I f28 used to have a very close friend f31 we met six years ago at work. The relationship started a little rocky but we got to know each other little by little. Every now and then we would go for a beer after work and just chat for hours. We worked together for 2 years until covid hit, and our restaurant had to close down. However, we kept the relationship going. We would take trips together, spend holidays together and we lived really close to each other so we would hang out really often. It was the kind of relationship where you could talk about everything and nothing at the same time.
3 years ago, she got pregnant and I was really excited about it. When her baby was born I created a bond with him as well and our relationship got stronger. (Or so I thought) one thing to know about her is that she is really intense and has no filter. Whatever she feels in the moment she will say. This includes bad and good feelings. So she could be really aggressive or really loving depending on the situation. During the 6 years we spent together, I saw her cut ties with a lot of people for small reasons. (This detail is important)
Last year, we both got pregnant with girls, she was 4 months ahead of me. And I noticed how after having her second child she became even more intense, but mostly in the negative way, she was always stressed about everything and in a bad mood about everything. Like she would even yell at servers if they took to long with the food, or in general there was always something wrong about anything. I am very non confrontational and introverted so I mostly watched her and didn’t say much.
Things started to get weird when she got into a big fight with my brother. The reason for the fight was that he refused to do a free video for her daughter’s baptism. She asked him to do it and he said no, and this got her so mad that she uninvited him from the whole event. Here is the kicker, my brother was dating the baby’s godmother.. So when my friend told her about the fight and she took my brother’s side, she got even more pissed because “she was choosing a man over the frienship” after that my whole family decided to keep their distance from her because they said she was too controlling.
In February of this year, we took a trip for her kid’s birthday and it was honestly super bad. She was stressed as always, and she picked a location with zero activities for kids except a Waterpark. Long story short she got mad at me because I decided to go to the Waterpark without her. The reason she couldn’t go is that her kids got extremely sick and she expected me to wait until they felt better so we could go together. I decided to go anyway because we saw that the weather was going to be bad and I didn’t want to take my kid outside if there was a storm. When we came back from the trip we didn’t speak for about 2 months until I reached out. According to her, I left her behind while her kids were sick and therefore she couldn’t see me as her best friend anymore. Against my better judgment I insisted that we had gone through too much to throw away the friendship fur such a small disagreement.
It’s been months since that conversation, and I told her that I didn’t see her any different and that if she ever needed me I would be here. But clearly things are over. If I text she gives short 1 word answers, even for my daughter’s birthday she sent a message that just didn’t seem genuine (she makes a very big deal of birthdays so the cold message told me what I needed to know)
Here is the thing, I am aware that she is very toxic but for some reason I don’t seem to be able to let things go. I really miss what we had. Im not sure if it i just got used to be with her or what. I really want to move on but as much as I try im not able to stop caring. I miss her kids and whatever plans we had for the future. How can I get over it?
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Have you had close friends before her? You know she’s hard work and toxic, are you sure you’re actually missing her and not missing a close friendship?
Personally, I’d stop contacting her, and look into ways of making some new friends to hang out with. Getting over a friendship is like getting over a relationship, you need to walk away and wait for the feelings to settle.
I am much older than you are and have been through losing friends many times. Over the past decade, I’ve been through some changes that caused the loss of some very long term ones that I thought would last until the end of my life. The shedding was necessary but still painful. A couple of months ago, I read an article that helped me a lot. It was about the mercurial nature of adult friendships and mentioned a statistic about the average duration of most. Seven years. That’s all…just 7 years. I started looking back and realized I’d been beating myself up when I was hitting the average or above in most of mine. You 2 lasted the average amount of time. You were a good, reliable friend to her when she was a bit…difficult. You let this heal the same way you do a relationship breakup – with time and extra treats and pampering on occasion. One day you’ll be remembering when the friendship worked and glad you have those memories. I still care about the people I’m not in touch with anymore and I’m glad for the room shedding old ones made in my life to move on to new ones.