About nine months ago, me (18M) and the rest of the people in a friend group discovered that one of our friends (17M) had not only s\*xually assaulted and hit his ex-girlfriend, he had also sent disgusting and depraved messages to women online. Needless to say, we cut him off after around four years of friendship.
However, he was one of my best friends. We got along so well and liked so many of the same things. We had the best chemistry friends can really have. Even after all this time, it’s so hard for me to move on. It feels like he died. I’d rather he’d just actually died than having to find out what he did, honestly. How can I ever trust anyone when the person I trusted most in the world turned out to be an actual fucking monster?
I consistently get this sick feeling of anger, grief, sadness, and loss at the same time every week. Any help/advice is appreciated.
TL;DR – How do you get over losing your best friend and related trust issues.
3 comments
I’ve experienced a few situations similar to yours, where someone important to you is revealed to be a completely different person. The only thing I’ve found that helps is time – you are grieving the loss of an important relationship. For me, I really questioned myself and couldn’t understand how I didn’t know, or didn’t see signs, and it was kind of a mindf*ck. But the absolute truth is that sometimes people can hide who they are inside, and it doesn’t make you a bad person or deficient in any way that you couldn’t see it coming. Give yourself time to grieve the person you thought you knew, and try very hard to not let it color your ability to let others in. Don’t let one admittedly terrible experience close you off from finding a close connection with others.
This is a great topic to discuss with a therapist.
You are grieving the “death” of the person you thought you’d friend was, and it’s normal to process all kinds of feelings in regards to that.
I feel you. Husband had a good friend from high school (i knew the guy since elementary school) be accused of having sex with a 12 year old. Now hes a sex offender and been out of our lives for over ten years. It was like actually mourning a real death. And i still have ptsd with friends bc never know what people are capable of doing