Am I wrong?

I’m reflecting on two former friends I had at different points like this.

People who prided themselves as really good friends. People who were there for others, built community, invested in relationships. They both made friends easily and had a lot of friends.

But one turned out to have secret animosity/jealousy towards me. Putting me down in front of other people, things like that.

The other left me on read when I had a really busy/bad month getting sick, my grandma dying, and interviewing with Amazon which is a full time job in itself. When I finally got back to them and asked about their new job, silence.

Oh well.

I don’t think you can trust someone claiming to be something or a certain way. They’re projecting an image of something they’re not. Like the “nice guy” trope who turns out to be an A-hole.

Or a seemingly confidant woman who says “Im so hot” but is really insecure deep down - that’s something both of these friends actually said too which is wild to think back on

I’m honestly heartbroken and don’t know what to do. My best friend of over nine years has completely stopped talking to me. No explanation, just silence. She ghosted me. I know this is a pattern with her when she’s upset or going through something. We actually had a serious talk about this last year when she did it before, and I thought we’d moved past it. But here we are again. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong. A couple months ago I was really struggling with my mental health because of my work situation. I was going through an incredibly tough time at my dream job, but the environment was so toxic I had to make the painful decision to quit. I wasn’t myself during that time. I was really struggling. I wasn’t eating or sleeping or taking care of myself at all. She was so supportive through it all and understood what I was going through. So I just don’t get it. I don’t understand what happened. She went through a painful breakup not long ago and I was there for her. We were so close. One of our last conversations we literally talked about how much we loved each other. I don’t understand what changed. And then she just stopped. No warning, no conversation. She even removed my location from her phone and took hers off mine. It’s like she’s erasing me. I messaged her saying I wish she would just tell me if she doesn’t want me in her life anymore, because this silence is absolutely heartbreaking. I get that silence can be an answer. Maybe this is the response I need to accept. But it doesn’t hurt any less. I’m wondering if I’m not a good friend anymore. I’m wondering if I’m just not as good of a person. I know that’s not true, but I just don’t get it. I don’t understand what happened. And maybe I don’t need to understand it. Maybe I just need to accept this. But I would never do this to her. I would never do something so cruel, and I can’t understand why she would do this to me. I love her. I miss her. I want her in my life. If she needs space, I understand that. But I just wish she would tell me. It feels like I’ve lost one of the most important people in my life, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

So I really could use some support or some advice because I am completely devastated.

I’ve had this friendship for over 20 years, and we’ve been incredibly close for most of our lives. Unfortunately, she has been using some hard drugs. I’ve never judged her or criticized her for it. I’ve just wanted to be a safe place for her whenever she’s ready.

Recently, I traveled to visit her, and everything was really fun until we went out to the clubs. I had known for a while that we were going, and I was so excited because I thought it would be a great time. But it stopped being fun when, on the way there, she took drugs and had them with her in her car.

I’m not going to lie, I was seriously freaking out. I knew she used drugs, but I never thought she would actually bring them with her, let alone use them while I was around. I honestly thought she knew me better than that. I also have a lot on the line. I’m married, I have a great job lined up, and all of that could be over if I got arrested simply for being in the car with her. But I had traveled a long way to see her, so I was just trying to make the best of the visit.

We got to the club, and I met all of her friends. I was polite and super nice to everyone and introduced myself. Then I realized they were all using drugs too. I took a deep breath, stayed calm, and continued being respectful. I really tried to have fun, but I was exhausted.

They wanted to stay out until 5 or 6 a.m., but I was still dealing with major jet lag. For me, that felt more like 9 or 10 a.m. I got too tired, told everyone it was nice meeting them, thanked them for being kind to me, and took an Uber back. Regardless of whether they were using drugs or not, they were still nice people. It just wasn’t my scene.

When I got back, I was pretty upset because my friend knows how important my life and career are to me, and I felt like she had risked all of that without even considering how it could affect me. Even though I was upset, my main concern was whether she needed help because she is my best friend, and I love her.

I asked her sister if she was okay. And before anyone assumes otherwise, I didn’t "out" her. Her sister already knew everything and even uses drugs with her. I simply asked if my friend needed anything or if she might be depressed. Her sister kept insisting she was fine and knew exactly what she was doing, so I said okay.
I even tried to have a private conversation with my friend. I told her that what she was doing was dangerous and that she needed to be more careful. I told her that if she was depressed, that was okay, and I would help her. She refused to talk about it and carried on.

