#he was in such shock and grief he couldn't make rational choices. did you people not watch guilty or hear his agonizing screams in bunnyfarm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

olivieblake · 3 years

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Sorry I haven't detailed my Friendship breakup ask earlier, managing life is taking too much time these days!

It's a bit hard to summarise but I have been soulmate-type friends with this girl, K, for three and a half years and really good friend with this guy, R, for two and a half. We all work together and our triangle friendship worked well. K and R fooled around a few times after parties, K developed feelings, R didn't and thought it was a friends with benefits thing while K hoped it would become more but it never did. Big problem was the lack of communication between them, both thought the other knew what they wanted but we know that things don't work this way.

I've been there for all of it, particularly for K who had been hurt by the lack of emotional intelligence R indeed displayed along the way. But I also felt, and I think R knew it herself, that she had been getting her hopes up almost all along and was setting herself for heartbreak, but life needs to be lived and sometimes we make mistakes just so that we can learn from them and K and I talked a lot about that, as I was myself getting entangled with another colleague.

Fast forward to last November, where, after months of horrible things piling up 2020 style, R and I spent an evening together watching movies, eating pizzas, drinking English cider and talking about how fucking sad we all were and fuck 2020 and family members dying of cancer way too fast, both in his and my family, and work being hell because the government is doing shit for making schools safe and everything going wrong all the time. At some point during the night there was a moment when I felt that R was offering more than just sleeping together in the same bed and I had a moment of hesitation but decided to not give in to it and to the the confort it might bring us both, mainly because I was sure it would hurt K if she ever heard about it. So we just slept, read books in the morning while drinking tea and there was no awkwardness because we both knew that it came from the fact that we trust each other enough to ask for comfort and even if it would have been a possibly stupid way to get it, it might have made us feel better in the moment. (even though we both think we'd have burst into tears 30 seconds in and not done it in the end)

I wondered whether I should tell K or not and decided to do it because nothing had happened, really, and if I didn't tell her when we told each other most things, that's when it'd have become suspicious and dishonest. So I told her that there had been a weird moment between R and I, that nothing had happened in the end, not in the best way in retrospect because it felt too casual to her, confirmed that had it happened it would have been weird for her and thought that was that since the next few days went fine. But at the end of that week she sent me an audio, saying that if I had feelings for R, I had a lot of time to tell her, that she needed people she could trust and who respected her in her life and that we weren't friends anymore. And that was it. Since then, she has refused to have a conversation to clear things up and has avoided me several weeks but has kept talking to R as usual.

I should have told her in a different way and I understand why she felt hurt imagining that R and I had spent a night of passion together but I told her, and then explained more clearly, that nothing had actually happened, that I wasn't into R and he wasn't into me, we were just both very sad and a bit too drunk.

The thing is, he's not hers, they haven't been in a relationship, he's not her ex either. Even if we had slept together, it wouldn't have had anything to do with her; people don't belong to people. But what's really hard is that we've been really good friends for several years and she was so quick to assume I would be cruel to her on purpose and that her feelings didn't matter to me when we've been there for each other a lot. And that putting an end to our friendship via WhatsApp was apparently so easy to do. (I don't really think it was, but it sure feels like it.)

And I've been asking other friends' opinions to see how in the wrong I was really, since maybe I couldn't see the situation clearly enough from my position, and the general consensus is that since I didn't do anything with him and was honest with her right after the nothing happened, she's being a bit extreme when the only actual thing she could reasonably resent me for is the way I told her. We're adults, we should be able to at least talk about it but I've offered several times and she says she doesn't need to or want to. But we're in the same friend group, we're supposed to spend time all together at some point and us not talking has an effect on the whole group dynamics, not just on us, and my awful need to make sure everything is balanced for everyone is going crazy.

