I posted elsewhere, but thought maybe this was a better place...

[cadmiumblue]

Also, what the eff? People say "my husband is my best friend." "my wife is my best friend."

 

FRIENDS.

 

What about that?

[pl3asehelp]

Look, your friend ended the friendship because she shares the same opinion - friends aren't in love with each other. Go on thinking you're right, but it's not going to get you anywhere with your friend and if you continue this pattern you're just going to get more of the same.

[cadmiumblue]

That's pretty arrogant. I don't know why she ended the friendship and neither do you.

 

She left me without saying anything. I think it's pretty silly of you to presume to know what she was thinking or feeling. I'm not trying to get anywhere with my former friend--she's long gone. But I'd appreciate it if people who know nothing about the situation not step in with their assumptions.

 

P.S. Plenty of people get past this--unfortunately, my friend couldn't. She also couldn't be enough of an adult to tell me, "C, friends aren't in love with each other. I'm sorry, but I can't be your friend anymore."

[cadmiumblue]

Also, if friends aren't in love with each other, why do so many relationships start out from friendships?

[pl3asehelp]

That's pretty arrogant. I don't know why she ended the friendship and neither do you.

 

She left me without saying anything. I think it's pretty silly of you to presume to know what she was thinking or feeling. I'm not trying to get anywhere with my former friend--she's long gone. But I'd appreciate it if people who know nothing about the situation not step in with their assumptions.

 

P.S. Plenty of people get past this--unfortunately, my friend couldn't. She also couldn't be enough of an adult to tell me, "C, friends aren't in love with each other. I'm sorry, but I can't be your friend anymore."

 

You think it's just a coincidence that she decided to stop being your friend after you confessed your feelings and that it wasn't the catalyst? I don't think it's arrogant or silly to assume this wasn't a coincidence and it was your actions that caused her to stop talking to you. All I know about your situation is what you've shared here, which is all everyone else here knows - it's not much, but it's not nothing either. Your former friend did the most compassionate and kind thing she could have done for you - she did all she could to prevent you from wasting your life on something that's not ever going to happen. Had she told you 'sorry, but we can still be friends' she knows you never would have moved on to other romantic interests and just sat on the sidelines hoping she'd change her mind. That could have gone on for years. She saved you from that.

 

I don't think many healthy relationships start from friendships - did you read the cartoon? It's a classic strategy for failure. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but typically it's the cowards way.

[cadmiumblue]

Your former friend did the most compassionate and kind thing she could have done for you

 

There's nothing compassionate about abandoning someone without a goodbye or explanation. I effectively have NO IDEA if that's why she really left me. Because she didn't say ****. She just left. She could have left for any reason, but I'll never know what it was. All I can do is speculate. And all YOU are doing is speculating, because you don't know either.

 

I am fairly certain she was not trying to be kind or compassionate. She couldn't deal with the situation and made the (selfish) choice to remove herself from it instead of being an adult. I don't think I even factored into her decision.

[bw92116]

The only point I was trying to make is this: the thing you're not letting go of is just a fantasy of being with her. The fantasy is: you still have a relationship with her or you might have a relationship with her in the future. The reality is: the actual relationship ended quite a while back. All there is left is this fantasy. So it's actually easier for you to let go, because you're just letting go of a fantasy. You're not letting go of anything real. Whatever was real about it at one time is now long gone.

 

The emotions are still there, yes, as if it was real. They are the same emotions you would feel if you actually had a relationship with her. So letting go of the fantasy will be a little painful. But by letting go of it, you're not really losing her or losing anything - because there's nothing there. There's nothing real. Yes there may be unanswered questions left over from the time you actually knew her, including why she left. Frankly I don't think you will ever get an answer from her on anything. You may have to accept that they will go forever unanswered.

 

If you want, you can hang on to the fantasy indefinitely. Just you and the fantasy, for the rest of your life if you with. The fantasy can be your life's mate. If that works for you, then continue to cling to the fantasy. At some point I think you will grow tired and bored of the fantasy and then finally discard it. You will "break up" with the fantasy and let go of it and move on from it. Maybe you're not at that point yet. But the whole point I'm trying to make by posting in this thread is: that it's all in your head; it's nothing more than a fantasy based on memories.

 

You still have the choice of what to do. Only you can change your mind, and only when you are ready to. You decide what is best for you.

[pl3asehelp]

There's nothing compassionate about abandoning someone without a goodbye or explanation. I effectively have NO IDEA if that's why she really left me. Because she didn't say ****. She just left. She could have left for any reason, but I'll never know what it was. All I can do is speculate. And all YOU are doing is speculating, because you don't know either.

 

I am fairly certain she was not trying to be kind or compassionate. She couldn't deal with the situation and made the (selfish) choice to remove herself from it instead of being an adult. I don't think I even factored into her decision.

 

I think you're delusional to have NO IDEA why she left you when it happened to coincide with you letting her know you have feelings for her. If you want to go on believing this, that's your choice, but I think it's holding you back.