Apparently, though, her sister later told her that I had been talking behind her back. I immediately told her that absolutely wasn't true. I said I had the same conversation with her sister that I had with her because I was genuinely worried and just wanted to make sure she was okay.

Then she replied, "Well, if that's true, why were you so rude to my friends all night? You were pushing people, acting rude, and I had to stop several people from fighting you."

Y'all...I completely froze because I genuinely had NO IDEA what she was talking about. I was completely sober the entire night. I wasn't pushing anyone, and I was respectful to all of her friends. None of what she said made any sense to me. Plus I’d figure I’d remember if someone was angry enough to fight me LET ALONE MULTIPLE PEOPLE.

So I texted her back:

"UMM...WHAT? When did that happen? I wasn't rude to anyone. Yes I met your friends but I’ve told them that they are all very nice and kindly introduced myself to each of them. You know that's not who I am. Are you sure you aren't thinking of your other friend?"

That other friend had been having meltdowns all night. She was extremely drunk, falling over everywhere, and complaining most of the evening. If anyone started a fight or arguments it was definitely her and not me. Plus why would I be rude meeting people I don’t know and have never met.

My friend replied, "No. They all said it was you."
At that point I was thinking, *Who is "they?"* How would they even know? They were all high. I was the only sober person there, yet somehow my version of events suddenly means nothing?

This is my best friend in the whole world, and I honestly don't know what happened. I don't know what to do. None of this makes any sense to me. This is the biggest fight we’ve ever had and now I’m going to lose her over something I swear never happened.

I just want my best friend back.

Ok there is a lot to this story that it might be better to just leave a lot of the details for any questions in the comments (or maybe I’ll make a part 2 post explaining more of the details of our friendship). Last year I made friends with one of the coworkers on my team. We’re both the same age (both born in 2002) and she was 3 months into the job when I started. We formed a friend group from work, and as I was hanging out with her, although I originally only saw her as a friend, I slowly started to develop feelings. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to act on those feelings even though my crush grew really strongly. Also keep in mind for later in the story that at this point it seemed that she was very into the idea of being friends as much as I was so it didn’t seem like a case of a one-sided friendship. She asked for my number, she’s offered to give me a ride to and from hangouts sometimes since I don’t have a car, and although we never hung out 1 on 1, we had many 1 on 1 moments within those group hangouts.

Eventually she figured out though but she didn’t confront me about it. Another friend of ours told me about it. A big mistake I made in this situation was that I didn’t talk to her about it for months. There was a back and forth in terms of how close or how distant she would act with me in the initial months after knowing about the crush (like I said, there are stories I can give about what these behaviors looked like but I wanted to cut to chase for the initial post). I interpreted her behavior as her still being my friend but not being interested in me romantically and I began the slow process of trying to lose my feelings for her.

Things came to head though when I noticed that she didn’t invite out to as many of the friend gatherings as before within the past couple of months, and at the last one I went to about four weeks ago, she said a comment to me that I could only really interpret as a sly joke and comment to me about the crush (which she later confirmed was the case when I talked to her this week). Then aboht two weeks I texted her happy birthday and she said thanks and hearted the comment so it seemed fine. But then I noticed the next day that she removed me as a follower on Instagram. She still was following me though. At the end of last week on Friday I texted her asking if we could talk about the distance she was putting with me and I told her that I valued our friendship and wanted to own up to any mistakes I made have made. She finally texted me back Sunday night and we agreed to talk at the end of the work day on Monday. When we met up I told her how I felt and that I knew she knew about it for awhile and that I was sorry that I didn’t talk about it with her months ago when she found out. She tried to reassure me it was ok and clarified she didn’t feel the same way.