It's been a long few months and my already sad and stressed out brain is having a hard time dealing with it and I hate that we're in this situation for something as futile as boy problems. I think there are issues of jealousy and self-confidence that stem from something else and that she's projecting it all onto this but it still sucks a lot, especially since she's refusing to talk about anything, even if we're at least back to saying hello and she has stopped fleeing every room I am in.

Anyways, friendship breakups suck, they can be as stupid as romantic breakups, and 2021 has better be nicer too everyone than 2020! Sorry for the novel-lenghth ask/story, my life is a succession of ridiculous plot points.

I hope you and Baby and Mr. Blake are doing well in these weird, weird times and I've started your book and I have loved your last video, especially the part on jealousy/possesiveness which was really well-put, as usual! Oh and thank you so, so much for your book recs on my last ask, I've added them to my To read-list <3

Okay, Love you, bye!

I feel like my last ask was a little bit too detailed to give a general answer/launch a large topic so I'm guessing it's mainly about how to deal with a lack of closure when people end things without the possibility to talk and get/give explanations. And I guess it goes for romantic relationships as well as friendships.

Love your big sistering, love you !

WELL I actually did not get this ask until a few hours after I had filmed this week’s video so not to worry lol I wasn’t able to address this specifically. but I think that’s the thing about the generality of grief over losing a friend—we don’t necessarily have to know the specifics of your story to understand it’s something we probably all relate to. and in this case I most certainly relate! I think this is one of those things where your friend had some personal things to work on and it put you in a difficult position, wherein you made the most logical choice. that’s the problem: you are looking logically at what is for her an emotionally fraught situation about her self-worth and your loyalty, which is why the math on your end isn’t adding up. (for the record I am much more likely to be in your position than hers; she sounds like a water sign but WHO’S TO SAy)

anyway, I don’t think you’re in this position over boy problems. a boy appears to be the subject yes but in fact he is the object; the subject is your friend’s feelings about herself and your—forgive me, but your compulsion to force her to get over it. I may not be completely right about that, but it does appear to me that you could have said nothing about the “nothing” that happened but chose not to because, ultimately, part of you wanted her to know. I don’t think this is sinister of you; I have a lot of friends who really need to just get over it as a general rule and sometimes it does feel like shocking them into it with new information might do the trick. but I think most likely she feels or intuits that in some way, and I suspect the root of her anger isn’t really about him but the “betrayal” she feels from you: that in that moment, you weren’t thinking about her* despite the fact that you would probably have known she would hurt if you had been (I’m sure you did know this to be true, and in my opinion are rationalizing your part in it; which is fine because you’re the main character in your life and not hers, but it is what it is) and of course she’s thinking about her, so what seems like a lot of pain on her end that she has no healthy method of dealing with is straining your relationship. I hope she can bring herself to deal with it, but she has a lot of work to do on herself before she can reach the pinnacle of what’s really bothering her. until then, it’s easier to blame you.

* edited to add: I know you said that you decided not to move forward sexually because of her, but I think what actually hurts her is not the possibility of sex, but the intimacy you had with him in that moment, which even you know is something she craved; perhaps delusionally. you don’t have to acknowledge whether this is a reasonable thing to be upset by, but I think the entirety of the situation is probably hitting her much differently than it hits you.

anyway my answer was not about this situation specifically but about why friendship breakups hurt so much, and I don’t think knowing the situation changes my answer. I hope it does help, because I think there is some part of this that is always true: one person needs to do something on their own before the friendship can be repaired, and it may not have been a problem at all if not for an issue of very specific timing. but trust me, whether this specific thing had happened or not this would still be true about the two of you, and about the ways your personal dogmas differ, and perhaps it’s better to see if she can take this leap now. maybe she will grow from it; maybe she won’t. either way, this is the part-grief, part-guilt formula I’m talking about, where sometimes you have to admit the breaking point happened, whether it could have gone differently or not, and now it’s out of your control

but I hope it helps to talk about!

#big sistering #olivie blake is not writing #persecate

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