24F struggling to understand whether my friendship with my 24F best friend became toxic, codependent, or just emotionally unhealthy for both of us after 3 years. How do I handle the situation personally and socially?
I (24F) recently had a fallout with my best friend/roommate (24F) after around 3 years of being extremely close. We became very emotionally dependent on each other during college, and now I genuinely can’t tell whether this was a toxic friendship or just two emotionally immature people hurting each other unintentionally.
She genuinely cared about me a lot. Whenever I was struggling emotionally, she would always try to comfort me, cheer me up, spend time with me, and make me feel cared for. She expected the same emotional effort back from me, which I think is fair and I tried my best to meet those expectations. The problem is that we’re very different emotionally. She’s extremely expressive and requires constant reassurance, while I’m much more avoidant and tend to shut down when overwhelmed.
Over time I started feeling emotionally drained because I constantly felt careful around her, like I had to monitor what I said so I wouldn’t upset her or trigger another emotionally heavy conversation. Even normal hangouts sometimes left me mentally exhausted instead of relaxed. At the same time, I know she probably felt hurt because I became quieter and emotionally withdrawn over time. I stopped opening up much because I often felt interrupted, talked over, or like conversations would always shift back to her experiences and emotions. Later she would complain that I had become boring, distant, or emotionally unavailable, which made me feel guilty because I had genuinely tried to change a lot for her and become the kind of friend she needed.
Another thing that affected me was feeling like she subtly discouraged me from getting close to other people. Whenever I started becoming friends with someone, she would make slightly negative comments about them, but if I brought it up she’d deny meaning it that way. One of her other closest friends (also our roommate) later had a very bad fallout with her too, and during that time both of us realized we had experienced many similar feelings in the friendship and maybe weren’t entirely “the problem” the way we had started believing.
I also know I contributed to the downfall of the friendship. I became avoidant during conflict, emotionally defensive, and I spoke to her other friend about our friendship problems, which she later found out about and felt deeply betrayed by. She now says she can’t continue the friendship in the same “best friend” way anymore because she needs to choose her self-respect atleast once. From her perspective, I think she genuinely feels emotionally damaged and betrayed by the people she trusted most. She’s currently having a very hard time and reposting things on instagram about narcissists, toxic friendships, emotional manipulation, betrayal, etc., which I know are probably aimed at us.
Now we barely talk, and I’m struggling because I realize I emotionally centered my entire college life around this friendship. I didn’t build many other close friendships outside of her, so now I feel extremely lonely even though I’m surrounded by people every day.
How do I objectively understand whether this dynamic was actually toxic or just mutually unhealthy? And how do I stop viewing either myself or her as entirely “the villain” after something this emotionally intense?
P.s sorry this might be too long but this is just the tip of the iceberg