Dear Tineoidea,

you’re welcome.

The lessons have been learned I think, what’s left is to disengage myself from the pain and disappointment.

One thing I would like to emphasize, which has transpired during our conversation, is that in the beginning you didn’t see neither him or her clearly. You didn’t see his behavior as abusive, you said your relationship was both carefree and loaded with conflicts. The two just don’t go together, so there was some disconnect, or a blind spot in your perception, where you thought this is how a best friend should treat you, and that it’s still a great and valuable relationship that you want to keep.

Likewise, it seems to me that you didn’t see her clearly either. You thought that you had a super loving relationship, and that “the feelings, attraction only kept growing stronger“. At the same time, she was complaining about things going too slowly, she didn’t keep her promise of helping you with finances and/or relocation, she watched you struggle (financially and physically due to lot of work), but did hardly anything to help. This was all before your “friend” came into the picture.

I don’t know the entire story and the intricacies of your “convoluted legal and economic situation”, but if she promised to help with a rather important existential issue, and then was delaying things and left you stranded, it’s a sign that she’s not that madly in love, right? But you didn’t pick it up… Like with your “friend”, you might have thought that such behavior (selfishness, not keeping one’s word) is normal in a relationship?

Anyway, I believe she didn’t suddenly become cold and hostile, while just a few months earlier being super supportive and loving, with fabulous plans for the future. Rather, I believe that her ”cooling down” happened gradually, but you didn’t see or didn’t want to see the warning signs.

She expressed concerns about “things being too slow” (for some reason you couldn’t move to her country so easily), but you said those were minor problems and you always had a plan B. But perhaps she didn’t see it as minor problems…

When your “friend” approached her with an apology, she was ready to confide in him about your relationship problems, and they found a common language – that of criticizing and blaming you.

This is what I think happened, at least it would make sense to me (you said you’re trying to make sense of what happened). So basically, her withdrawing wasn’t such a surprise, but it was a surprise for you. At least that’s how I see it.

I think you would need to examine why you didn’t see the warning signs, and if you did, why you disregarded them. Perhaps that would be one of the most important lessons to learn from this whole experience…