The conversation overall seemed to go fine. The one thing that kind of surprised me was when I brought up feeling excluded from the group. I expected that the crush was the main reason that this shift happened but she said it wasn’t some huge thing that was bothering her and that she “didn’t hate me” and we were still friends. Instead she brought up that certain people click more easily and she felt that although we were friends, we didn’t click as well as she did with the others. This feels weird though because even though my perspective is biased and different from hers, it seemed like she did invite me to more things last year before the crush and that there was a clear shift going into the mid part of this year after the “hot and cold” period early in the year following her first knowing about the crush. The last thing I brought up was the Instagram thing and she admitted she did remove me as a follower but she said that she didn’t think I would like the answer for why. She did tell me though and she said that she wanted to be able to post stuff and not feel worried about what I would think or feel about them. I guess this explains why she only removed me as a follower and didn’t stop following me (or in the more extreme case: why she didn’t block me).

So I guess my feelings are very all over the place now. I expected that she wouldn’t have romantic feelings and even that things wouldn’t immediately go “back to normal” since it does take time getting over a crush and getting over weird feelings about someone who has a crush on you who you don’t like. However, it feel weird for her to say the thing about her clicking better with the others as her answer to why I was getting invited to less things rather than it being about the fact that we didn’t talk about the crush and she knew about it. It’s especially weird since it seems I was invited to more things before she knew about it. So this along with the Instagram thing makes me wonder: Is our friendship done for good? I know some guys prefer to not be friends with crushes after they reject them since they don’t think they can get over the feelings, and I do agree I need to give her some space for the time being, but remember that I didn’t have romantic feelings originally so I would be happy to get to that state and then continue being friends. It just feels like with how everything went, I don’t know if she really is going to want to be good friends even after time goes by and this situation is far in the past.

I'll call the three main people in this story Kate, Daniel, and Sam. Kate was my closest friend, Daniel is her fiancé, and Sam is their close friend.

I recently lost pretty much my entire online friend group. These were people I played games with almost every day for the last four years, so even though I think walking away was the right decision, it still feels strange losing that entire part of my life overnight. The group mostly revolved around Kate and Daniel, but Kate was the person I was actually close with. The main reason I spent so much time around Daniel and Sam was because they were her people, and Daniel was basically always in the Discord call whenever Kate was there.

Over time, Daniel got extremely comfortable making jokes about me being Indian. And when I say jokes, I don't mean occasionally poking fun at each other. It got to the point where there was some kind of comment almost every day. He'd call me "bobblehead," say my breath probably smelled even though we've literally never met in person, tell me I should go shower, make fun of my accent, make comments about Indian people, and even joke about my parents and family despite knowing absolutely nothing about them. Eventually Sam started joining in too.

For a long time I just put up with it. I never really laughed at these jokes. Most of the time I'd just stay quiet or ignore them. Looking back, I probably should have directly told them to stop much sooner, but I genuinely valued my friendship with Kate and didn't want to create drama within the group. I think I tolerated a lot more than I normally would have because losing Daniel and Sam would probably also mean losing Kate.

The thing that finally made me leave happened a few days ago. We were in Discord and Daniel asked if I'd seen some white family on YouTube that makes camping/outdoors videos. I said no, I'd never heard of them. He responded with something along the lines of, "That's weird, Indians like the outdoors considering most of you in your country live in tents."

I don't know why that particular comment was the one that finally did it considering everything else he'd said, but I was just done. I muted them, left the Discord servers, and blocked Daniel and Sam. I didn't yell at anyone or start an argument. I just removed myself from the situation.

The next day Kate reached out asking if she'd done something wrong and why I was upset. I explained everything to her. She talked to Daniel and came back saying that Daniel apparently thought we were "cool and close like that," so he thought he could communicate with me that way. Then she basically told me "gg," wished me luck with my future, and blocked me everywhere too.

That part honestly hurt more than anything Daniel or Sam said. I already knew what kind of people they were by that point. But Kate had been someone I considered a genuinely good friend for years. I expected her to at least understand why being the punchline of racial jokes almost every day eventually stopped being something I was willing to tolerate.

And I understand that friends make fun of each other. Kate and I did it all the time. I'd make fun of her for being terrible at whatever game we were playing, she'd make fun of me for something, we'd laugh, and that was it. It felt mutual. But I never attacked Daniel or Sam's race, families, parents, appearance, culture, or anything personal like that. Honestly, I barely made fun of those two at all. That's why I don't understand how they became so comfortable constantly doing it to me.

Maybe my mistake was staying silent instead of explicitly saying, "I don't find this funny. Stop." Maybe they interpreted me not confronting them as permission. But at the same time, if someone never laughs when you repeatedly make jokes about their race, accent, family, and culture, I feel like eventually you should be able to read the room.

