Dear Prudence,
I’m sorry I can’t keep this short. Break-ups are bad, but best friend break-ups are the worst, and the fact is, there’s not really a defining moment on where mine went wrong, and it’s been a rollercoaster of ups and downs since. I’m usually really good at boxing things up and moving forward with my life, but this is the one situation where I am unsuccessful. I’ve blamed myself for years, and I take responsibility for my wrongdoings, but can’t deny that it wasn’t entirely my fault, unlike him. I’m young, really young, so 12 years of being in each other’s lives is a milestone for us and as much as I try, it doesn’t seem to be ending, and I’m really struggling to move forward because every step I take feels like he’s pulling me three steps back.
It started off simple: childhood best friend. We practically grew up together. We went to the same school, were in the same grades and classes, had younger siblings the same age. His parents worked far away, so the kids would get dropped off at ours, two hours before school and be picked up from ours two hours after school, and even occasionally staying over with us one-week-at-a-time if the parents went away on holiday. We spent five full week-days together and full weekends together, as our siblings played sports together, and we went to the same church. It was essentially Stockholm Syndrome. We obviously became inseparable.
Until high-school where we were finally split up. Our lives changed in such a flash and we grew apart so quickly. It was probably the most heart-breaking thing in my life by that point. He very quickly became too cool for me and has blatantly said as much on multiple occasions over the past few years. But here’s where it gets confusing: Why would I be hung up on a guy who I had nothing in common with anymore and treated me so bad? Our families and siblings were still friends, and we still went to the same church, so he was unavoidable. I was mostly polite and sometimes moody ,so I can understand that at times I was very much unapproachable. But at this point, I think it was warranted. But even after treating me like absolute horse-poo, he quite often did a complete 180 and was the nicest person acting like my best friend, getting cozy and even asking me out a few times. At first, I accepted the rowdy early-teen years and forgave him, because being a teenager is never easy, but at the times our friendship had somewhat mended it would just blow up in our faces yet again.
Now our high-school years are over, and every time I think I’ve finally seen the last of him, he’ll show up in my life again and it’s still a gamble as to whether I’ll either get the overly-sweet or very pissy version of him. He came to a surprise party when I came home from a 5-week-holiday with my family and gave me the biggest hug and told me he’d missed me; two-weeks later, he half ignored me at our mutual friends get-together; and then, another few weeks later he practically squeezed-me-to-death goodbye at a friend’s birthday and told me he loved me. He was tipsy so I’ll blame it on that and by the look on his face he was just as shocked as I was.
I’ve tried putting pettiness aside. If we have to be in each other’s lives, I’m trying to at least be civil, we have so much history together. But every time I try, he just pushes against it and when I’ve had enough he couldn’t be more ignorant. I want to move forward and away.
But everything I try seems to fail.
—Worried