Hi all. New poster because this has really been giving me trouble. Might be a little longer but trying to provide context…
Let’s call my friend W.
I met W when I moved to a larger city for the first time online and met in person right away. We became fast friends and had similar hobbies, humor, and just had a lot of fun together. I’d consider W to have been an incredibly supportive friend to me, and I did my best to be supportive as well. We were both pretty busy people and they had to drive a ways to see me most of the time so we’d text when we could. Most often we’d text big blurbs and respond later, or if we couldn’t offer a full and “proper” reply, I knew we’d probably call soon as I usually tried to call her at least once a week to keep in touch.
We were making plans to hangout. I asked what day and time. She replied, and said she wanted to get something for her parent because the parent was sad due to one of their rabbits passing away suddenly the night before. Now, from my POV, she didn’t seem upset- she didn’t say or do anything to indicate as such, seemed like she just wanted to support her parent. And honestly I was going through something myself at the time, so I just said “oh no not your bunny, I’m sorry to hear about that”. That’s all I said.
About an hour went by without response. I saw W was online on our favorite game. Still assuming nothing was amiss, I asked if she wanted to play. That way we could chat more if they needed to since we always call when we play. I was just trying to remain casual and be friendly.
Then she said “how could you say that about my animal dying.” In my confusion I repeated that I said I was sorry to hear it and added that I was there for her if she wanted to chat. She said that “oh no not the ___” is a meme that people say all the time online and it’s a joke we say, and that it seemed like I was saying that phrase jokingly about the rabbit. I said that no, I would never joke about such a thing and had just sent a brief message. She also asked me how I could bring up a game at a time like this. I said I asked to play to try and cheer her up and talk on the phone. Back and forth argument ensued for quite a while, with her sending huge paragraph texts saying she couldn’t believe I would act like this as a so called best friend, how I was so supportive before but not now, how she had felt like she couldn’t be honest with me about their feelings for a while for fear of this sort of thing happening- what thing I don’t know?
I felt like I had just taken crazy pills. I tried calling her, straight to voice mail. I said this was obviously a miscommunication and I would NEVER make fun of someone’s animal dying- I’m in the animal science field for a career and have grown up with animals my whole life! I still cry about my animals who have passed! If you ugly cry about your pet frog to your pet dog dying, I am there for you! I was so utterly confused. She had not shown any signs of being upset until after I apologized. I said whoa, let’s take a step back, let’s try speaking over the phone, this is a misunderstanding, and she seemed to think I was implying she was overreacting or crazy. I apologized for the misunderstanding multiple times, stating being harmful or funny wasn’t my intention, but to no avail.
W then cancelled our plans for the following day and said she needed space to grieve and suggested I respect that. I sent a big apology and said I’d always be there for her and never intended to hurt her and would be there when she was ready. She ignored my text and me for two weeks straight. I tried calling a couple times but again straight to voicemail. Keep in mind that due to her weekends being busy and her living further away we had not seen each other for weeks at this point to begin with so I was getting antsy. It gave me a lot of anxiety and made me feel like I was being punished for something I didn’t do.
Finally she replied to one of my follow up texts asking what was going on and if everything was okay. She said she “hadn’t given it much thought” in a brief, petty kind of way. Then I noticed she had blocked me and all of our mutual friends on everything but text message. I’ll admit I was furious at this after 4 years of friendship so I may have said some choice words in the sting of betrayal… but I can’t stop thinking maybe I was at fault in some way?
Unfortunately she has had a history of being very overreactive as a trauma response I think, labeling people who make slight mistakes as evil enemies or taking things from 0 to 100- some people it was valid, others not so much. Before this happened she had been starting to hangout with a friend group I wasn’t super into due to one regular friend being twice our age which I thought was really weird and uncomfortable but I never said anything. I have always wondered if maybe she just wanted an excuse to be with those friends instead so found a reason to be mad and drop me. I’m not sure. According to my partner she’s always been mean to me. I never saw it that way but I will admit this isn’t the first time I’ve been kind of lit up for not meeting her emotional needs, at times it almost felt like she was anticipating responses from me that you’d expect from a spouse and not a best friend in terms of emotional support. I just felt for her and I thought we were close.
I’m having trouble coping and moving on. Everywhere I look in my house is some amazing gift she made or found for me. Pictures and letters everywhere. Clothing pieces we thrifted together. Every restaurant, nature spot and place we went to. We had our differences but I never thought this sort of thing would happen and I really still don’t know what went wrong. I’d appreciate any advice.