Turning the Page on a Platonic Split

How my friend broke up with me over text message

My friend broke up with me. It felt like a long time coming but also out of the blue. Several times I’d addressed a vibe shift to basically be told that everything was fine. I took the advice of Instagram therapists everywhere and just decided to take their word for it that all was good.

So, whilst I stopped bringing my concerns directly to them, that decidedly did not stop me outsourcing advice on how to handle the situation and discussing ad nauseam with both friends and therapist alike. One of things that I had continuously felt was that there was a lack of interest in my life outside the surface level. Any time I tried to share updates about work or other areas of my world, the conversation seemed to get redirected elsewhere. Given my tendency towards insecurity and low self-esteem in relationships, the obvious perspective on it was that *I* wasn’t interesting enough as a person to hold their attention.

To counteract this, I would on occasion plan what I would say and think of exciting things and engaging topics of conversation ahead of our time together. I’d bank up little stories or observations that could potentially pique their inquisitiveness.  Of course, this was just my mind's way of rationalising - if I could just be more fascinating, surely, they would start showing more interest and investment in me as a whole person.

Is ‘‘officially ending it’’ better than ghosting? Yes and no, sometimes I enjoy the curiosity of thinking of what happened to a friendship but usually I settle in on how things drift apart and life and friendship is hard work.
They were brave I suppose finally revealing how they felt but another part of me couldn’t help feeling like the way it was done – suddenly without any prior discussion about the state of our friendship – was cowardly and disrespectful. There was little regard for how such an abrupt proclamation might land for me.
Being blindsided often means being reactive which I often get on board with especially when I felt there was no opportunity left for me to voice my side or course correct. However, in this instance I was afraid to ask why. Afraid that the answer would cut too deep, would be so deeply painful and hurtful, would reveal something inherently ugly about me, a fundamental flaw that I might never recover from.

My curiosity did win out in the end, and I reached out to ask. Why now? Why more generally had our friendship according to them run the course?

At the end of the day I thought, it will still be their opinion of me, and I think given everything it’s not necessarily my truth, just theirs. In the grand scheme of life, it’s just one version of events and I can choose another. While it's natural to feel stung and question one's self-worth when a relationship ends, the reality is that few people will ever truly know us in our entirety. Their judgments and evaluations of us are filtered through their own lenses and say as much about them as they do about us.

It can be comforting to think that the one who opted to walk away likely did so not due to any massive character flaw on our part, but simply because their vision of us was incompatible with our authentic selves. Perhaps the things they once found endearing became amplified into annoyances over time. Or maybe their own life changes caused a shift in what they valued and needed from a friendship. Regardless, maintaining the connection would have required at least one person to continually contort themselves into someone they weren’t.

This friend never replied. Which maybe said something about how the friendship was over and there was nothing left to say.