Losing a friend is always difficult. Whether you are the one that made the decision to pull back or if your friend made the decision for the both or you. The good news is, time heals (or mends) all.
The following stories share the end of friendships from all angles.
Find the original source at the end of the article.
He Left The Internet To Focus On The Real World
“Several years ago, I met this guy on a language forum. His posts impressed me, they were always intelligent, well-reasoned and kind. Eventually we started to exchange e-mails. And these e-mails started to touch on all kinds of subjects, including philosophy, politics, religion, relationship issues (he’s married, I have a boyfriend of many years) and other matters. We could talk about anything.
He visited Germany a few times as well and spent almost a month as our guest. His wife decided to stay at home; she hates traveling.
We’d occasional have long Skype calls and e-mail each other several times a day to share thoughts or request the other’s opinion and despite the distance I considered him one of my best friends.
Then, last November I got a single-paragraph e-mail from him saying that he was going to shut down all his online profiles and focus on the ‘real world.’ It was very impersonal, like a mass e-mail. Of course I was astonished and tried to learn more, but that was basically it. He didn’t reply to my Christmas greeting, which I had sent to his work e-mail. And that’s how I lost a very good friend.”
The Cold Reality
“You couldn’t separate us.
We played hacky sack, partied, and spent every lunch together.
For four years, we shared every secret.
I knew he had family problems. But yet and still he had a rich dad, and I though how bad could his life really be?
It wasn’t until I visited his house did I understand how bad.
Page break after this block_viewagenda
Page Break
Content Block 4
WYSIWYG
‘That’s all you have in your fridge? Why is your pool green?’
After his parents had divorced, his dad let the house go and stopped taking care of his children.
I couldn’t understand why a wealthy man would refuse to spend money to help his kids living in his mansion.
My best friend became self-conscious about his life when he wanted to have a girlfriend.
He needed new clothes and a car.
He started hustling – flipping laptops and old belongings.
I thought nothing of it.
One day he explained to me about how he ripped off a poor person by selling them a broken laptop.
He didn’t think twice about it.
At that moment, I knew the same could happen to me.
Our relationship began to fragment.
Then it got worse when he began flipping cars.
‘The car died on my way to sell it to this guy. I had to jump start it. And I still made the sale.’
He changed.
He never arrived on time for events or meetings.
He lied to everyone around him to get what he wanted.
I tried to stay his friend, but I couldn’t depend on him anymore. Our communication went from every day to every week to once every couple of months.
He became a club promoter.
I founded a startup.
We talk to each other twice a year. I hope he’s changed again for the better.
I don’t think I’ll convince myself to take the risk of finding out.
I miss the good times we had.
But sometimes we need to move on from those around us who lose their way. It’s a cold reality that only makes us stronger.”
‘We Fell In Love’
“I fell in love with her and she fell for me too, eventually. And this was the end of our much cultivated friendship.
In the process of cultivating a romantic relationship, we forgot the most important thing.
‘Love is friendship set on fire.’
I hope no one repeats the mistake of killing a friendship for the love they have committed.”
The End Of A Bromance
“We were both in our late twenties at the time. We had met while working for the same employer and were like kindred spirits. We hung out all the time, we went to concerts, bars and pool halls together. When our apartment leases expired, we were living with different people. He had a roommate he couldn’t stand and I was living with an ex-girlfriend…I really needed to get out there!
So we moved into a two bedroom apartment together and became almost inseparable. It was the most intense platonic relationship I ever experienced and it went on for a few years. Then one day, he meet a woman and fell madly in love with her.
Soon he was talking about moving out and getting a place with her. It just so happened I met a woman right around the same time. Before I knew it we were both enveloped in our respective partners’ lives. We no longer had time to spend together. We rarely met for dinner anymore and certainly did not do activities together like we used too.
Then he got married and soon after I got married. The gulf between increased even more. Although my partner did not mind me spending time with my buddy, his wife seemed jealous of our bond.
This caused a rift in our relationship and soon we were only hanging out once every few months. Nowadays, we live in different states. I’m divorced but he is still married. We exchange the occasional email or text but the relationship is no longer the same.
Once, in grad school, one of my counselling professors loudly proclaimed: My people are hurting!
What he meant was that many heterosexual men in his age group (middle age) suffered from intense loneliness. Many men, according to him, by this stage in life had solely focused on their marriages, children and careers. They had neglected developing satisfying peer friendships.
By the time many men reached the pinnacle of their careers their social lives were completely dependent on their families. The male buddies they had when they were in their teens and twenties were no longer there. Suicide is rampant among men in this age group.
And whenever I get a random text from my former ‘best friend for life’…I think about my professor’s lecture and as a professional psychotherapist and a man…I feel sad.”
‘She Said I Was Causing Her To Sin’
“She became too religious. ‘You are going to ruin my relationship with God’, she said to me.
We were friends from grade school to high school! We did everything together. We had so much in common and we loved hanging out whenever we could. We were those cheesy friends that pinky promised to be friends forever.
During the end of high school she became so religious and started wearing very conservative clothing. She didn’t color or cut her hair because it was against her beliefs. She even told me she will never get married because she wanted to devote her life to God.
Almost like a nun. She started to judge me and quoted versus from the Bible. I was never against any of her beliefs but it seemed as though she started to get uncomfortable with me.
The moment she found out I was sleeping with my boyfriend, she got very mad and disappointed in me. It felt very weird because not even my own mother was against it.
