So I have this friend...

[freakykat]

I've known them since I was fifteen years old and I love them a lot. I think they are one of the best people I've ever met. We've been through A LOT together in seventeen years.



It seems like I'm losing them. This person has a habit of picking the wrong people to want to enter into relationships with and they sometimes lose themselves to that particular goal. It's nothing new. Has been happening for years. They can never see what's in front of them and tend to chase the elusive.

(For example the person they are currently dating will be moving to another state to start graduate school. They've only been dating a few weeks. My friend wants a committment that this other person can't give and the more they say no, the more my friend wants it because they are stupid.)

And even though I spent years (I'm talking YEARS) a little bit in love with them (and probably will ALWAYS be a little bit in love with them), I dealt with them either pretending they don't see it or really just not seeing it. I'm okay with it and moved past it long ago.

The problem is that it's never felt as personal and hurtful as it does right now that I've been pushed aside.

The thing is...I don't know what to do this time.

Because I just don't really care enough to hang in there until they get dumped (which inevitable they will) and they come to me for comfort/advice.

But I don't want to just end an seventeen year friendship like that. I just don't know how to approach them or even if I could, what I could say that won't piss them off.

*headdesk*

So, I'm just going to hide under my covers and cry and eat ice cream and write/read.

That sounds like a plan.

Comments

[mdfawn.livejournal.com]

Okay, so here's my two cents. First, I didn't have the whole being a little bit in love with them for years thing but I did have a best friend that I was almost literally joined at the hip with from kindergarden to the time I got married (24 yrs). That a friggin long time.

Every life's milestone we meet together and concurred and we dealt with the loves and losses and helped each other through them. But like your friend she always, ALWAYS, made the wrong choice when it came to a boyfriend. After we got out of high school and we both started working I finally saw the pattern that each and every relationship of her took and eventually went up in flames. Even pointed it out to her on numerous occasions and she even admitted I was correct but still . . . the same old, same old.

Eventually around the time I had my first child (30 yrs) we just fell out of contact. For seven years I didn't hear anything from her even though she lived in the same small community. I did see her a few years ago at my father-in-law's funeral and surprise, surprise it was like time had stood still for her. She was still unhappy and in-between relationships. We promised to keep in touch but unsurprisingly she didn't.

I guess what I'm trying in a way too long post to say is that the friendships that we've had when we were younger and grew up with can go one of two ways (and there's really nothing that YOU can do to change this). 1) You both grow and the relationship evolves or 2) You grow and the other doesn't and the relationship eventually just dies.

You can't do anything, Kat, to change her/him. That's totally up to them. If they keep making the same mistakes they will continue to get the same results and unfortunately at your ages I think your friend's patten is pretty much set. You, by your own admission, have moved on and grown. You can try and be there but eventually like summer follows spring it will all play out again and again.

My advise, be there to talk but I think it might be time to cut your emotional losses and move on completely from this friendship. You deserve to be treated so much better by your friends.

Just my long winded two cents. :)

Anna Marie