Should I end the friendship or try again?
26F, best friend is 28F
My best friend and I have been close for 13 years, but things have felt off for the past 3 years, mostly because of her current relationship.
She has always been the loudest person in the room about hating cheaters. Her current boyfriend, however, was in a 5-year relationship when they got together, she found out he had been cheating on his girlfriend to be with her, and they still ended up together anyway. She also always said marriage was her ultimate goal, and he promised her that’s where they were headed.
When he got a job offer overseas and later accepted a permanent position that would keep him away for 5 more years, she was devastated. I was there. I answered every tearful call, took her out to party, and we ended up in another city, completely drunk on an impromptu trip that wasn’t cheap. I did it without hesitation because she’s my best friend.
Throughout that whole period I was her person. When she was sad, when they argued, I was there. I often helped her see his side of things because she does tend to overthink. Then one day they had a big fight, she blocked him, and I spent the entire day comforting her. That same evening she told me she had unblocked him and they were going to work things out. I told her honestly that I felt like she had wasted my time, she got upset, and we had a major falling out.
We eventually agreed to stop discussing men altogether, really it was her decision I didn’t get a say in the matter, which wasn’t ideal for me because I believe best friends should be able to talk about anything. In March last year we had a proper conversation and hashed things out. We never fully went back to talking about relationships openly, but we were in a better place.
Then in June last year she posted about celebrating their 2-year anniversary, which confused me because I thought he was still overseas. I assumed he had come back for the short visit she had mentioned a while back and let it go. A month later she was still posting dates and outings, including places we had planned to go together. Two months in, it became obvious that he had been back in the country for a while and she had never said a word to me about it.
Around that same time, she cancelled one of our plans because it was his birthday. The following weekend, she went to a festival to see an artist we both love, and took him instead of me. The year before, I had paid for her ticket to that same festival for a different artist. I wouldn’t have even expected her to pay for my ticket this time, just to be asked first.
Then a week before a festival we had booked together, she cancelled on me saying she wasn’t in a good space. She’s cancelled a lot this year between school and family stuff so I wasn’t completely surprised. She offered to transfer her ticket to another friend so I could still go. I asked what was going on and she said she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, that she didn’t want to open up to the people she felt vulnerable around, and then added, with a laughing emoji, that the only exception was her boyfriend.
So essentially: “I can’t talk to the people I’m vulnerable around, except John 😂”
The part that stung the most is that she never even told me her boyfriend had moved back to the country, even though I was the one holding her together while he was gone. And now she’s making a point of telling me she’d rather talk to him than me. When I replied with “okay, take care of yourself” and a heart, she got upset because apparently another friend had said “I’ll be here when you’re ready” and she read my response as passive aggressive.
I genuinely don’t know how to feel about all of this. I love her a lot but she seems to have found her forever person and ever since he came in the picture one way or another it seems like she finds faults in me. Should I leave the friendship or rather keep my distance and let her be the one to end it cause I see it going in that direction. It just feels silly a man would be indirectly the root cause.