We haven’t been an official couple in a year (we were a couple for nine months), we were in limbo for a bit after the breakup but quickly moved to being completely platonic friends and he really had become one of my closest friends. Recently he had grown pretty quiet on me very suddenly. I definitely noticed as it went from goofy messages every day to suddenly him straight up ignoring the messages which was so out of character.
Then I get a long message: He is seeing someone new and ending our friendship. And for a bit I am stunned. Then, I am overwhelmed and the grief and panic set in. And i’m angry that I don’t even get an explanation when he was one of my best friends. So I just called. Because I knew I would be up sick all night if I didn’t know why. He cried even harder than I did. He said he’s started seeing an old acquaintance from high school and she told him she wasn’t comfortable with us being friends. We said our goodbyes and I told him I understand. That doesn’t make it any less painful.
I am heartbroken. And I can’t help but hate this new insecure person. I really care about my ex but it hurts my feelings so much that this friendship we have was so easily thrown away. I am heartbroken to lose one of my closest friends. I have no intention of disrespecting their relationship or trying to force my way back into his life and i’ve heard all the “sometimes exes just can’t be friends”. I get that. But how do you cope? I have never had this happen before and we still have some mutual friends, so there’s a strong chance we’ll see each other in the future. And just the loss of a close friend when it seems like they were given an ultimatum feels awful. He’s very kind and admittedly a bit of a pushover, so I can’t say that it’s unexpected of him to cave on the ultimatum, but it still blindsided me. I don’t know, any advice or perspective beyond “exes can’t be friends” would be helpful.
Tl;Dr: My ex and I have been completely platonic very close friends for a while now and the new person they started seeing gave him an ultimatum to cut me off. I would like advice on how to cope with the loss of a best friend due to an insecure new partner.
Comments
You can go ahead and call me insecure too, but if one of my partner’s closest friends was an ex who he talked to every single day, that’d weird me out too
It’s very hard to lose friends for any reason, but I think you need to accept that he chose to cut you off. I don’t think directing all of the negativity at the new partner and her apparent insecurity is helpful here. (Many people aren’t comfortable with their partner keeping exes as friends.)
It comes down to the fact that he chose to prioritize the new partner over your friendship. Whether or not there was an ultimatum involved, whether or not the new partner doesn’t trust that people can be platonic friends with exes — it comes down to the fact that he accepted the request. And yes, that’s going to be painful. I think it’s one of the risks of remaining friends with exes. Is there any chance he doesn’t feel things are as platonic as you do, and that could have motivated him to agree to create distance?