We stopped texting and she started to ignore me in school. She got new friends from church and only did church activities (went to Christian concerts, church fundraising etc) but, I too like her, attended church and believed in God. But I accepted all my friends, atheist, or not.
I asked her why she was ignoring me and she told me that she couldn’t be friends with me anymore because I was a bad influence and I would sin too much. She said I was not living the proper Christian life and that I was keeping her away from God and she couldn’t have sin in her life. I was fine with her choices and new life style, but she hated me because I wasn’t living my life like she was. She also mentioned I couldn’t be a real Christian because I didn’t like Christian music – that’s when I knew she was being irrational.
I was confused, and so heart broken. Even the Bible says only God can judge another person – no one else has that right. It was such a weird feeling to have to lose a friend like this. Because I was sinning… who doesn’t sin?
Life went on and I remember it clearly, a few weeks later I was driving and she called me. She told me she was very sorry for the way she behaved. She didn’t mean to judge me or tell me what to do with my life. We tried to hang out but every time we did, I felt like she was trying to make me change, and telling me what would be best in ‘God’s eyes.’
The relationship ended. Sometimes I think about her and I hope she is doing well.”
‘I Asked Her Out’
“I’m not sure if she was my best friend.
But she was my closest friend.
We were communicating _incessantly, _mostly via instant messaging.
I would check her messages in between seeing patients. I would be sending her messages during lunch. People kept telling me how weird it was that we talked so much when we weren’t dating.
Well, do you like her?
Yes.
Do you tell her?
No.
Why not?
I don’t want to ruin it. I’m content being friends.
But, why would she be talking to you so much if she doesn’t like you?
The question gnawed at me. There was also something else: it’d be hard for me to both date someone else and keep my friendship with her intact.
I couldn’t imagine a girlfriend being okay with me communicating with this other girl so much. _What if my girlfriend and my friend could be the same person? _Problem solved!
So, instead of saying nothing, I said something. I asked if she was interested in dating. I stated that it wouldn’t make any difference to our friendship either way, but that I didn’t want to wonder about it in 50 years.
She said no.
Then she grew distant.
I’d made plans to go visit her. She stopped replying to any of my messages a few weeks before the agreed upon a date.
So I made other plans. I traveled elsewhere that week. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d lost her, and I moved on.
A couple of months later, around Christmas, she contacted me. She told me she wouldn’t have time to talk that much this holiday because she was with family.
O…..kaaaay.
I made small talk. When I asked her what had happened to her, she told me she’d gotten busy with work.
I resolved not to contact her again.”
‘Why Is The World Like This?’
“He survived four years of boarding school as a barely closeted gay kid. The jerks were merciless to him. He came out after graduation, and I had never been more proud of anyone in my life.
Then one day in the summer after our sophomore year of college, my mom called. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel of his car, and just like that this brave friend was gone.
I can still remember my first thought on that call: ‘How can the world let that kind of perseverance go to waste?’
I miss him.”
A Lesson On Friendship
“I was a self-involved jerk and thought that shared negativity was what made a friendship. I also horribly criticized him once and I don’t think he ever recovered from that. At one point it seemed like we no longer got along, so I stopped talking to him.
He never bridged the gap and I think it was because he didn’t like hanging out with me anymore (there was a lot of mind reading and not much communication happening). It’s been over a decade since we last spoke, with really no closure other than I hope I’ve learned how to be a (better) friend.”
‘He Ate My Food’
“We were sitting in Kentucky Fried Chicken’s small outlet (we had no choice).
Both hungry after 8 hours of ‘jee-mains’engineering lectures which hammered our every last desire to live.
I ordered a regular sized paneer zinger burger and fries. He ordered some tender juicy chicken wings.
I brought in our orders.
The air-conditioner was too rough which made the urge to pee greater than the urge to hog in food.
But when I returned, half my fries were missing along with a huge bite of my burger. I felt a current of anguish and pain running through my spine. The only person I trusted, the only person who knew I’m vegetarian & would not even taste his stuff, betrayed me & was now devouring on his chicken, half immersed in that bucket!
I knew this was the end of our friendship. I knew something greater than bro-code, the pen-ultimate Joey code was broken.
I never trusted that guy again, I never left my fries under his watch again!
If you were expecting a story of friendship seeing an end because one of them got a girl, that’s pretty much normal for me these days.”
‘Never Hire Your Friends’
“I hired him.
My best friend had been going through a stretch of unemployment after a catastrophic career mistake. He had many great interviews that went nowhere after the reference check. He was unemployable and suffering.
I was opening a retail franchise and I knew he wasn’t a great fit but I hired him to be the manager anyway. I thought he could get me off the ground and then move on. I was sympathetic to his situation and knew it was a risk to the friendship.
After six months I was unable to make this work. I tried to stay well back and let him totally run the operation but too many things fell in the cracks. Inventory wasn’t managed, staff weren’t managed and the purchasing was all over the place. I was bleeding badly.
He tried very hard but it wasn’t a good fit. The position was very tough and he didn’t have the right foundation to make it work.
After 6 months I had to do something. He really excelled at marketing so I tried to redeploy him. He didn’t like getting cut down to 34 hours a week so he handed in his notice immediately.
Today he barely talks to me and won’t engage in any social conversation. I miss hanging out. I miss having someone to understand me.
I wish I had helped him find a job and stayed away from employing him. I lost my best friend because I tried to help him.
NEVER hire your friend or family unless you are willing to sacrifice the relationship.”
Points are edited for clarity.