When Something Good Stops Feeling Good

“I knew it before I really realized it. Things had not felt good between us, and they hadn't felt good for a long time.

I met her at a mutual friend's birthday and we clicked pretty quickly. We started going to plays together, getting coffee every Saturday morning, and eventually taking weekend trips when we needed a break from the stress and minutia of everyday life.

We liked a lot of the same things. We laughed a lot. For years, she was one of the people I felt closest to.

But somewhere along the way, I started noticing that sometimes when I left her, I didn't feel very good about myself. It wasn't anything big. That was part of what made it so confusing.

If I couldn't get together one weekend, she'd make some little quip about it. She'd make side comments that seemed harmless enough, but somehow had a negative edge to them. She could be critical of me too, but never in a way that was obvious enough for me to think, Wow, that was really mean.

It was more like, "You know how particular you can be." Or she'd tell me I was always looking for a problem. After a while, I started wondering if she was right. I even caught myself criticizing myself.

That was probably the strangest part. How could someone I felt so comfortable with also make me feel so uncomfortable?

Around that time, I started therapy for reasons that had nothing to do with her. But of course, when you start looking at yourself, you start looking at your relationships too.

And I learned some things about myself. Yes, I could be sensitive. I definitely overthought things. Apparently, I was also a people pleaser, which was not exactly a fun realization.

I started noticing how often I said yes when I really wanted to say no. How much I worried about disappointing people. How easily I could talk myself out of my own feelings because I didn't want there to be a problem. And I was doing all of that with her.

Eventually, I couldn't keep convincing myself that the comments didn't bother me. They did. Maybe she didn't mean anything by them. I don't know. But they were affecting me, and I didn't want that kind of criticism in a close friendship anymore.

Still, I felt trapped.

I didn't want to hurt her. We had years of history together. I also kept thinking about all the good parts of our friendship, because there were a lot of them.

Finally, one day I told her that some of the comments she made bothered me and made me feel bad.

Her response was, "You always take things too seriously!"

I think that was the moment something finally clicked. It wasn't even the comment itself. It was realizing that I had told someone I cared about how I felt, and there wasn't really any interest in understanding it.

I knew then that I didn't want this person to be as close to me as she had been.

That was much harder to accept than I expected. I had to let go of who I thought she was. I also had to let go of what I thought our friendship was. We had shared years of our lives. Saturday mornings. Trips. Inside jokes. Things we'd helped each other through.

None of that suddenly became meaningless because I needed something different now.

I didn't officially end the friendship. There wasn't some big conversation where I told her we couldn't be friends anymore. I just took a step back.

I stopped making myself quite so available. I saw her more in groups instead of one-on-one. I stopped working so hard to keep the friendship as close as it had always been.

And I started spending more time with other people. People I felt good around. People who could disagree with me or point something out without making me question myself afterward.

The friendship didn't disappear. It just became different.

I think for a while I believed letting go meant deciding that the whole thing had been bad. Now I don't think that's true.

She was an important friend to me for a long time. We had some really good years together. I'm grateful for a lot of what we shared.

But I can appreciate what a relationship was and still recognize when it isn't something I want to keep holding onto in the same way.

For the first time, I trusted myself enough to do that.

And that felt really good.”

Shared with permission. Names and identifying details may be changed.

Even in the mud, something is beginning.