I Don’t Think I Can Be Friends With Her Again

Friday | September 23, 2022

Love Letters Breakups 🖤

I Don’t Think I Can Be Friends With Her Again

How’s your relationship life? What’s stressing you out? Send a question about it to [email protected] or fill out this form. Also, for the weekend, Ep 2 of this season of the podcast is a story about a woman whose romantic life takes so many twists and turns and … it’s good listening.

I’m 22. I got along really well with a friend of mine, and eventually we liked each other as more than friends. We dated, but after a bit she got bored of the relationship and broke up with me, but we remained good friends.

After the breakup she started talking about a guy – how she really liked him. She had been talking about this as if she had felt this way about him for years. Once I realized this – and because of other moments in the friendship/relationship – I felt like she never really liked me in the first place. I ended up having a meltdown and talking to a mutual friend of ours about how I felt. That person then proceeded to take a screenshot of my message and sent it to my ex/friend, so it made me feel worse – and I blocked both of them on every platform.

The friend I dated was begging me to unblock her because she had something really important to tell me. She then proceeded to tell me how she still has feelings for me and she just wanted to let me know. After that, we just ignored the topic and started talking like friends again, but lately I don’t think I can handle either of them and can’t forgive what they did to me. I feel horrible. Should I let her (or either of them) back in?

– Blocked

I’m going to refer to these people as “friend” and “ex” so we don’t get confused. (“Friend” is the person who took the screenshot.)

Friend is the big betrayer here. You confided in this person, and instead of respecting a pretty obvious need for privacy, they meddled. I’m not sure why – whether it was to cause more drama or encourage more productive conversation – but you don’t trust this person. It is totally fine to take space from them, maybe forever. I’d be curious to know their logic – if/how they explained themselves, but … go with your gut on that.

As for ex, who is also a friend, it does sound like she’s been honest about things. She had feelings for you and then didn’t. Yes, it’s possible she also had feelings for someone else while she was with you. That hurts, but it happens. I don’t think she did horrible things (based on this letter), but that doesn’t mean you have to take her back in any form. You say you can’t handle her presence right now, and that’s OK. You can tell her you need space based on everything that happened, and that it wasn’t easy to be her friend after dating her. That makes sense.

Try to be clear about your boundaries so she can respect them. If you don’t know them yet, you can say that too. I assume you don’t want to be in a romantic relationship with her again, at least not now. Make that known too – if that’s true.

– Meredith

Readers? Any reason to bring these people back in? How do you know whether it’s good for you?

Breakups 🖤 Friends Friendship After Breakups Getting back together