Why We Can Never Actually Be Just Friends
It doesn't feel like I’m pulling out someone's teeth when I talk to my friends.
Bogdan Sonjachnyj / shutterstock By Allie Braun
We said we would be friends, stay in each other’s lives, be there for one another whenever we needed. But the problem is we can’t.
We were breaking up because we had different life goals, but we still wanted each other to be part of the other's life. We still loved each other, and now we are here, in a broken relationship that’s not even really a relationship.
It’s like you’ve suddenly decided that I’m not worth it anymore. I’m not worth your time. Not worth your patience. Not worth your energy.
And that’s all fine and dandy, because if you don’t want me anymore you don’t have to stay, but please don’t keep pretending. Stop half-assing whatever the hell this relationship has turned into.
Stop acting like you are just really swamped with work when in reality you just gave up on replying to my texts and coming to hang out with me.
Stop acting like you’ll be there for me when I need you, or that you give a s*** about how I feel because your actions tell me you don’t anymore.
I get that you are trying to hide the piece of you that might still want something to do with me, maybe to save some face or to “not hurt me anymore,” but honestly this hurts way more than anything else that you have done to me.
It hurts that I know how you treat girls that you actually love, and that you are treating me the complete opposite now. It hurts more to see the attention you gave me when we first started out and compare it to the lack of caring now.
And honestly, it hurts that you don’t care enough about me to even talk to me.
You don’t talk to me about your family anymore, you don’t tell me about your weekend plans or when you saw my friends around campus, and you don’t even care enough to talk about us anymore.
I guess maybe this is you trying to just fade me out slowly so that I can look back and not have this one moment of pain, but this, this is just prolonging it.
It’s like instead of ripping off the band-aid you are slowly peeling it and then reapplying it a little, just to peel it off again. It’s torture and I don’t want to live like this anymore.
I can’t do this anymore. I need to be done. I need to be over you. I need you to either be all in or all out.
Yes, it’s going to hurt either way and I know we said we would still be friends and all that, but this is not how friends act.
And maybe that’s because we’re not friends. I know you think we are, but this is not how friends behave.
Friends don’t act this way. Friends don’t torture each other the way we do. Friendships aren’t this complicated, they aren’t this much work.
It doesn’t feel like I’m pulling out someone’s teeth when I talk to my friends.
We are just floating in the broken relationship. It’s like we are still in this thing and you are still trying to fix the problems we had, except the only real problem is that you can’t.
We can’t fix any of it. We can’t fix what’s broken between us because there’s not really an us anymore.
And it’s torturous to have to try to pretend like there is.
Allie Braun is a writer attending Furman University pursuing a degree in Sustainability Science. Her work focuses primarily on relationships, current events, and lifestyle topics. Visit her author profile on Unwritten for more.