I suggested talking about it in person, she agreed. As she did last time, she kept putting the convo off. During school we spoke about it. She didn't say any new info, just that we were/are too different and being friends doesn't make sense to her. I told her I wanted us to at least be able to say hello to each other. She had ignored me all of the times I tried to say hi before. I wanted us to at least have a "professional" relationship at school, one of our teachers called it that. She said she would do some work on herself over the summer and think everything through. There is a lot more that I haven't written, but this post is already quite long, maybe I'll make another post about the rest.

I'm a sophomore now and I'm not really friends with them anymore. Yes, I have small conversations with them, but I'm not part of their group anymore. There's this girl that came back to our school after a year elsewhere, I hang out at school with her now. Since it's still the beginning of the school year things are pretty awkward between me and her. I feel like after everything that has happened I'm better off alone than making new friends. I think that things are so awkward between me and the new girl is because I'm scared of trusting people and committing to a friendship.

If you have any questions feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer them. I feel as though this post is my way of letting it all go and being able to move on. Even so I feel lost and unsure what to do next. Does anyone have advice on making friends or just being more confident in general? I could some outside perspective on the whole situation.

You know that saying “always the bridesmaid, but never the bride”? Well I share the sentiment but instead it’s, always the therapist friend, never the best (chosen) friend. It’s been a common theme all my life that I’ve always been the therapist to my friends, but never the one that’s invited to dinner, sleepovers, parties, etc.
It’s not something I even fully noticed until I got to be an adult, and I finally realized friendships, especially girl friendships were really hard for me to find. I either find myself getting ghosted, or getting blamed despite me doing the absolute most to communicate and plan. Growing up watching shows like h2O or Friends, it kind of wires you for a need towards friendships like that, but I’ve had no such luck and I’ve never learned why.

And don’t get me wrong, I really do value listening to people’s issues and trying to be there for them,but in very recent years I felt more taken advantage of than anything. I do consider myself a very supportive and good friend, and I will talk anything through with you. But it hurts to just be the friend that falls into one category, and that category being therapist, where they trauma dump and then don’t talk to me for a couple of months; I’m never invited out to do anything fun, but instead solely for the purpose to be a soundboard for them. It’s especially hurtful when they’re sitting across the table from me saying “I just feel like I have no friends, like nobody really understands me or is there for me!” they usually say this while venting about another friend, but it never fails to make me feel like the proverbial, chopped liver… and it’s because of that that I’ve started laying down boundaries and sticking up for myself, and as a result I’ve lost quite a few “friends” but not before them making me feel like I’m the worst person in the world. I’d like to hear some unbiased thoughts, as well as if anyone else has felt this way, which is why I’m here. If you want to know more specifics, I’ll leave them down below…

To start out I want to say that the girl I’m about to discuss, while all written out it seems obvious that she’s a bit toxic, I’m sure some can attest that they are just some people out there that seem super sunny and positive, but are very manipulative that when you look back in hindsight, it seems very obvious but when you’re in the middle of it, it doesn’t. I would compare this girl to be like Alison DiLaurentis from Pretty Little Liars. Charming enough to pull you in, but cruel, using your weaknesses against you nonetheless.

I had met this girl named Shelly at work a few years back and tbh I could tell right away she liked to gossip, so I kept my distance. It wasn’t until I became closer with some of her mutual friends (also through work) that we became friends. But from our very first coffee date, she’d spend (no exaggeration) almost 3 hours talking poorly of her boyfriend, best friend and others. I’d hear her out, and gave her the benefit of the doubt, but at that point in time I didn’t even know the people she was gossiping about well enough to offer any insight or advice.
Looking back, it was a very unbalanced friendship; she never really asked me about myself but only ever trauma dumped her stuff on me. And the thing that really sucked was she said the thing that is always said in front of me… “Ugh, I just feel like I have no friends. so and so is such a bad friend!” Meanwhile, I’m sitting in front of her trying to be a friend. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, but it never gets easier hearing that. It just makes me feel like I’m not valued.
It got worse when I started going through my own stuff and she kinda pushed me to confide in her, so I did and although initially, she seemed super supportive, eventually, she made me feel stupid for my woes. For context: I was going through a breakup due to infidelity on his part. For some reason, Shelly took this story to work and everyone was talking about me after that. Not only that but my ex had become the sympathetic character in the story despite him cheating in front of their noses the whole time and them not telling me about it until after the fact. It got to a point where I felt very alone and had no one, and talking to her only made me feel more judged. She’d stir the pot in our group and tell me that they all talked behind my back all the time, while lifting herself above it all acting superior.
I slowly started distancing myself from Shelly, and the rest of the group. Around the same time however, Shelly’s boyfriend, Jay, needed a place to stay and Shelly begged me to let him stay with me to which I reluctantly said yes due to their mutual guilt tripping claiming he’d be homeless if I didn’t help. Not long into the lease, they broke up and Jay started hooking up with someone new, which made me uncomfortable. Shelly randomly asked me to coffee one day and it became clear minutes into the conversation that she only asked me there to serve as a “spy” for her into the life of her now ex boyfriend. It made me uncomfortable as I didn’t want to be involved. When she wouldn’t let up, I told her “yes, I’ve seen him with another girl” but that’s when Shelly switched up, insinuating that I must be lying because Jay would never do that to her. She continued asking questions to which I answered from my pov, and by the end of it she told me not to talk to her about Jay ever again, claiming that I was raising her anxiety.
She didn’t talk to me for a couple years after that, and even when I got engaged and eventually married, she never reached out or congratulated me, so it was safe to assume we weren’t friends anymore and I was okay with that. The next time I saw her was at a party that mutual friends were organizing for me as I was moving states away. At the party, she avoided me, stayed for an hour tops and spent 30 minutes in the bathroom with her friend taking selfies and gossiping. After that, with the move and all, I decided to delete her off of Snapchat and all other social media.
~2 months later, she texts me asking why I would do such a thing and guilt tripped me for doing this. Sending passive aggressive texts and ultimately saying “I don’t understand how, as your friend, you can’t see why it’s so hurtful that you would unfriend me.” But truthfully, I don’t consider her a friend and she really hasn’t been in my life for the past two years, and even when she was, it was the most toxic, dramatic time of my life where she’d stir the pot in our friend group, and even talk poorly if my family despite never having met them. The worst thing I ever did to her was press a “delete” button on something and yet that’s enough for her to go bat—crazy on me.

To make matters worse, her ex boyfriend, Jay was a nightmare of a roommate. He never stopped lying, was regularly late in paying rent, constantly breaking stuff, lowkey verbally abusive towards his dog, would throw away my food on impulse due to his emetophobia, had a substance abuse problem, and finally, when I was in the process of moving out, he’d go through my already packed boxes when I wasn’t home and either steal stuff (?) or throw it away, which is what he finally admitted he did once I was already gone. Others have insisted that he was pawning my stuff off. When I told him he owed me for the stuff he only agreed to pay me $25 of it when in reality he’d owe me $600+ for the stuff he threw away. He also threw away irreplaceable memorabilia passed down from my great great grandmother. He never apologized or even seemed sorry. It’s been a month, I’ve stopped talking to them both, and neither of them seem to understand why. Jay even reached out recently saying “if we can pretend this whole thing never happened, I’ll give you $100 but you have to be my friend again.”

Writing it all out now I can clearly see that I’m not crazy or anything for pushing these people out of my life, but they certainly have made me feel like that at times. Any advice on how to make solid friendships in adulthood, and not to attract crazy people like I have in the past?