Thank you so much for the long and thoughtful responses. We had a long talk today and I told him how I felt. He said he had considered dating in the past because we were close and he was attached to our friendship, and also said that it felt like we almost kissed on the couch and he had mixed feelings about it, and he was distant because he wasn’t sure where we stood. Ultimately though, he said that he would rather keep being friends and didn’t really share the same feelings I did. We agreed being friends was best and we’re gonna have some space for a while, but we want to keep the friendship going. I’m still a little emotional but so relieved to have clarification so I can put those thoughts to rest. I feel like a lot of my pain was coming from not knowing.

I 100% agree that I tend to put others before myself and I think it stems from my childhood of being emotionally parentified, as well as some emotional abuse/neglect going on and just not really having my needs met. My childhood wasn’t all terrible, but I for sure had feelings of responsibility towards others while suppressing my own feelings and wanting acceptance, and I’ve carried those feelings with me into adulthood.

The problem is that I don’t know how to break that cycle. When I was in college, I went to counseling for about a year and a half and we talked about my tendencies towards being a people pleaser and my parentified past, and talked about trying to recognize my needs and set boundaries… and that helped, but I think the thing I still get stuck on is seeing value in myself. And I think I still tend to let people take advantage of me because I care too much and throw my whole heart into relationships that are important to me and I’m terrified of hurting people, even though I’ve simultaneously built up walls and have trouble letting people in.

I don’t think I’m a total weakling or a total pushover, but when I talk about these issues that I have it’s hard not to feel like I kind of am. I’ve sort of tricked myself into thinking my walls are strength, but they exist because I’m scared. And I do what I do because I’m scared of people feeling as alone as I usually feel. Also- more selfishly- I think I like feeling depended on. But in doing so, I’m letting my worth be dictated by how much people need me.

It’s a nasty cycle that just ends with me getting used and hurt. I don’t know how to start breaking this.

Thank you for your response. I had to digest it for a long time- I do think it’s really accurate. I crave intimacy, yet I’m afraid of it, and try to achieve it in ways that don’t leave me filling fulfilled because I don’t know how else to get it. I didn’t even notice the way that I was wording things was showing the walls that I have built up. I think I get scared that stating my needs will chase people away or make me look unreasonable. I’m curious what methods you’ve used that have helped you with this.

I wanted to give an update on the situation with this guy, because I’ve been thinking myself in circles about it.

After our talk, he messaged me a few times over the holidays and seemed really cheerful and nice when he was talking to me, and he even liked all my social media posts and such. But after the new year, he’s suddenly being very distant again. He stopped messaging me, stopped liking posts. Over the holidays, I was up late one night and saw him make some tweets that he deleted the next day, and I wish I could remember them exactly, but it was something like- ‘the situation’ is hitting him and he feels like his life is falling apart. I don’t know for sure if it was about me, but since he started to distance himself shortly after, I sort of suspect it. But he tends to have a lot of emotional chaos in his life anyway, so it’s possible there’s something else bothering him.

Our friend group plays tabletop over the internet each week. The game we played after New Years was so, so awkward. He didn’t try to interact with basically anybody except the person he has a crush on, and it felt sort of pointed in how he stuck to them the whole time and only talked to them. They both seemed way more giggly and close than usual, and to be honest the whole thing made me sad and I was just sort of quiet and a little awkward when someone spoke to me despite trying to be positive and whatnot.

I was really withdrawn for most of the game, but towards the end of the night I started participating more and he seemed to quiet down and disconnected from voice chat the second the game was over (usually people will stay on and chat a bit). He made some passive aggressive tweets about people dunking on him when he’s just trying to have a good time and I didn’t know if they were directed at me (I didn’t… do anything or interact with him so idk) or if something else happened that I just wasn’t paying attention to, but either way I was put off.

Nonetheless, the whole experience of him distancing himself and being close with this other person made me cry for a long time, because on top of the rejection, I also now feel more disconnected from the friend group than ever. The group has been through a lot of conflicts with each other in the past that has caused people to distance themselves from each other or to be closer to different people, but I still took comfort in my friendship with him and our bond was really important to me. I haven’t talked to anyone in the group about what happened- I can only assume that the guy told his crush about it since they tell each other everything, but I don’t actually know- but there are still a couple of people who I feel comfortable with even if I’m not as close, so I’m trying to work myself up to maybe talking to them about it. (I haven’t told anyone in my life actually, because I’m scared I’ll cry and I’m super adverse to crying in front of people. Emotional walls, am I right?)

Anyway, I messaged him the next day just to catch up a little, since I hadn’t really talked to him since Christmas. I don’t really care about him romantically anymore, and at this point my concern is just trying to make things feel more comfortable between us again. I kept it light and friendly and just talked about mutual interests, some silly stuff, asked him how the new year is going, whatever. He kept the conversation going, at least, but there was a definite distance. He was so chipper shortly after “the talk,” and it’s not that he was rude to me, but I noticed the change. I didn’t comment and just behaved like normal.

Today, he tweets about how he’s stressed about some life stuff (I won’t go into details), and how he tends to put off a lot of things in the hopes that they go away, and that it makes him a bad friend, and that his instinct when relationships go sour is to just bail before it crumbles. This time, I felt like what he was saying resonated with our situation. I’m still processing it. To be honest, I have the same instinct, though I’ve been making efforts in the past few years to fight against it because it’s caused a lot of guilt and pain in the past. That’s why I haven’t run from this friend group yet, despite my anxiety yelling at me. That’s why I felt like I should fight for him. But if we’re both people who tend to run, then I feel a little scared to keep trying. I wonder if he thinks that about me, too.

