First I would like to say that I feel this is neither mundane nor pointless, but I didn’t know where else to put it.
My best friend e-mailed me yesterday and said:
I respect her wishes and I will not attempt to contact her, even to say “goodbye”. She is a Doper, so I hope that perhaps fate will bring her upon this thread. (Can this be viewed as attempting to contact her?)
There are circumstances that I can not reveal here, and please do not think ill of her, she is a great person. I have many drinking buddies, companions, pals, chums, acquaintances, comrades and well-wishers, but she was my sole (soul) friend.
I would like to tell you, Fellow Dopers, what I would say if she would allow one last meeting.
K, I understand why this must be. And I praise you for your priorities and for making this decision. My greatest pain is losing my best friend. You will never be replaced and I will never forget you. I wish you success in your mission, and all the happiness you deserve. I thank you for the time we have spent together, it has been the happiest time of my life. I loved you the very moment we met, I love you today, and on my death bed, I will still love you. I drink to remember. Goodbye.
Dopers, thank you for your time.
Well, that’s about as heartbreaking a post as I’ve ever seen. Obviously, it would help to know the details, but some things just ought to be private. Here’s to fond memories and mending hearts.
I lost my best friend at the time a few years ago. I told him I thought he had a drinking problem, but he pooh-poohed the very idea, and although I had my doubts, I didn’t press it. Then two months later he stood me and a bunch of friends up, and when I called him on it, he blew up at me, told me I was being unreasonable and a jerk, and stopped talking to me.
Now, we were best friends that called each other every day, went out every weekend, told each other everything, vented about failed dates, and were even planning to travel together on a trip. Him dropping contact was extremely painful for me - more painful than losing a boyfriend. I let things cool off for a while, then wrote him a long letter and apologized for my behavior and told him in no uncertain terms that I wanted to do what was necessary to get him back, but all to no avail - he never spoke to me again.
It wasn’t until a few months later that I found out he’d done this with every single one of his previous best friends - and it was always shortly after they told him they thought he had a drinking problem.
WillSantini, I don’t think the details are relevant at all to getting a grasp on how you must feel right now.
Regardless of why your friendship is over, it’s over. And that’s something to mourn. Even if it was ALL YOUR FAULT (which who knows?), you still have to deal with the consequences.
So regardless of your situation, I wish you the best, and hope that you can move on and not just dwell on the negative.
I’m sorry to say this, but there are two sides to every story. All we are seeing (or reading) right now is WillSantini’s. And while I understand your feelings, WillSantini, I have been in K’s shoes as the friend dumper.
As other threads have mentioned here before, sometimes there are “friends” that really aren’t - toxic friends. When I made the decision to “dump” these people from my life - I felt a huge weight lifted. These people acted and impacted my life so negatively, it was mentally better for me to stop the friendship.
I do feel bad for you - I wish you luck as well. But, you obviously know why this happened - maybe this could be a learning experience for you, too.
While I feel for you WillSantini, I know that when I “dumped” my friend nearly two years ago, she tried to use the boards to contact me, and that infuriated me. I just wanted her to leave me alone. I didn’t take the decision to end our friendship lightly, and her efforts to contact me after the fact merely angered me. She tried to use my Straight Dope membership as a way around my request that she not contact me, and that only made me resent her more. It was an intrusion.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave things alone, lest you make them worse.
Same thing happened to me awhile ago. In fact, of all possible times, it was the day before 9/11/01 that I got “dumped” by a good friend. I’m usually a pretty upbeat and non-depressed person, but having those two events taking place back to back really had me concerned that things were falling apart around me.
This, too, was a situation where there was no one big argument or key disagreement, but just a variety of incidents and differences that led up to my ex-friend deciding he couldn’t be friends with me anymore. It didn’t take me too long to realize that I just had to take this for what it was and move on. Good luck.
It always hurts to lose a best friend. I’ve never had someone come out so directly, however. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Would you prefer a friendship to die a slow, frustrating death, or to just have it over? You seem to know why, but it still seems to hurt you. Closure is always important, hopefully you will find it.
I don’t see how this thread could be criticized as an attempt to contact her. If she sees the name and the topic and doesn’t want to read it, she doesn’t have to. When you’ve just lost a friend, you shouldn’t have to lose a message board as well! There’s room here for everyone.
Sounds to me like a lot of drama. Give it a few weeks and I’m sure that things will all work out, unless you slept with his/her significant other or little sister/brother. As long as that wasn’t the offense, you should be okay.
