You Were My Best Friend, But I Was Never Yours

Imagine being friends with someone and loving them so much that you feel like that person and the relationship you have with them is the best thing ever. You admire and feel the need to put them on a pedestal for far too long, feeling hopeful that one day they will magically feel the same way. Because you love them this much, they have to feel the same, right?

But they don’t. And it’s heartbreaking. You’re left questioning what you did wrong or why you weren’t good enough for them to see you the way you saw them. Instead, they see you as clingy and needy. It feels like they don’t want you in their life and that you’re not enough of a friend for them and never will be. That’s a hard but necessary pill to swallow, but as painful as it might feel, the pain will pass.

Just because you weren’t seen as “enough” for this friend doesn’t mean you’re not enough for someone else. You just have to find them. And when you do it will feel like you belong to that core group of friends. You’ll finally feel like you’re enough. And you always have been, you were just craving the wrong person’s affection. When someone doesn’t share the same feelings about a relationship, it doesn’t matter how badly you want it. And if and when they do finally give you attention you may finally feel seen by this person and think maybe they finally grasp just how much they mean to you. But before long you’ll feel the familiar heartache that stems from the realization that they have and always will see you as a close friend. Maybe that’s all you ever were, but you felt a stronger bond than you actually had in the first place. You feel sad and relieved at the same time because you know these two things to be true: you are enough and you did nothing wrong. It can take a lot of convincing on your part to come to the realization that this is not the case, and it also makes you feel vulnerable enough to be willing to let people in and show you that you are good enough to have best friends who feel the same way about you.

When it’s real, you won’t have to question it like you have in past friendships that made you feel inadequate. Sometimes you might still get that feeling fades away with time and you start feeling more secure and trusting the right people. This doesn’t mean you can’t keep friendships that are emotionally lacking, it just means that they don’t care about you or love you in the ways you need.

When you grow mentally and emotionally and realize you had higher expectations for this friendship than your friend did, you can start to accept that it is what it is. You can still admire each other for the impact you’ve had on each other’s lives. At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember is that you’re enough for the right people. You always have been.