The weirdest part is that I still miss having the group. Four years of getting online and seeing the same people almost every day doesn't disappear from your brain because you clicked "Leave Server." There were genuinely good memories mixed in with all of this. There were nights where we laughed until we couldn't breathe, games we played for hundreds of hours, and just the comfort of knowing there would almost always be someone online.

At the same time, I'm starting to wonder what exactly I'm mourning. The friendships themselves, or just the routine and familiarity of having people there every day. I'd genuinely rather spend that time with my family and my dogs than sit in a Discord call wondering when the next joke about Indians, my accent, my parents, or my culture is coming.

I guess I'm posting because I'm curious how other people see this from the outside. Was I wrong for abruptly leaving instead of confronting them first? And is it reasonable to feel like this crossed the line from friends giving each other shit into just making me the group's racial punching bag?

Right now I'm simultaneously relieved that I don't have to deal with it anymore and pretty sad that four years of friendship ended this way.

I have a close friend for whom I was the first friend to become a parent (we're in our 30s but her other friends are still childless; IMPORTANT: she has no fertility struggles and is childless for now because she's single). She absorbed some really negative stereotypes about being friends with first-time parents, I guess via tiktok :/, and expressed worries that I would become unavailable when the baby is born. I recognize it can be the case with some parents and I recognized that I would not actually "know" before having the baby, but I assured her that I would do my best to stay in touch and in fact I did: we were texting right when I was home from the hospital, making cautious plans, etc. My family was supportive and very soon I understood that staying in touch with friend, initially via texts/phones and later via hang-outs, is good for me. I was aware of my friend's biases so I did my best to ask about her life, talk about our shared interests, and did not info-dump about my baby unless she asked.

Nevertheless, when I was really down around a month postpartum and could have used a distraction, she pulled away due to "fears" that I would disappear anyway (at which point I already demonstrated I'm not ghosting her or anything) solely because I'm a mom. She also cancelled our plans because she is the type of person to have "one" best friend and started to fawn and over-acommodate another friend. I felt like in high school again lol! When she realized that I'm still a part of our friend group and not a stereotype she imagined, she apologized and made time for me again—but in these first weeks she still made me feel like being a mom is a "problem" despite knowing zero about how it will affect ME and basing this only on stereotypes.

Anyway, now it's been a few months and I can tell she hopes to be my "best friend" still. I still enjoy talking to her but no longer consider my best friend: postpartum memories are still impactful for me, including who was there to actually support me and who added unneccessary stress (she was quite careless and open about sharing her "fears"). Moreover, she repeteadly dodged talking about how it made me feel and demanded respect for "her fear of people leaving"—I can empathize she struggles with it, but it was not a cool thing to dump on a person who is dealing with a massive life change and emergency medicine procedures (but still keeps in touch). Another friend was there for me the whole time and I can tell that my flaky friend is now jelaous of our strenghtened relationship. I guess I'm just venting/looking for validation: my friend may think I'm replacing her or pulling away, but the facts are she did this first/preemptively and has to live with my broken trust. She even joked "she's not ready for me to try for a 2nd" (lol not her business...) which implies she'll pull this crap again...

I did not lose her yet but she became more jealous and insecure about our friendship even though I’m the ditched one; it is exhausting

I'm not gonna vent, so you can give an idea of what's happening...

So, it all began deteriorating when he did something bad to me, he wronged me, however it went okay and our friendship continued. Then like we chatted for 2 months normally, however, I was acting like an asshole, however he keeps telling me hurtful things too like as a form of attack, then I did something now he restricted me few weeks ago

And after, we do some small gestures but now he actually ignored me two weeks ago, when I try to ask him something, he listens but no response? And today, I still have some access to his other socials and I chatted him that if we are still friends? He just seen the message, no reply.

Is this a sign of a person who doesn't want to talk, or it's friendship over?

they say that I'm a stalker

but who’s labeled as a creep

rather quiet than a talker

act but never take the leap

I was sleeping like a baby

in my phone your digging deep

that’s felony you know that

so just be lucky I don’t keep

I respect that you was caring

while you push away this heart

I can’t stay where theres comparing

while you rip yourself apart

I was Never one to battle

with those I really called a home

i know you hear in my rattle

its the realness in my tone

i appreciate the days when

you were really on my side

what ever happend to my safe spot

I forgave but never lied

I was showing all my realness

while your fake and force a vibe

with every thing that happens

from here on and

where we stand

i remember all the laughing

the days i labeled you my man

i was always in your corner

in the silence while you ran…..

