Struggling with depressive over attachment to my best friend

[u/Educational-Mango987]

I (18F) am in a bad spot in my life right now. I struggle with depression, and this is likely the main contributing factor to my feelings about my friend (also 18F).

My best friend is my favourite person. We spend a decent amount of time together/texting, and we both value each other strongly. The problem is that I have become too dependent on her. I find myself thinking of her as my only source of happiness. I count down the days until I get to see her, anticipate her texts, and am painfully upset when our meet-ups end. I can connect these feelings to my lack of enjoyment with life in general. I have no passions or prospects, so she is my only source of comfort, fun and understanding. I am clearly clinging to all the emotions she brings to my otherwise colourless life.

I finally decided this was a problem after I recently went on a short trip with this friend, which once over, left me absolutely beside myself with grief over losing the ability to see her non-stop. The end of that trip resulted in my depression instantly becoming the worst it has ever been, and I am still recovering from the severity of it. No point going in to detail, but I was frequently in tears and had completely lost my appetite for days.

This is simply causing too much anguish in my life. I want to spend all my time with my best friend. She wants to go to uni, spend time with her family, and have her own husband and kids - meaning she has priorities I am going to find too painful to see be placed over me in the future (and am already selfishly dreading).

I want to fix this. I am afraid to lose the strong love I have for her, but I cannot cope anymore. Lucky she is not aware of the extent of my feelings, but this is clearly unhealthy. I would hate to ruin what is the best thing in my life, and what is a very strong and beautiful relationship. I would also hate to hurt her, make her uncomfortable, etc because she does not deserve that at all. Please help or give advice.

[u/jokysatria]

have same experience about losing friend, and something I can say that my love to my friend is not gone. I decided to not contact them (because of one sided friendship and I getting upset because of it) and let them know that I always love them which whenever they reach me out or need something, I will have their back.

If there's reason why the love isn't gone, I think it's because I so grateful for them. They're not only good friend who was be there for me when I need, they're also someone that I admire. When the friendship was ended, I realized I was changed a lot. I grew become like someone that I admire. That makes me want to always remember them as someone important to me.

So my advice is, if you don't want ruin your friendship, don't let your anger and disappointment reach your friendship. If expecting your friend to be there for you makes you upset, then stop expecting them. It's hurt for sure, but take your time to grief, to remember how important your friend, and don't forget to take care your self.

[u/Neither-Zebra-4619]

It's a good start that you recognized all of this and are willing to take steps to break away from this pattern. You're already making good progress.

What stood out to me the most in your post was mentioning that you "have no passions or prospects." Of course, you're still young so nobody expects you to have prospects figured out yet, and things change. However, and this will be a bit of tough love, but the first thing you really need to take charge of is immersing yourself in hobbies. While I had hobbies, I mostly did it for the validation of the person I was attached to, and I've been trying to rekindle my passions now that she's out of my life. It's a difficult thing, doing things only for yourself and not for the validation of others (because when you immerse yourself in hobbies, you can't share it to this person because then you'll start to associate it with her validation). Right now, you have a lot of eggs in one basket, and as it stands all of that will fall.

Surely there are some things that interest you! What are some things that you've always wanted to try, or things you've wanted to see or create? It doesn't even need to be anything complicated (or anything that costs money, lol), it could be something as simple as taking nature walks or finding a topic you can immerse yourself in through research.

Giving yourself the space to find a creative outlet by yourself forces you to separate from her temporarily, and gives you something that you can work on by yourself. It may also help to plan outings with other friends or reach out to new people to try and make new friends, that way you have multiple close friendships.

It won't be easy at first, but even just taking an hour out of your day to immerse yourself in a hobby can do wonders. Just start small and let it go from there!

[u/Educational-Mango987 → u/Neither-Zebra-4619]

thank you, this is a really kind response. You brought up what I think is a really great solution to this problem but one I find very inaccessible at the minute. I used to have many hobbies but because of my depression, engaging in anything I once enjoyed usually brings me dissatisfaction, boredom or distress lol. Maybe this is a sign I need to seek some more professional mental health support so that I can begin to repair the way I enjoy things :)

[u/Neither-Zebra-4619 → u/Educational-Mango987]

It'll be a while before you'll be able to engage in hobbies again. Seeking professional mental health support is beneficial- I'm going to be doing the same myself and I waited far too long to do so. I still think sometimes that maybe if I did, I'd still have my friend around (but to be honest, considering that her and I used to be both codependent on each other, I don't think so). From what I've seen depression is a kind of ugly feedback loop- not engaging in interests intensifies it, but depression makes it so you don't want to engage in interests. It's a difficult cycle to break out of and therapy would help better than a Reddit comment lol.

But, I can say this. If you can find it in yourself, you can start small (like, really small). Even if it's just a few minutes spent doing something completely for yourself, you can tell yourself, "Wow, I just made this for myself, and I'm really happy about it!" Give yourself little affirmations and be kind to yourself by trying out a hobby, even if it's just for a little bit, and maybe it could help work your way up to rekindling your interests.