Dear Ex-Best Friend

I’ve been going back and forth in my head about whether or not I should post the story of how my best friend and I parted ways. If you’ve read my previous posts, you know my best friend and I decided to leave our hometown together and move to Portland, Oregon. We’ve known each other since high school and were extremely close for years. I thought of this girl as a sister and genuinely believed she was one of the very few people who truly understood me. There was nothing that would have broken our friendship up, or so I believed.

Before I tell my side of the story, I would like to preface that I really don’t want to paint her out as a villain or make her sound like a horrible person. From the bottom of my heart, I will always love this girl and cherish the time we spent together. But after reevaluating the situation for months, I think it’s important to state my side of the story because in her perspective, she sees myself and my boyfriend as the villains. I hope if she ever reads this post, she can look at it from my perspective and understand that I was hurt from all of the events that went down.  

Not long after we moved, we both got serving jobs at Olive Garden, where she met this boy. Just for reference, my best friend was 20 when she met this boy, who was 28. When we first met him, he was already in a 10-year relationship, so we were confused when we eventually saw him on her Tinder. When my friend matched with him, she asked if he was still in said relationship. He told her they recently opened their relationship up, but his main priority was with that 10-year relationship. As time went on, my friend and this boy grew closer, and he eventually broke up with the girl he was in a 10-year relationship with. He didn’t take time after the breakup; he immediately jumped into a relationship with my friend. He was even still living with his ex-girlfriend for months after their breakup. This was my friend’s first serious relationship, and to be honest, I thought the age gap and the whole ex-girlfriend of 10 years thing was extremely weird. But whenever I voiced any concern to my friend, she told me it was her decision to make, and things only went downhill from there. 

By the time my best friend and this older guy got serious, I had already been in my relationship for over a year. My boyfriend (who’s only one year older than us) and my best friend, didn’t always get along at first, but eventually became friends as time went on. The three of us were even planning to travel to a different country together. At the time, my friend was working on saving up enough money for the trip, but my boyfriend and I didn’t mind waiting for her since she promised she would eventually have the money. We even decided to all move in together 6 months before our set departure. By the time my friend and I moved in with my boyfriend, she was getting closer and closer to her older boyfriend. He would come over and spend several nights with her, even though she originally was upset with my boyfriend spending several nights with me when we first started seeing each other. At first, she told us not to interact with each other because she was trying to settle into the relationship. (Side note: he didn’t even ask if she wanted to be his girlfriend, he just started calling her his girlfriend one day.)

Once they became official, she asked me to try and get to know him better. When I worked with him at Olive Garden, he was very quiet and seemed too mature for someone in their early 20’s. When my boyfriend and I finally did hang out with him in a social setting, he was extremely quiet and seemed uncomfortable. I was seeing less and less of my best friend and I tried telling her that I wanted to spend more one on one time with her. When I first started dating my boyfriend, we had a conversation about how I would split my time 50/50 because again, we were extremely close and agreed to always put our friendship before any boy. When I told her she was not holding up her end of the bargain, she thought I was being a hypocrite. But I asked my boyfriend from an outside perspective if that was true, and he admitted he barely saw her anymore unless they were passing to and from work.   

I eventually had to just keep any concerns I had about their relationship to myself. If I wanted to keep my best friend, I was going to have to get used to the new setup. That was until about 2 months before we were set to leave the country. I had asked her if she was still sure about traveling with my boyfriend and me, since her older guy would not be coming with us. She pinky promised me that nothing was going to get in the way of her life-long dreams. But only a week later, she sat me down, and told me she had decided to move in with her new boyfriend. 

I was naturally shocked because it was finally official… My best friend had chosen a boy over me.

She claimed the real reason she wasn’t coming with us anymore was because she didn’t have the money, even though she continuously promised over and over again that she would have the money soon. I know not everyone's the best at saving money, but we had a plan of how to make it work by the time we left. I tried to see it from her perspective and understand, but I needed some time to wrap my head around everything and didn’t talk to her for a little while. After about a week of not talking, I told her that I still wanted to be friends, but my feelings were extremely hurt. Even though we were still hanging out, it was kind of obvious our friendship was over. 

Whenever she spent any time with me, she was usually on her phone texting her boyfriend. When we went away for the weekend to celebrate our friend’s 21st birthday, her boyfriend messaged her nonstop and even told her he was insecure about what might go down at said party. Not to mention, she once told me that he told her he was jealous about the friendship she and I had. It was obvious this 28 year old man was not as mature as my friend made him out to be, and it seemed like he just wanted her all to himself. My friend began lashing out at my boyfriend and me on a daily basis, and the house was filled with rising tension. She was leaving her dishes in the sink, and messes all around the house, but when my boyfriend nicely asked her to wash her dishes, she yelled at him and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Believe it or not, things only got worse from there.  