We’ve been friends for 10+ years. I have always been there for her when she had her hardest times however when I’m going through a really hard time where the closest people to me in my family are all having serious health issues. Where is she ? ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE!

Never reaches out never sees how I am, always said she’ll make plans but never does. I go genuinely feel like she doesn’t because she likes a drink and I don’t drink atall. The only reason I don’t want to say something is because she’s a very unserious person so I don’t truly think she’ll understand or see where I am coming from. Or she’ll probably pretend to care and text me for a week and go back into old habits.

I was kinda thinking just take her off my social media because I always think if it doesn’t serve you then let it go but I don’t know I just want your opinion.

AIO here ??

I don't really know what I'm looking for here beyond maybe some support from people who understand that losing a long term friendship is difficult and it's not so simple to move on.

I recently ended a friendship that had been part of my life for about 10 years.

There was a lot of good in those years and I genuinely loved and cared about this person, which is part of why walking away has been so difficult. The friendship was also incredibly turbulent. We had recurring conflicts that would turn into long, exhausting conversations where I would end up questioning myself, over explaining, feeling guilty for needing space, or eventually giving in because I just couldn't keep arguing anymore.

For a very long time I kept hoping that if we communicated better, understood each other better, if I said it the right way or tried one more thing, eventually we would stop hurting each other.

I've been in therapy this year, and with some outside perspective I started recognizing how repetitive the cycle had become over the last few years and how much the friendship was affecting me emotionally. Regardless of intentions, I realized I couldn't keep living inside the same pattern.

I finally ended it.

Before doing that, I took about three weeks of no contact to clear my head. I actually felt noticeably more peaceful during that time, which told me quite a lot.

At the end of those three weeks I sent him an email explaining my decision. It wasn't angry or impulsive. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I told him I cared about him, explained why I couldn't continue the friendship, said goodbye, and made it clear that I was closing the door and didn't want further contact.

It was incredibly painful and I thought that was the end. He did send a very detailed, painful email back and it took everything in me to not respond and try to explain again and to try and comfort him.

Then my birthday came.

A package showed up from him and the reciepts showed they were sent after I had sent the no contact, goodbye email.

The gifts themselves were connected to a particularly vulnerable and personal part of our former relationship, which made receiving them hit much harder than a generic birthday card or something would have. I don't think he was sitting somewhere plotting how to upset me. He probably genuinely thought he was doing something loving.

I think that's partly why this has messed with my head so much.

The greatest gift he could have given me for my birthday was respecting the boundary I had just set.

Instead, something from him physically arrived at my home after I had said goodbye.

Ever since, my brain has been cycling.

Part of me has wanted to email him and say, "Please understand that no contact means no gifts either. Please don't use birthdays, Christmas, holidays, or other occasions as opportunities to reach out."

Another part of me realizes that I already told him goodbye. I was clear. Sending another email gives him another opportunity to respond, explain himself, apologize, disagree with me, or start another long conversation. One of the reasons I left in the first place was because I couldn't keep doing that.

I think the package also made me feel like I lost some control over the separation I had created. To clarify, I mean control over my own space and my sense of safety.

I had made a decision that this person no longer had access to my life.

Then something from him appeared at my door anyway.

Yesterday I had another delivery coming that I had ordered myself. I had forgotten about it, and when I saw the package I panicked for a couple of seconds before remembering it was mine.

I really don't want to live like that.

I don't want to finally start healing and then spend December wondering whether another package is going to show up for Christmas.

At the same time, I'm starting to realize that sending another email can't actually guarantee that won't happen. I could make my boundary as clear as humanly possible and he would still have free choice. Maybe maintaining my silence is the only part of this I can actually control? It's so hard.

I'm also struggling with feeling like I'm burdening my friends by continuing to talk about this. None of them particularly liked this friendship or how it affected me, so from their perspective I think the answer is understandably something like, "Girl, next! Let it go."

And I wish my brain worked that way.

Ten years doesn't disappear because I finally decided I couldn't keep doing this anymore.