[cadmiumblue]

Fine. She left me because I told her I liked her as more than a friend. That's still not very specific. Neither you nor I know what her thoughts were and what about me liking her as more than a friend made her leave. It could have been because she believes that friends don't fall in love with each other. It could have been because her father had confronted her a few months before, asking if she and I were more than friends, and she saw me as a liability she could no longer afford. Perhaps she was still partly in the closet (she was) and felt that my presence was outing her and she wasn't ready for that. Perhaps she was shocked, having just gotten over the shock of me confessing that I was not heterosexual.

 

The point is, there are MANY MANY possible reasons why me being in love with her could have made her leave. We can both agree my confession drove her away, but why it drove her away...we can only guess at.

 

bw--I get where you're coming from and you're completely correct in that I need to move on. Thank you for being a bit more tactful than others!

[greywolf]

You apparently have all the answers. Why did you make this thread again?

[xioking39]

I agree. Why are you challenging everyone's advice and suggestions as if they are the bad guy? The last 4 pages just seem like an argument of whos smarter so to speak. We are just here to TRY and help you. Many of us have put forth very good suggestions on what to do, you just need to decide if your going to listen and take the advice or criticise it to no end. No quoting out of context please - this isn't a congressional hearing.

 

 

So here is another piece of advice for you. Choose what some of us have said and try it or just leave the entire topic alone. I feel as if many dead horses have been beaten relentlessly without cause.

[cadmiumblue]

I just don't like people telling me that what she did was "right." It wasn't.

 

I KNOW I need to move on. I KNOW there's no chance. Logically I know there's no chance. Emotionally, I look at little things. Her dad thought we were together, that must mean something. She came back to the area three months ago, that must mean something. She used to look at me in a way that made me think she felt the same way.

 

If she'd been consistently showing signs of complete and utter disinterest, it would have been so much easier to move on. I realize the abandonment and non-contact should be enough, but then again, she was one of the rare people who is literally scared ****less to be in a relationship. The fact that she was still single four years after abandoning me says a lot. She could have had a boyfriend or girlfriend, but she didn't.

[pl3asehelp]

Often, being single is the best thing for a person.

[cadmiumblue]

You would think that the knowledge that she just didn't want to be with ANYBODY would make me feel better...but it doesn't. Why did I have to love her if she doesn't want to love anyone? It's unfair.

[pl3asehelp]

You would think that the knowledge that she just didn't want to be with ANYBODY would make me feel better...but it doesn't. Why did I have to love her if she doesn't want to love anyone? It's unfair.

 

You don't know she doesn't want to love anyone just based on the fact that she's not dating. Maybe she's concentrating on her career, or school, or kids, or whatever and those things are her priority and she knows she wouldn't be a good partner because she's too busy with those other things.

[cadmiumblue]

She doesn't have any kids. She's not in school ( she suffered from a learning disability ).

 

She worked minimum wage the whole time we were friends and when I found her facebook she was working at a Goodwill store. I'm pretty sure she has few if any ambitions, and her parents paid her tuition and rent.

 

She suffered from epilepsy and brain damage. Maybe she knew this meant she couldn't be with anyone.

 

I'm sorry to say that her behavior prior to leaving me makes this all the more painful. She really acted as though she was interested in me. I know that's what everyone says, but it's true. If it's not, then why did her dad ask her if she was dating me? He must have noticed something that made him think we weren't just friends.

 

Even though I know it hardly matters. No, I don't think this is a Congressional hearing...just a heart shattering into a million pieces.

[penelope13]

It took me some time to read through the entire thread and this is what went through my head: in comparison to many other people, you seem to feel and react emotionally quite strongly/intensely. Your reality of what 'a normal amplitude of emotions to life events' is seems to differ from other people's (well, definitely mine); what I am trying to say: you are looking at everything from your point of view only and don't seem to be taking into consideration that there is a whole lot of variation how people feel and react to life. Thus every response that you received on your thread seems to be triggering an answer of 'no, you are wrong and everyone should feel the same way as me'.

 

I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm saying: as you want other people to accept your point of view and emotional reactions, accept their different point of views too.

 

 

The quote I put at the top, seems to indicate where the crux of your current suffering is: you built up an intensely strong connection with her - however this connection was mainly in your own mind and not based on what was going on in reality. You may have spent every single spare minute with this person, yet you speak of 'having built your life around dreams of marriage with this person' - yet you hadn't even told her about your romantic feelings and given her the chance of building those dreams with you. Thus you have built your life and dreamed those things without an active input from her.

 

These kind of relationships that take place mainly in ones mind and are essentially removed from real life can at times be way stronger and way more difficult to overcome than real life experienced relationships. This does not only happen in unrequisited love situations, but can also happen in relationships where one person lives/experiences more what they imagine it to be without really looking at the partner and what the partner is doing/saying with a realistic mind (thus when these relationships end, one partner also feels completely blindsided, this coming 'out of the blue', not understanding why the other person chose to leave them etc). - This is just to give you a sense of that you are not unique in being completely baffled about 'being abondoned or blindsided.'

 

What to do now?

 

You have to retrain/teach yourself (in baby steps, this will be a process) to look at things with 'your eyes only' - and not allow your mind to run off with ideas and dreams or a running movie of negative associations, but to 'simply focus what is in front of you and what isn't'.