My friend had a golden retriever that she left at her parent’s house because she wasn’t able to take care of him in our new place. One day, her parents called her and let her know they could no longer take care of her dog. Unbeknownst to my boyfriend and me, she had brought her dog back. She originally said she would take care of him all by herself, but I told her we weren’t monsters and would help out if need be. She didn’t want us taking him on hikes, however, because he was having “listening issues.” The day after she asked us not to take him on long walks, she asked me if I could take him out a few times because she would be at work for the whole day. My boyfriend and I were busy running errands and getting things together before our travels, so I didn’t get a chance to take her dog out. We had already planned to go on a hike that day, and I figured that would be the only time we could take her dog out all day. Since she had asked me to take him out a few times and it was only a one time thing, I figured she would be okay with it. Her dog was perfectly behaved and that was probably the most exercise he had gotten since being back in Oregon. 

When we got home, she started yelling at me. Even after I explained the situation and apologized, she continued yelling at me. My boyfriend eventually had to step in and asked her to not yell at me. He told her that we could all talk about it in a respectable manner, but she only got more pissed off. I stopped speaking once she started yelling, and my boyfriend was trying to calm her down. The whole ordeal ended with her flipping off my boyfriend and telling him she never liked him. The next day, she stormed into the living room, asking us if we took her dog on a walk. We told her no and that we were out with friends all day. She told us that the leash had moved, as she made sure to leave it on the floor and it suddenly was on the bed. My boyfriend laughed and asked if she was being serious. She said it wasn’t funny and I told her that we didn’t touch her dog. 

After screaming at my boyfriend and I, my now ex-best friend was being passive aggressive. We left the house temperature at 65 degrees, but every morning it would be changed to 40 degrees. We woke up freezing for 2 weeks straight. She also took herself off of the Life360 we all had, and her boyfriend was basically living with us. She didn’t ask us if it was okay for him to have a key, but there he was walking into our house with a key. She also hoarded dishes and other common household items in her room. I eventually nicely asked her not to hoard things anymore and her response was, “Sure, I’ll just be more invisible than I already am.” I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. 

We weren’t talking to her anymore because she screamed at us and never even attempted to apologize. My boyfriend and I were trying our hardest to stay civil and not add to the tension. The next day after asking her not to hoard things, she put a gift I gave her on the living room table. I still remained silent and only texted her about roommate things. A couple days later, she told me she was moving out. She left all the cleaning to my boyfriend and me, and her dog left pee stains all over her room. 

When our final bill came from the landlord, we owed $1,000 for carpet cleaning fees. The pictures showed that a large dog had left urine stains. There was one small stain that I assumed was from my cats. My boyfriend doesn’t have any pets, so I told my ex-best friend that she and I would be splitting the cost. She said she understood why we were splitting it between the two of us instead of three, but that she was running low on money. She asked if my boyfriend could help pay. Even though most of the carpet damage was from her dog being trapped in her room all day every day, and I was already paying for half the expense, she was complaining about “fairness.” I told her that her being in a different financial situation isn’t a reasonable excuse for not paying what she owes, especially after how she treated my boyfriend and me. She told me she would get the money from her older boyfriend, then told me she was “done.” After making sure she didn’t jip us, I blocked her on everything. 

I’m not sure if her 8 year older boyfriend got to her, and that’s why she turned into someone I no longer recognize, or what, but I knew our friendship was completely over. It’s tough looking back at everything, because I genuinely believed she was going to be my best friend until we were old and wrinkly. I know in the eyes of the law there’s nothing wrong with a now 29 year old dating a now 21 year old, but I still think it’s weird. I’m not going to go into depth about the situation, but in high school, someone only 2 years older than us put this ex-best friend of mine in an uncomfortable situation. Now she’s in a situation with someone who graduated high school when she was in elementary school. He also has more relationship experience, as he was in a 10-year relationship while first seeing my ex-bestie, and this is her first serious relationship. I don’t wish her any harm, in fact I wonder about her and hope all is well. 

Of course I wish that things could have ended differently, but sometimes shit happens and you lose people. If I’ve learned anything about healing and moving on from the past, it’s that you can’t keep reliving events in your head and stay wondering, “What If?” I truly believe that everything works itself out. I personally am a Christian and I believe that God will not lead me astray. Now, whether you have a religion or not, I’m sure most people have some sort of faith in believing that things tend to work themselves out. So maybe I’ve lost my childhood friends and everything seems to be going off course for me, but I know that soon enough everything will be the exact way it needs to be. So, if you’re reading this and you also lost a relationship you never thought you would, just remember that everything’s going to make sense one day. And to my ex-best friend, I truly hope all is well.