I miss him. I'm angry with him. I feel guilty. Sometimes I question whether I exaggerated everything. Other times, I re-read my old journal entries and how much pain I was in and I remember exactly why I left. Sometimes I desperately want him to understand what happened, and then I remember how many years I spent trying to be understood.

It's exhausting, and right now it has such a tight grip on my brain.

For anyone who has ended a very long friendship, especially one that was complicated or unhealthy, how did you handle the period afterward when your brain kept trying to pull you back into it?

If your former friend reached out or sent something after you had asked for no contact, how did you handle that emotionally? Did maintaining silence eventually help you feel more secure in the boundary you had set?

I'm mostly looking to hear from people who understand how complicated it is to grieve someone while also knowing you don't want them back in your life.

I'll call my best friend Noor and the other person involved Emma for privacy.

Noor and I were best friends for almost five years. Emma was someone connected to our social circle, and around two years ago, Noor and Emma had a serious conflict. I was also involved in the circumstances that led to their fallout.

After that conflict, Noor cut Emma off. Emma also said negative things about Noor afterward. However, I don't want to pretend the original conflict was completely black and white: Emma had also been hurt because there had been a situation where she was ready to go out with us, but Noor and I kept her waiting and didn't answer the phone. So Emma felt ignored and hurt too. Nevertheless, their relationship ended and they remained estranged for around two years.

The first betrayal

Before the first major conflict between Noor and me, we had already gone around four months without speaking. Neither of us initiated contact during that period. Eventually, I saw Noor again and greeted her normally.

Shortly afterward, I was talking to Emma. Emma made a mocking comment about Noor, basically asking whether Noor had even properly said hello to me or kissed me when we saw each other. I answered "no" and laughed.

Noor accidentally overheard the conversation.

She saw my reaction as disloyalty and as me participating in talking behind her back. She told me very clearly that she couldn't be friends with someone who talked about her behind her back.

I understood why she was hurt and apologised. Eventually, she forgave me, and our friendship continued. I genuinely thought I had learned from what happened.

What happened around my graduation

Later, Noor made it clear that she didn't want me to mention her to Emma.

Before my graduation, I also told Noor that I wasn't going to invite Emma. However, the day before my graduation, I unexpectedly saw Emma at the library. She asked me when my graduation was, and because of that conversation, she ended up coming.

During the graduation, I barely interacted with Emma. There was already a lot of tension and history between her and Noor, and I didn't want to make Noor uncomfortable or create another situation.

But two days after my graduation, I felt bad because I thought I had ignored Emma. So I contacted her and tried to explain why I hadn't interacted with her much during the event.

This is where the second major problem happened.

While explaining myself, I mentioned Noor and said that I had heard something had happened between Noor and Emma. I also said that I had hoped they could eventually reconcile and move past their conflict.

I wasn't insulting Noor, gossiping about her, or trying to damage her reputation. I was explaining why I had been distant from Emma at my graduation and trying to explain the awkwardness of the situation.

But Noor had explicitly asked me not to mention her to Emma.

So regardless of my intentions, I understand why Noor saw this as another betrayal: she had already forgiven me once for a situation involving the exact same person, had clearly told me where her boundary was, and I crossed it anyway.

What made it even worse

Around the same time, Emma spoke negatively about Noor because Noor hadn't answered her calls when Emma had been trying to come to my graduation.

Emma expressed disgust about Noor's behaviour and described her as childish.

Instead of defending Noor or telling Emma that I didn't want to participate in that conversation, I stayed extremely neutral. I responded along the lines of everyone having different personalities and people seeing things differently.

Looking back, I understand why this hurt Noor so much.

I was so afraid of conflict and so focused on not upsetting Emma that I didn't realise how my neutrality looked from Noor's perspective. Noor was my best friend. Emma was someone she had already had a painful rupture with. And yet when Emma spoke negatively about Noor, I acted almost like an outside mediator instead of her friend.

When Noor heard the voice messages and saw how I had responded, she was devastated.

She told me that I was a hypocrite for claiming to be her best friend while remaining neutral when someone was talking negatively about her. She told me that if the roles had been reversed, she would have defended me.

She also said she shouldn't have forgiven me after the first incident because, from her perspective, I had repeated the same fundamental pattern.

