I was best friends with a guy since elementary school, and moved out of state after dropping out of college. We stayed in touch for years, would play games together online and chat all the time.
One day, I got radio silence from him. A month goes by and I’ve seriously considered the idea that he died or killed himself, until he finally says something to me. I’m so damn confused, and when I ask him what the hell happened he says that he wanted to know if I’d notice or care if he didn’t talk to me, that he felt like we never talked about anything more than surface level anymore. That I was obsessed with video games and he felt like it was all stuff he didn’t want in his life. Of course I noticed, I tried to get a hold of him repeatedly.
And you know what? I think he was right about those things. I spent and still spend my time getting high and forgetting about anything I could, and video games were some of the only things to get me to forget about the waking horrors of life. That and spending time with him and sharing music with him. But I didn’t care that he might be right, because he never fucking talked to me about any of it.
There was no discussion of concern, no expression of the feeling that things weren’t satisfactory for him, no chance for me to realize these things about myself and repair them for the good of my best friendship I’d ever had in my life. Not once did he consider how the way he just cold shouldered me made me feel, how I worried for his fucking life.
I just stopped talking to him. He was always a weird dude, but that’s fine, I’m a weird dude, who cares. But it turns out that it affected his decision making in such a way that he thought how he handled it was reasonable and he expected me to just let it go. I stopped talking to him.
Months later he hit me up again to talk, and I got on an hours long call with him, only to realize he was cool with me, and I was okay with him, and he wanted to be friends again, but he was surprised that I even wanted to bring up what he did at all, as if I would just let it all go because “time heals everything”. We hung up that call open to talking more and being friends again, but I just never spoke to him again and he didn’t try either.
I realized we could be technically cool with each other all we wanted, but the friendship we had was broken, my trust was broken, he was essentially dead to me. I think, in the end, that if you have a nasty falling out with someone, that if it’s your fault, even partially, you can own that, you can try to fix it. But if it’s their fault and they don’t acknowledge that part, it’s just not worth it, because the friendship you had doesn’t exist anymore, and clinging to it won’t fix that.
It took me another year after that to get over losing him, I don’t really have many friends, and that was a major blow to me, socially and mentally, for a long time I’d see things and want to tell him about them, and getting past that was tough, but I did it, and I’d rather be here now, like this, than have caved and reconnected with some empty shell of the friendship i used to have.
The part that I think is fatal is the loss of trust. Like when someone acts like they are ok and equally energetic and enthusiastic about what they and you both suggest or plan to do, and later say you secretly exhaust them just in time to avoid doing what they signed both of you up for so to speak, there’s no abillity to predict how things will go—ever…I’m not some lilly-pad for you to capsize to temporarily hoist yourself…Anyways guess I was and I will work to avoid that in future
Edit: I think this is part of the difficulty of bona fide male/female friendships. I honestly feel at this point there’s a completely seperate layer of evaluation or expectstions that exist that really can’t be satisfied in any sense unless you have money or something impressive but I don’t feel like that will satisfy them ever. There’s another game being played and I’m honestly glad I’m not an attractive target for it anymore or ever
Yeah, it’s just once it’s happened I can’t forget anymore, I’d always be second guessing or paranoid that it would happen again. It screwed me up for friendship in general for a while because if a guy I knew since elementary school, who I thought I’d figured out could do that, then why trust anybody? You just never quite know somebody, sometimes.
And I sound pretty jaded when I say everything I’m saying, I don’t think everyone is like that. Some people are easier to figure out and are more straight up about everything, and some people aren’t, sometimes you get unlucky and get caught up with people who are more trouble than it’s worth.
Yes, I think if you need to worry about someone being upset with you or having problems that they don’t wanna talk about directly then it’s not worth it. Life is hard enough without a run around from someone who’s supposed to make the world easier.
I was best friends with a guy since elementary school, and moved out of state after dropping out of college. We stayed in touch for years, would play games together online and chat all the time.
One day, I got radio silence from him. A month goes by and I’ve seriously considered the idea that he died or killed himself, until he finally says something to me. I’m so damn confused, and when I ask him what the hell happened he says that he wanted to know if I’d notice or care if he didn’t talk to me, that he felt like we never talked about anything more than surface level anymore. That I was obsessed with video games and he felt like it was all stuff he didn’t want in his life. Of course I noticed, I tried to get a hold of him repeatedly.
And you know what? I think he was right about those things. I spent and still spend my time getting high and forgetting about anything I could, and video games were some of the only things to get me to forget about the waking horrors of life. That and spending time with him and sharing music with him. But I didn’t care that he might be right, because he never fucking talked to me about any of it.
There was no discussion of concern, no expression of the feeling that things weren’t satisfactory for him, no chance for me to realize these things about myself and repair them for the good of my best friendship I’d ever had in my life. Not once did he consider how the way he just cold shouldered me made me feel, how I worried for his fucking life.
I just stopped talking to him. He was always a weird dude, but that’s fine, I’m a weird dude, who cares. But it turns out that it affected his decision making in such a way that he thought how he handled it was reasonable and he expected me to just let it go. I stopped talking to him.
Months later he hit me up again to talk, and I got on an hours long call with him, only to realize he was cool with me, and I was okay with him, and he wanted to be friends again, but he was surprised that I even wanted to bring up what he did at all, as if I would just let it all go because “time heals everything”. We hung up that call open to talking more and being friends again, but I just never spoke to him again and he didn’t try either.
I realized we could be technically cool with each other all we wanted, but the friendship we had was broken, my trust was broken, he was essentially dead to me. I think, in the end, that if you have a nasty falling out with someone, that if it’s your fault, even partially, you can own that, you can try to fix it. But if it’s their fault and they don’t acknowledge that part, it’s just not worth it, because the friendship you had doesn’t exist anymore, and clinging to it won’t fix that.
It took me another year after that to get over losing him, I don’t really have many friends, and that was a major blow to me, socially and mentally, for a long time I’d see things and want to tell him about them, and getting past that was tough, but I did it, and I’d rather be here now, like this, than have caved and reconnected with some empty shell of the friendship i used to have.
The part that I think is fatal is the loss of trust. Like when someone acts like they are ok and equally energetic and enthusiastic about what they and you both suggest or plan to do, and later say you secretly exhaust them just in time to avoid doing what they signed both of you up for so to speak, there’s no abillity to predict how things will go—ever…I’m not some lilly-pad for you to capsize to temporarily hoist yourself…Anyways guess I was and I will work to avoid that in future
Edit: I think this is part of the difficulty of bona fide male/female friendships. I honestly feel at this point there’s a completely seperate layer of evaluation or expectstions that exist that really can’t be satisfied in any sense unless you have money or something impressive but I don’t feel like that will satisfy them ever. There’s another game being played and I’m honestly glad I’m not an attractive target for it anymore or ever
Yeah, it’s just once it’s happened I can’t forget anymore, I’d always be second guessing or paranoid that it would happen again. It screwed me up for friendship in general for a while because if a guy I knew since elementary school, who I thought I’d figured out could do that, then why trust anybody? You just never quite know somebody, sometimes.
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And I sound pretty jaded when I say everything I’m saying, I don’t think everyone is like that. Some people are easier to figure out and are more straight up about everything, and some people aren’t, sometimes you get unlucky and get caught up with people who are more trouble than it’s worth.
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It really blew my mind, like, why did he have to do it that way? What happened to just speaking about how you feel?
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Yes, I think if you need to worry about someone being upset with you or having problems that they don’t wanna talk about directly then it’s not worth it. Life is hard enough without a run around from someone who’s supposed to make the world easier.