How do you fall out of love...

with your best friend?

Answers welcome. Also know that me starting this thread will likely make everything worse, but it's all I've got right now.

 

Was something done to hurt the friend/lover?

Other than that, I've got nothin'.

 

Nope. Sometimes both people can think they want the same thing, on different timelines, only to eventually discover that all the wanting in the world on one side doesn't change the reality of the other. If that makes sense.

And if it doesn't, sorry. Not really seeing clearly.

 

Lasting romantic love is a myth, like the yeti.
What counts are things like shared goals, affinity and just flat out liking a person.
But for many people, that's not enough. They believe life should imitate art.

 

Replace him with this little guy



and accept being the Crazy Cat Lady. I'll move in next week.

 

Anecdote time:

Mike and I met first day of college and were inseparable for four years. We hung out every day, met a few times each summer, we ended up with minors in each other's major because we liked taking classes together. I was the second best man in his wedding behind his dad the month after graduation.

Gay, haha, OK, moving on.

He joined the Navy, went through training and ended up stationed in Hawaii with is wife. He sent me an e-mail telling me how great it was and how he couldn't wait for me and my girlfriend (now wife) to come visit for as long as we wanted.

That was the last I heard from him for three years. He didn't reply to e-mails, return phone calls or texts ... just disappeared.

He called me one day, told me he was going to be a dad and how much that excited but scared him. We talked for four hours straight about where we were and how we had gotten there. Said he hated how we had drifted apart, how he's just been so busy and being a decent friend slips his memory. Out of sight, out of mind. It got late and I told him I'd call him in the next few days to talk more. Tell your wife I love her, congrats on the kid.

That was four years ago and he hasn't responded to an e-mail or returned a call since.

Anyway, I guess my point is this: It hurts like hell, then it doesn't any more. That's life working on you and your sense of self-preservation working for you.

I'm sorry for whatever's going on in your life. Whether it's anything like this, I don't know and it's none of my business. But I understand and I'm sorry.

 

I once had girlfriend who told me I drank too much.
I quit drinking for a while, and she told me I was boring when I wasn't drinking.

 

She sounds like she was confused.

 

We're all confused.
I've had many loves since, and I'm very content.
But she was 'the great love.'
Probably because she was so vexing.

 

I'm not dismissive of romance. I understand, as many do, the pain of romance.
I'm just advocating a rational way by which one can consider romance.

 

Tammy Wynette once said, of her volatile marriage to George Jones, there's no love in the world that can't be killed if you beat it to death long enough. That may actually be the exact quote - I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

Not that anyone here has a relationship like theirs (at least I hope not), but the point is clear......love can die if it's not cherished, not appreciated, not nurtured. I realize it's not a tangible thing, a living, breathing person or animal or plant or anything that we would normally consider to be "alive".....and yet, it can live, and it can die.

Some loves die quickly. Some linger. Some loves die only when the people themselves pass on. Some loves change. In that, I mean that an affectionate love of sorts takes the place of a passionate and/or romantic love that has flickered out or is maybe on low boil instead of the high heat. I have a love like that for my estranged wife. Not just because she is the mother of my children, but because I once loved her - for a very, very long time, I might add - with every ounce of my being. For me, a love like that never truly dies - it just changes.

Some loves, unfortunately, do die. And when they die in the heart of one person but not two.....that's the saddest, most tragic love death of all; for one person to love someone in a way that is no longer reciprocated. Because, as yet another country singer named Steve Wariner once put it, it's only love when you're loved in return.

 

IJAG, I know Grady isn't hitting for shit, but he will turn it around.


Should this be read that you love this person, but they do not know, and you are afraid that them finding out, or this love, will hurt or end the friendship?