Having genuine and loyal friends gets more difficult as we get older. I get it. There’s no such thing as a perfect friendship. Drama, fights, hurt feelings, and tears – these are all an inseparable part of any healthy and close friendship.
But it truly hurts when someone that you thought was a real and close friend to you doesn’t feel the same way about you. And I know this best.
Three years ago, I made friends with someone that I felt an instant connection with, as though we were soulmates. We worked in the same company and we always helped and supported each other to find our way. There was never competition between us.
Well, for a while.
Suddenly I began hearing stories that she got promoted. I couldn’t stop wondering why she never told me anything about this. She also began spending more time with her other friends, completely leaving me off the invite list.
The most bitter blow came when I found out that she planned to attend a work event that she and I had planned to attend together with another colleague of mine.
Well, I could no longer run away from the truth. I had to accept that she chose other friends over me.
She didn’t care about our friendship the way I did.
I wasn’t one of her top priorities, even though she was always at the top of my priority list.
She didn’t feel about me the way I felt about her.
I’ve spent many hours wondering how and when this friendship went wrong. But I couldn’t find any reasonable explanation.
However, I had to let go of it ultimately. For my own emotional and mental health, I made a decision to accept the truth that I simply wasn’t her cup of tea.
Now I know that sometimes the people we consider to be our close friends actually aren’t. Sometimes, for reasons which no one knows, they don’t feel the same way about us.
And there’s no point in chasing those people. There’s no point in begging for their attention and love.
Yes, the friendship didn’t work out as I’d hoped, but I will never let this define me or determine how I feel about myself. Maybe we were never meant to be close friends and that’s okay.
