Were They Really Your Best Friend?
I’ve been in 5 relationships since I was 17. One fizzled out after two years, one was destined to be temporary, one ended in a screaming match and me moving to another island and two ended in catastrophic heartbreak.
Those two were unexpected and shook me to my core.
After both of these breakups, I kept repeating the same thing to myself “But he was my best friend”. I felt like I’d lost more than just a lover and if you’re reading this, I’m sure you can relate.
In this episode of The Date with Confidence Podcast, I’m asking were they really your best friend? My hope for you is that after listening to this episode, you’ll feel stronger, more empowered and ready to move on from the one(s) who didn’t deserve you.
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Were They Really Your Best Friend?
After my biggest, world shattering, unexpected breakup, I was devastated. And all I kept thinking was “but he was my best friend”. We’d travelled the world together, we’d had incredible experiences together, we’d been living together for 6 years (one of those before we were officially a couple) and we’d had a lot of rough experiences too.
At the time, he was who I (thought I) was most myself around. And I considered him my best friend.
But it wasn’t until I was moving through the breakup processing phase and the rose tinted glasses started to lift, that I realised best friends don't treat you that way.
Best friends are…
Best friends are supposed to support you no matter what. Supposed to cheer you on, encourage you, respect you, be mindful of your needs. Yet so many of us are in relationships or have now exited relationships where we have this belief that they were our best friend - which impacts our ability to move on and leaves us in a state of grief for a longer period of time.
Now, I’m not talking about the relationships that fizzle out or the ones where you grow apart over the years or the ones where you do become more like friends than lovers. I’m talking about the toxic relationships where you weren’t necessarily treated as you deserved to be and also where you perhaps didn’t treat them in the way that they deserved to be treated.
I’m talking about the catastrophic type breakups that shake you to your core. The shock ones, the ones you didn’t see coming, the ones where they perhaps cheated on you or disrespected you. The life altering, can’t function, can’t get out of bed breakups.
But when you think about it, and this is what really helped me to start to move on from my last breakup, were they really, truly your best friend?
Best friends don’t…
Best friends don’t gaslight you. Best friends don’t put you down. Best friends don’t abandon you to party with strangers. Best friends don’t ignore your needs. Best friends don’t live a life behind your back. Best friends don’t make you feel guilty or ashamed when you express your feelings or needs.
Best friends give as much to the relationship as they take.
So perhaps ponder on that and ask yourself, were they really my best friend?
This made moving on feel that bit easier
And for me, when I came to this understanding, instead of being in that reflecting with fondness and a feeling of loss space, I was able to feel more empowered and recognise that they weren’t the one. That that wasn’t the relationship that I deserved to have for the rest of my life. That we weren’t, in fact, soulmates.
And this really, however hard it was to acknowledge, it really helped to move on. Because in the moments where I started to fall into the pit of despair, of sadness that my life wasn’t gonna be what I thought was, I was able to remind myself of all the reasons that we shouldn’t have been together and all the positives surrounding the breakup.
Which, was obviously really hard because I thought they were the one.
But ultimately, I was able to instead reflect on all the times I’d had my feelings hurt, I’d been disrespected, I’d been treated poorly. And that helped. Even though there was then the inevitable feelings of shame around “how could I let myself be treated this way?”.
But that’s a whole other ballgame…..