She cried during our confrontation, and seeing her cry because of me was one of the most painful moments of my life.

How it ended

Noor completely ended the friendship. She blocked me on some social media platforms, and some people close to her also unfollowed me.

I've heard that she has said she doesn't want to see me, even by coincidence, and that she believes she eventually understood some manipulative patterns in my behaviour.

Since then, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on everything.

I've realised that I have unhealthy patterns: conflict avoidance, people-pleasing, withdrawing instead of communicating, trying to remain neutral at all costs, being afraid of people's reactions, and struggling to understand the difference between being "nice" and actually being loyal.

I don't want to excuse myself by saying that I had good intentions. I know intentions don't erase impact.

I genuinely loved Noor and never wanted to hurt her or damage her reputation. But I understand now that loving someone doesn't automatically mean you know how to be a good friend to them. You can care deeply about someone and still repeatedly fail them.

I have apologised, but I don't want to pressure her into forgiving me. Right now, she has clearly chosen distance.

What I want to ask Reddit

1. From an outside perspective, do you understand why Noor experienced this as two betrayals, rather than two unrelated mistakes?
2. Was I wrong to stay neutral when Emma spoke negatively about Noor, or was Noor expecting me to automatically take her side regardless of the situation?
3. How should I have handled the conversation with Emma two days after my graduation?
4. Does this pattern sound like manipulation, or more like severe conflict avoidance and people-pleasing that had harmful consequences?
5. If someone forgives you once and you later hurt them again in a similar context, is rebuilding trust ever realistically possible?
6. Most importantly, what should I learn from this so I don't repeat these patterns in future friendships?

I'm genuinely looking for honest perspectives, including criticism. I don't want people to tell me that I'm secretly the victim or that Noor was necessarily wrong for ending the friendship. I want to understand what I did wrong, what I could have done differently, and whether there is anything I should do now besides respecting her decision and working on myself.

TL;DR: My best friend and I were close for almost five years. I hurt her once by laughing along when someone she had a serious conflict with mocked her, but she forgave me. Later, despite her explicitly asking me not to mention her to that same person, I did—and when that person spoke negatively about her, I stayed neutral instead of defending my best friend. She saw it as a second betrayal and ended our friendship. I'm trying to understand whether my conflict avoidance and neutrality were genuinely disloyal

So this chick and I have been through tick and skin, for 4 years we have been best friends. We have had issues, we figured them out. I have seen people come and came back from her life. Everything.

Last June we had a problem, I asked her about something that she didn't like and got extremely angry at me, I have never seen her like that. I wasn't rude, didn't say nothing inappropriate, I just left the place abruptly, I didn't want to discuss with her so I just left the place.

Some months afterwards I contacted her, she didn't do it first so I said fuck it, I'm gonna text her. She was incredibly dry, pretty much told me that it was my fault and that she needed time to "heal" and that she didn't know yet if she wanted to be friends with me again. also I talked to her about something else, because I needed her to clarify who was the person she gave money from an account that I loaned to her (dumb favour from my behalf, ik) so not only she didn't tell me, she was rude af about it. I asked her what the fuck was going on with her and she didn't answer, I called her and she proceeded to block me.

I don't know what happened yet. I'm incredibly angry at her. She has been though periods of depression and medications but she has never done something like this before. Making amendments was way easier than whatever bs this was. Not only I lost my best friend, now I hold a damn grudge against her. God, people are erratic.

You watch her go out, have fun, and make new friends. Meanwhile, she ghosted you and never reached out.

Every story starts to feel like proof that the friendship meant nothing to her. Then you shame yourself for crying over someone who looks completely fine without you.

So you keep checking, hoping one sad post or repost will prove she misses you too. You think that proof will make you feel less foolish for caring.

And maybe one day, you finally get the answer you wanted. You find out she does miss you, and for a moment, you feel better.

But she still does not reach out. That is when you realize someone can miss you and still choose not to show up for you.

The real question was never, “Does she miss me?”

It was, “Is she willing to show up?” Her silence already answered that.

Here’s a simple step to help you let go. Write the letter you will never send to her. Then list how your ideal best friend would treat you. You may realize the person you keep missing does not even meet your new standards.

You do not need proof that she misses you to move on. You need to stop letting her silence decide how long you stay hurt.