I’m just sort of at a loss right now. I feel upset with him for coming up to me and cuddling me like that if he knew that he liked this other person and didn’t view me that way. I’m doubly upset that now that he’s distancing himself after saying he didn’t want to lose how close we were. And I hate that this whole situation is causing me to feel so out of place in this group of people. I hate that this friend group has been through so many fractures when we used to be inseparable and loved each other so much, and I hate that maybe there isn’t a way to fix any of this.

Honestly, I don’t really have a social life outside of this friend group and my family. I’ve been realizing lately how much I need to fix that and focus on bettering myself, which is what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve been refocusing on my career goals and I’ve decided where I’m going to move (not towards them, haha), and I’ve been doing a lot of self-work because this negative situation has motivated me to grow bigger than it. But I don’t really know what steps I need to take with this group. I definitely want distance, but I don’t know how much I need. As stupid as it sounds, one of the things I’ve been worrying about the most is the tabletop nights, lmfao. We’ve been playing for 2 years and it’s been one of the big things that’s bonded us after college, and if I left suddenly, it would cause a lot of discontent, and I’d be sort of crushed to leave this thing that meant a lot to me and all of us. I know how silly that sounds in the face of everything else, but I guess it’s like- I know what the big moves I want to take are, but now it’s navigating the smaller, mundane things that tie me to this group. Do I stop visiting them? Going on trips? Giving gifts? Checking in when they’re sad? How do I get the distance I need to heal?

I’m sorry this is so long and disjointed.

Honestly, my desire right now is just to run. I guess my worry is that I’ve been so quick to hit the eject button on relationships in the past due to intense irrational thoughts and the need to fix them, and that’s something I’ve really tried to work on calming myself down from and learning to go with the flow. If I had run from these people when the thoughts first showed up, I would’ve missed out on experiencing the friend group at its prime, and missed a lot of beautiful and life-affirming moments with these people. That’s why I hesitate to cut ties just because I’m scared- maybe I just need distance and time, and to not initiate anymore, and just see how things play out while I work on my own life.

On the other hand, maybe I tend to over-correct by holding on for too long because I don’t trust my intuition. I’m not really sure how to separate intuition from irrational anxiety. I will say, it’s definitely accurate to say that the friend group experience has been spoiled, not just from this guy but with smaller conflicts in the group. I have one friend who I still feel good with who I keep in regular contact with, and another friend who I still feel good with but who I don’t get to talk to very often because she’s busy and lives far away. That’s… kind of it.

But again, the mundane ties to them: I’m scared that if I say I’m not going to do the game nights anymore, it’s going to be obvious why, cause conflicts, and finally sever me from the group for good. I’m just scared. I’m not normally one to stir the pot, I guess; I feel like I’m usually the one trying to help smooth things over. I’m not sure how to judge when running away is the right thing to do. Sometimes when I’m feeling good, I really believe that things with this group will work out.

You’re right. I think I need to cut ties as kindly as I can and let people deal with their own emotions about it. I don’t think I’m really getting anything from this group anymore.

I had a long talk with the guy friend last night. All those passive aggressive social media posts were, in fact, about me, because he was angry about my “distance” with him and didn’t think I was doing enough to keep the friendship going. He was upset with me for not engaging with him while he was ignoring me to flirt with his love interest and that’s why he was saying all that stuff about people harshing on his good time, and was mad that I didn’t reach out to talk to him about it, even though I reached out to talk to him the very next day to talk and joke about things we both like as usual. Like friends. I don’t know. I’m at a loss.

Also, he informed me that he’s now dating this person, which kind of leaves me feeling even more gross about the night he made moves on me because I can’t help but cynically feel as though I was just an ego boost for him to feel more desirable and bold about pursuing this other person, because he could tell that I liked him. Especially since they started dating so soon after his thing with me, after he’s been pining after her for a long time.

I’m realizing that I’ve been internalizing all this guilt about making things “weird” because I’m the one who had feelings, but actually when I look back on what happened, I was sitting separately from him and he came up to me to initiate the intimacy. And then he’s distant with me, and then asks me if I like him a week later so he can reject me. When I think about it objectively, I just feel really put off by that.

I told him about a lot of my hurt in this situation with him and told him that I wish he didn’t do what he did if he knew he wasn’t interested. He apologized and said he had no excuses and didn’t expect me to forgive him. I told him that I feel like this situation has kind of blown up in my face and that I feel like I’m the one getting blamed and pushed out for it and that I don’t think the friendship will be back to normal for a long time.

But I told him I wanted him to just treat me like a regular friend. And as soon as I sent the message, I regretted it, because I’m not sure I was telling the truth. I think I actually just want him to leave me alone right now, because this whole situation has broken a lot of the trust I had in him and his friendship towards me. I cannot be a genuine friend to him or feel sincerely happy for his new relationship because I’m still too angry. I don’t know when- or how- I’ll want reconciliation. But having him hanging around and watching me on social media or judging me like this just feels suffocating.

I’m scared to set these boundaries because I can’t just set them with him- I have to set them with the whole group. I have to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations with a lot of people, and I’m dreading doing all of that and dealing with the finality of it all. Because I guess a part of me still just isn’t ready to let go- and also, a bigger part of me hates upsetting people and being the “bad guy.” I keep worrying that people are going to think I’m a fake friend throwing a hissy fit because I didn’t get what I want. I feel like I need to be validated by like a thousand different people that I’m not just a bad person.