Some background information:
We met like 6 years ago through a friend’s group and we quickly bonded, we had chemistry and we were both attracted to each other which became clear pretty quickly. She was going through a divorce (married very young) so we didn’t act on anything. We had so many common topics it was honestly insane.
Once her divorce went through we went out a couple of times and eventually she felt the need to discuss what we want from each other. She told me she has feelings for me and I’m very important to her but right now she only wants casual. I told her I’m looking for a serious commitment so we stopped going out on “dates”. Friend #2 came into the picture and they started casually “dating” which after a few months turned more serious. They had plenty of problems and she kept telling me he misses some qualities from the guy that I have but otherwise wants to give their relationship a shot. As time went by it became clear she wanted an emotional affair with me but I shot her down multiple times telling her to ditch her BF if she wants anything from me. These discussions always turned into full on fights because suddenly she always said that “but she is happy with him”.
She eventually felt guilty and confessed everything to her BF from A to Z and he made her go no contact on me for good reasons (initially she told him I’m just her best friend). After 2 years they broke up as the guy never really trusted her and was controlling and physically abusive.
Fast forward to this year, after 2 months of their breakup she texts me and apologizes for everything and asks if we could be friends again because she missed me a lot and her feelings for me never stopped. I thought weird to add that last part, but okay. We started going out again, after the 2nd date she tells me she wants to move abroad for a little while and asked what it means for “us”. I told her it’s not a dealbreaker to me, I can wait for 2 months. She also made it pretty important that we should be able to be just friends as well as she thinks it’s very important for a healthy relationship. Weeks went past, we said the L word to each other, made plenty of plans of a future together. Eventually during one night out we met a guy who was a foreigner (call him Guy B) and shared our gaming hobby. We became great friends with him, he flew back to his country a week later.
We played online a lot together and we hung out generally a lot. After a while I saw them hang out together without inviting me or asking me to play with them, which I gave no thought about at first, then on the next few occasions she didn’t even text me back only after they finished their session and told me “Oh sorry I didn’t see you wrote”. This happened multiple times and on other occasions she always texted me back even when she was ingame. She started to give less and less attention to me and they started to spend more time together. There were occasions when I left to sleep and they kept playing, but when the guy left from the group she always insisted on us leaving too. Ofcourse they kept chatting until 4am while telling me she is going to sleep at 1am.
Shit was started to raise some alarms in me but said nothing. Then she flew out to meet him and decided to tell me she is visiting her friend and when I pried she told me she was actually meeting the guy. I told her to discuss what will happen in the near future, if she wants to be with me or him, because even if she chooses him I won’t be mad just come clear if she does. She started calling me jealous and controlling. 2 weeks later she comes over, sleeps with me then tells me she will move abroad and she doesn’t want a long distance relationship. I ask if there is anything going on with the guy but she says that he is just a friend. I ask her if she feels closer to me or him and tells me that she doesn’t love either of us (so far). I flip out as at this point we were going out for several weeks with discussions like moving in together, etc. She decides to just leave in the middle of the convo and tells me I put way too much pressure on her with my love. I never was the one initiating the discussions of love or moving in together, she started all those things, though…
We don’t talk for 2 days and when I hit her up, she tells me that they are kind of a thing now. Oof, okay. I tell her from my side we can remain friends if she wants. She basically begs me to keep being friends. We start playing together again and apparently she told the guy I’m just her friend and we never had any feelings for each other and that we have never had sex because I’m gay. I’m like wtf.
She moves abroad and moves in with the guy after knowing him for a month or so (so there’s that we need to be friends first to have a meaningful relationship shit) 2 weeks in, she started sending me TikToks of couples with messages like “this would be totally us haha”, telling me what her love language is, telling me how much she loves me. I ignore these messages and keep the tone in a friendly manner but eventually I just got tired of this shitshow and I just stopped replying to her. Didn’t say a word I just left her on read because I don’t have the energy or the guts or the mindset to start this shit.
After 2 days she stopped texting as I wasn’t replying. It’s been 3 weeks now and I honestly feel better than when we were “friends”. Now some of you might say this is toxic to give someone the “silent treatment” but this is not just that, I wanted to cut contact because noone has ever played with my feelings this much.
I honestly think she was always just keeping me as Plan B. Now and 2 years ago as well.
TL;DR: Became friends, had a fling, she got together with someone else, 2 years later history repeats itself and I finally let go of her.
3 comments
I’d say go the next step and block her entirely. You don’t need that kind of person in your life. She never seems to be happy with her current relationship. She’s always looking for the next one. Or she’s looking for a one-sided open relationship where she can have as many partners as she wants but her partner can only have her.
She got married young. And divorced young. She was casually dating you and started dating someone else. She tried having an emotional affair with you while dating that someone else which ended with you being blocked. I suspect that relationship ended because she found other people to have affairs with. She starts up with you and finds yet another person. She eventually starts up with that other person and keeps coming back to you. She’s bouncing around partnerships more than a crack addled toddler with ADHD in a room full of candy and puppies.
If you want to be nice, send her a final message saying that the distance these last 3 weeks has made you realize that your friendship is not healthy and that you’ve decided it needs to end. You’ll be blocking her and ask that she not contact you again. Alternatively… just block her.
Either way, you deserve a better friend than her.
I don’t think it’s so much that you have always been Plan B. I think it’s more that to her the grass is always greener on the other side even if it’s a side she was on before.
I had a similar experience with a male friend. We were friends for about 7 years, in the beginning, I knew he might have been into me. I met my then-boyfriend a few months later but we remained somewhat friends as we used to work in the same company. I was with that boyfriend for 3 years, and after the break up we started to talk more as I had more “time” for social stuff compared to before.
During these years he did confess that he initially had feelings and he asked me out at least twice but I declined, and in the last 2 years he also mentioned he loved me but again, I said that I didn’t feel the same way about him and he seemed to be totally okay with it.
Suddenly (earlier this year) he goes into this depressive mode and when I finally ask what is wrong he confesses that he upset himself by thinking about how he probably wouldn’t be able to stay my friend if I found a boyfriend (I had been single for four years at that time) and I was just quite unsure how to go about it. He would then just say how he needed a friend to just come and hug him in bed and I guess I just had enough. Realized that he had been very subtly dropped comments and tried to make me feel emotionally guilty (like “Oh I am apparently not good enough friend to you for you to just reply to me etc etc) to the point he was trying to guilt me into not dating people or else I’d lose him.
I decided to just cut him off, told him I no longer wanted to be friends (we had a fight just before it) and that I was going to block him, and that this was not something we could discuss. Cutting him out of my life was the best thing I could have done and you are making the right choice.