They say it’s harder to break up with friends than a romantic partner since the rules are a lot less cut-and-dry. This often results in people tolerating others’ company they otherwise wouldn’t be around because they can’t bring themselves to cut them loose.
I’ve only ever friend broken up with one other person who was going down a 4chan bigotry rabbit hole back in the day, and he’d constantly bring up problematic talking points that I’d try to dismantle, but he was too dogmatic to have a conversation with so I had to stop being friends with him.
I check up on his online presence every now and again, but he’s only gotten more racist and sexist. Sometimes I wonder if having more pushback from me or someone outside whatever echo chamber he was in would’ve helped, but he just sapped my energy so much I couldn’t take it.
(trivia for older internet peeps; he was the Legorobot Comics author. If you ever saw his work you could probably tell he was gonna grow up to be a bigot)
Anyways, what’s your friend break up story? What was the last straw? What was the first straw? Any regrets?
I had a friend once, and then I met a friend through him. A girl — but it’s not what you think. She was my friend but he never liked her. She accused him of SAing her, and then moved away. I actually heard about it through his family. Like they found out the other family was moving and I guess someone asked and she made an accusation but couldn’t prove it, so her parents decided to move. I still think about her, and I’ve based my Animal Crossing characters after her, basically wishing she’s living her best life somewhere. The crazy thing is, he never said he didn’t SA her, just that she was a selfish bitch and this that and the third… I never trusted him after that. He was not a friend to me, and I certainly wasn’t going to be around someone who could do something like that. I hope to hell he didn’t do it, but he lost my trust and I lost two friends. I mourn the loss of one of them.
I actually saw him a couple years ago. He’s doing well, some people I know still talk to him. And I never straight up accused him of doing that to her, so I don’t think he ever really hated me or anything, but I’m sure he knows that’s why we aren’t friends. At the time, he acted like it was his choice, he “finally figured out I was a loser” and shit like that.
I just really wish I had her contact information. I’m sure by now she’s married, has a few kids… she might even have grandkids by now. She may not even remember me — another point, she was a bit younger than we were. So she was kinda like a little sister to me, not just a friend. One thing I remember is how light she was. Like she didn’t get enough to eat at home but didn’t have the self-confidence to ask others for food. Like I would have donated my entire allowance ($10/week) to feeding her if it would have helped, or if she would have accepted it. But she let me pick her up and she just weighed like nothing. (And the first time I picked her up, my friend told me to put her on my shoulders, but facing back so my face would be in her belly, but he was implying something else… not very good with female anatomy, but foreshadowing his creep tendencies. I had no attraction to her whatsoever, so I shut that shit down straight away.) But, she was a good friend to me, and tried to be a good friend to him but he just hated her for some reason.
That was over 30 years ago. To be clear, I don’t hold a grudge — I don’t actually know what happened. I just know I lost a good friend. She and I could have been lifelong friends. The age gap was too great for us to have ever dated, even later in life, but I would have stood by her through a lot of shit. And yes, my wife (married almost 20 years) knows about her, and wishes she could meet her.