Formed Frontal Lobe Thoughts

[soos_mite_ah]

The other side of a friend break up

I had this messy friend breakup that lasted from early August 2024 and lingered into the end of February 2025. That has been fucking with my brain. I will say that by the end of March I was like 80% over it but that last 20% has been lingering. Then by September, I started to feel like I was on the other side where most of the pain subsided to where I felt like I see the life lessons in this situation. And I've had like a month or two to let those lessons simmer and I want to journal about it. 

I would say that the biggest thing is that this situation taught me about the type of friend I do NOT want to be. 

1. I don't want to be the friend with no conflict resolution skills: Conflict is inevitable and it comes up when you're in a long term relationship with anyone. Misunderstandings happen, people aren't perfect, but so long as you can communicate your needs and take accountability, I think that helps you preserve your relationships as well as help each other grow. Sometimes we need the friction of other people to smooth out our rough edges and I think we're living in a world that values emotional convenience over connection which can cause us to deem any form of friction as erosion. 
2. I don't want to be the friend who ghosts (or tries to ghost others): I think that ghosting people who you have considered close is pretty confusing and existentially bad to the person who you're ghosting who was probably under the impression that things were fine this entire time. 
3. I don't want to be the friend who people pleases and doesn't voice her needs or when someone did something that bothers her: I think a lot of the stuff that the other person was going through can be wrapped up in not being proactive with something that bothers her to the point where it bubbled up and exploded. I also think the person I was dealing with was probably around a lot of toxic form of conflict in her workplace and maybe even in her romantic relationship. And in my experience, when you're around so much toxic conflict, you also tend to paint healthy and natural forms of conflict as toxic as well which then causes you to be conflict avoidant / a people pleaser. I wouldn't be surprised if because she was surrounded by volatile people she would get into screaming matches with if she brought something up that she would think that I would react the same way if we were to have a conversation. I can see how trauma can cause this kind of bias but it's also like, anyone who has had conversations with me knows that I'm not a volatile person and that I am capable of working through things constructively and in good faith. Basically, I think this person has a lot going on which has affected her ability to handle conflict and she probably doesn't know me like that. 
4.  I don't want to be the friend who doesn't give people the space to grow and take accountability: I understand that growth isn't perfect and that people can still make mistakes in that path but I don't want to write someone off who is genuinely trying. So long as we had a conversation and I can see that you're making moves in the right direction, I think that's good enough. I think it can be dehumanizing and harsh to expect perfection in ourselves and the people around us. Again, it reminds me of this quote: 

   On 9/7/2025 at 4:20 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

   Everyone is so emotionally intelligent nowadays they completely miss the part where love sometimes means being patient with someone who's still figuring things out. We've learned the language of boundaries and red flags so well we forget that healing doesn't always look pretty or perform well. We live in a time where one wrong text can end a connection, and one imperfect moment can brand someone as unsafe. Where protecting your peace is sometimes just avoiding intimacy. We confuse regulation with disconnection, clarity with control, detachment with wisdom. And in doing so, we build curated lives filled with people who never challenge our edges and only mirror them. We mistake emotional intelligence for emotional convenience. And then we wonder why everything feels so distant even when we're doing everything right. 

5. I also believe that being a friend also means holding each other accountable. Like I don't want a group yes men who will validate everything I'm going through and be unconditionally supportive. I want people to call me out or reassure me when I'm not thinking straight. I don't see people disagreeing with me or people not being unconditionally supportive as them being negative. I'm not the type of friend who won't say anything and will sit and watch the circus go down as their friend is running around like a clown and ruining their life. I'm also not going to be the type of person that lectures, nags, or keeps bringing the same thing up (I'm not their mom or their therapist) and I'm not going to be the type of person to say I told you so either because I want you to feel safe even if you made the wrong decision. I will mention something once or twice and then let you make your decision because you have agency and some people need to learn from their life experiences and fuck around and find out to have certain things stick. 

6. I'm going to start judging people by their significant other/ long term partners: Of course there are caveats and nuances here. I'm not going to judge people and victim blame those in abusive situations. I'm not going look down on people who made a few bad decisions here and there as they are learning through life experiences. But what I am going to consider is that birds of a feather flock together and the type of partner you choose does say something about you. And if you're dating a weirdo, either you yourself are weirdo on some level or you tolerate that type of behavior. Either way, I'm proceeding with caution. 

7. I'm more mindful about things like weaponized therapy speak and hyper individualized self care: I did a few posts talking about this so I will not be elaborating. 

I'm also at a place where even though I can see where I might have fucked up, I can also see ways that her breaking up with me in this way might also be more of a reflection of what's going on on her end rather than mine. 

1. She was working in a very volatile work environment and had a lot of chaos in her life: I'm sure that what I did was the straw that broke the camels back but also, the camel was holding on to a lot of other things that was contributing significantly more to that weight than my straw. And kind of what I was saying earlier, I think the toxic confict she was facing in this environment also caused her to react disproportionately to healthy conflict and me trying to figure out what was going on her end in good faith. And I think as she was going into a more peaceful time, she's kind of over correcting and going into the toxic positivity route. I had that era too and I can recognize that this is part of the process sometimes but it sucks that I was collerateral damage in her journey of personal growth. 
2. She may or may not be in a toxic relationship: I don't want to say that she is for sure because I have limitted evidence of it and I don't want to make bold claims of people I don't know like that. But she has said things about this man that has cause me to be like *girl... that's not normal..* And I wonder if this relationship was worse than I thought and I was unknowingly navigating a minefield where I said the wrong thing that caused this person to want to distance herself from me and further isolate. 
   
   I also remember a time in my healing from all of this where I was pissed because she can go to couples therapy and work shit out with this man that did fucked up things to her. But when it comes to me doing something minor, she's going to cut things off and never have a proper conversation about this. And now, my perspective has shifted a bit about this as I have been learning about toxic relationships. People who are trauma bonded to each other with the low lows and the high highs can sometimes justify and fight for things that don't make sense because they are attached to the abuser in a way that mirrors addiction. Maybe the reason she felt like she could leave without fighting for the connection when it came to me is not because she's male centered but because I'm not manipulating/ trauma bonding her to me. 
3. There might be other stressors going on that I have no clue about: Given that this looks like an avoidant person, I wouldn't be surprised if there were other things going on that I had no clue about that was also causing stress to cause her to react the way that she did. 
4. I think this person also might have the Bumble BFF brainrot: I will not elaborate since I already did posts about convenience culture and how that is translating to people on apps as their main form of socialization. 

At this point, I think I'm like 95% over it. I still have a few thought loops that go along the lines of: 

1. I think I'm a trauma dumping crazy person who is miserable to be around and that makes me scared to open up to people at times. 
2. Sometimes I think people secretly hate me and I have no friends.  
3. I'm scared I might be overestimating my place in people's lives 

But on the bright side I have been making a couple of new friends and been opening up more at work. I think that has been helping me combat the thought loops above and it's making me think *hey, you don't suck socially, you just dont have as many opportunities as you did growing up so finding and making friends takes longer than it used to.*