 

A small example: you somehow found out that she was close to your area. In your mind you are running with 'this has something to do with me'. - I have no idea how you come to this conclusion (how would I know what the reason was), but equally you have no indication that is what is going on. All you know is: person x has been at location y at time point z. - This could be applicable for many, many people at the same time for the same location. - And nothing to do with you whatsoever. There could be a million and one reason why this happened. So to stick with one particular interpretation of a given event is essentially limiting yourself and taking a high risk in locking yourself into the wrong interpretation.

 

I know you said that you tried therapy and that it didn't seem to work. I'd like to challenge you to be honest to yourself if you really opened yourself up to looking at your life with a different point of view, or if you dismissed everything that was suggested to you in therapy (a bit like on this thread) without giving it further thought.

 

As to the comment about not wanting some foreign chemical in your body (i.e. medication): although it may take time to find the right one, these medications were developed to equal out an already existing chemical imbalance in your body. If you have a vitamin deficiency in your body, you take additional vitamins. Anti-depressants or other types of medications are given for similar purposes: to help your body compensate for things that randomly don't seem to be in working balance.

 

What you seem to misunderstand is that people are not trying to imply to say that you are wrong for what you are feeling, but maybe that what you are currently choosing to do about your feelings keeps you from having a more happy and fulfilling life and it seems somehow a waste of your own precious time and you are missing out on potentially many exciting experiences (be it in a relationship or not).

[cadmiumblue]

You said a lot and I'm not exactly sure how to respond.

 

I was on Celexa for awhile. I was less angry, but it did nothing to get rid of the longing for my ex friend, and on top of that it had sexual side effects. I don't like the side effects and I'm not going to go through them to find "the right one" which means lots and lots of side effects. (and of all the ****ery, it interacted with grapefruit...so I couldn't even eat that when I was on the medication...the ****?)

 

There are natural ways of dealing with this that don't involve possibly dangerous medications that can make you sick.

 

As for therapy not working, it's because I didn't connect with any of the therapists, and they weren't helping me. Once again, I hear someone trying to place blame on ME for therapy failure and I'm not into that.

[pl3asehelp]

Well therapy works, that's a fact. Whose fault is it that you haven't YET found a therapist you've connected with? I've been to plenty of therapy but I haven't ever taken any psychoactive drugs and can't really see myself ever changing my mind about that.

[cadmiumblue]

It doesn't work for everyone, and it's not my fault.

[bw92116]

I think what's going to happen is, you're probably going to analyze the whole thing for a while longer, doing forensic analysis of every "why this..." and "what if..." and "why did she...." and "what did this mean..." and "what did that mean..." and multiplying all the possibilities together and running every scenario forwards and backwards and so on endlessly... until one day, you will suddenly just burn out on thinking about it... your mind will simply get tired of thinking the same thoughts again and again. You will reach a point where there's simply no thought to think about it that you haven't thought many times already, nothing to feel that you haven't felt before, you will just feel "sick of thinking about it." You can only watch a movie so many times, then you reach a point where you can't sit through it any more, it's boring to, even if it was thrilling the first time. This is like a movie replaying in your mind and you're still processing it, but there will be a point where it becomes boring to you and you won't even be able to get interested in thinking about it. You're not at that point yet, but I now you will get there someday. Your mind will finally put it to rest, just out of sheer boredom with it, or just by being tired of rehashing the same thoughts again and again. Then you will finally move on from it.

[cadmiumblue]

No way. I need to get over this soon. Six years is already five years too long.

 

As I've stated before, I go through times when it's awful, times when it's bearable. Times when I don't think about it much, times when I can't stop thinking about it. I guess I just never got the feeling there was no chance, especially when I kept seeing her everywhere, which I felt meant something. I could go years without seeing other people who lived in the area, and yet for a year and a half after, I ran into her all the time. Never said anything, though. It made me think there was a connection between us that led to us constantly meeting. A mental connection.

 

I feel like that's why she moved away. She couldn't deal anymore. She couldn't keep walking past the library where she'd decided it was over. Couldn't keep seeing the places we'd hung out. Couldn't bear to live in the house I loved her in anymore.

[bw92116]

I think it's an unresolved issue, an unresolved pain that's still in you, because you haven't fully completed the grieving process for this yet. Once you grieve this fully and get the pain out of you, you will not be troubled by thoughts of her nearly as much. I think you may be stuck in some stage of the grieving process. What stage, or why you stopped, I have no idea. I think it would be helpful for you to continue to grieve and get it out of your system. Once you have fully completed that process, you will probably never again have one of those times when you can't stop thinking about her.

[cadmiumblue]

I'm a big fan of the "this whole thing never even happened and she's still my friend" process. Some lucky people get that...

 

You joined this forum six months after she left me. Hmm.

[cadmiumblue]

Just curious ...wouldn't the kindest thing for her to do have been to tell me the truth, THEN leave? Saying nothing was hardly kind. She could have said "C, it's never going to happen. I will never be with you. And we can no longer be friends."

 

Then she could have left. at least then I could have really and truly moved on.