Besties
I haven’t been very active on the internet lately. Not here, not on Fet. Seems like once I’ve been away from Fet for a little while, I have trouble getting back into the swing of it. The place moves too fast. Threads are done, posts are old, conversations are finished often times within hours. If you miss it, you’re out of the loop!
Sometimes the (perceived) intimacy of internet forums makes me back away, too. People who have been reading here for awhile know me a whole lot better than I know them, and it can seem like they already think of me as their friend when I’ve only just “met” them- literally.
It’s not that I don’t want people to be my friend, or to be friendly, and it’s not that I have any problem with people reaching out… I mean, I’m not entirely a cold fish. But I am kind of… stand-off-ish, I guess.
The other day, Am was talking to me about her friend, Lee; she was complaining about this thing Lee does that drives her crazy, and my response was along the lines of why not just dump her then. To which Am replied that Lee was one of her besties and how I would understand that if I actually had a bestie.
I have friends; both online and face to face. But, leaving M out of the mix
I don’t always like this about myself. I think it probably comes across as bitchy. Or snobby. Or something even worse. Thing is, I wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, I had a bestie.
Her name was Dawn, and we met when we were in the 4th or 5th grade. We both got glasses that year and endured the soul-searing insult of “Four eyes!” together. Our friendship was sealed.
We were pretty inseparable, through the rest of elementary school, through the 3-P’s of junior high (puberty, pimples, and periods). Together we suffered through the horror of being a high schooler who wasn’t a jock or cheerleader. We shared boyfriend woes, and went on double dates. We shared homework, clothes, houses. We smoked our first cigarette, and later, our first joint together.
I was there when she got married. She was there when I did. I was there when she had her son. She was there when I had my daughter, and then my other daughter. Our babies shared teething cookies and playpens.
I was there when she began to suspect her husband was having an affair. I went with her on ‘stake outs’ and evidence-finding missions, and she cried on my shoulder, sitting in my car in the dark, parked on the side of the street, when we eventually tailed him to the other woman’s house.
I supported her through the divorce and the beginning of a bitter custody battle. I couldn’t help stop her own descent into drinking… a descent that eventually cost her that custody battle. And then, for a time, I joined in with the drinking and we all sank.
It was during a period of enforced sobriety (aka: I was pregnant with B-man), and perhaps I was feeling left out and lonely as the rest of them continued to party without me, maybe it was bitterness that had me nagging at my by-then ex-husband one day, saying something to the effect of “My BFF is more of a second parent to our kids than you are!” Until I pissed him off enough that he dared me to challenge her on what kind of bestie fucks her BFF’s husband and then lies about it for years.
To her (small) credit, she didn’t deny it.
I remember that moment as clearly as if it were yesterday: Sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, feeling like I’d been sucker punched in the gut, as she admitted that, yes, she had fucked him while we were still married. Oh, you can probably guess the story: She was drunk, it meant nothing, yadda yadda yadda.
It wasn’t the sex that bothered me so much anyway. It was the countless hours I’d spent talking to her about my marriage, about my suspicions, about my concerns that I couldn’t trust him. The opportunities she had to tell me that he was a liar and a cheat and to stop wasting time on him because she KNEW. She knew that he was sleeping around, and not just with her, but with her *sister* (her SISTER! To add insult to injury, he slept with Sis while I was in the hospital birthing Am), among countless other bar sluts. She knew about all of them. She knew the whole time. And yet she let me-no, encouraged me to believe his denials and hang on to the sham of a marriage, the sham of our family and our life.
It was quite the blow. Anyone who has gone from ‘suspicion’ to ‘confirmation’ can tell you what a painful difference that is. And to make matters worse, the one and only person in the entire world that I would have gone to to share the pain of learning that truth? My bestie?
What kind of bestie does a person like that?
And so. We were never friends again. Just like that.
These days, people thinking I’m a bitch or a snob is less risky, less painful.
(*M falls into a whole different category. He definitely fills the slot of bestie, without actually being a BFF. It’s a much more…formal?…arrangement.)
Uncategorized | kaya | 
Wednesday February 29th, 2012 11:21pm
Sorry to hear that Sweetie! Something like that would make anyone think twice about letting any one else that close again.
Having said that, you still wanna do lunch?
Oh, Kaya. My heart goes out to you…
If it makes you feel any better, kaya, I don’t have a bestie either. I used to. there was someone I was very close to, but we fell out. not over something like what happened with you, but it hurt, deep down, all the same.
And since then I’ve never really found another – I’ve friends, people I can talk to in tough times, yes, but a female bestie, who is there no matter what? no. not any more. and while that hurts, it also takes a very special person to fulfil that role, and I don’t think it will be filled any time soon.
Personally I think that unless you’ve already got a bestie at the time you met your other half, then the closeness you have with your other half sort of, in a way, replaces the intense need for a bestie in a woman. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that for young girls, friendships (of the intense, bestie kind) are sort of practice runs for the kind of enduring relationships we have with the one significant other, when we’re grown up, so it makes sense that when we do have that one significant other.. the need for the bestie scales back a bit.
But still, at times, I wish I had that sounding board, that love, but it obviously isn’t meant to be. and truth be told, these days, I wouldn’t have time to chat as we used to. hell, for that matter, I have enough trouble keeping up with more important people – like BP and my mum.
Anyway. just wanted to add my tuppence…. *hugggsss*
I don’t have a best friend either. Or a close one for that matter. Just people I go drinking with once in awhile. They were my husband’s friends first so I don’t even think they really care about me. There is a person I used to know that I called my best friend once, but that’s only because I was blind to what was really going on. But after years of using me and expecting me to pick up after her fuckups and using me for a punching bag when I got something she thought she deserved, I cut her out. I’m so much better off now.
I wish I knew why some women feel the need to hurt people they claim to love.
*raises hand*
been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, ain’t goin back. I have never felt that you were stand-offish or bitchy. Then again like attracts like, no?
Vixen´s last [type] ..ISTJ
I am probably one of the weird exceptions to what others have posted. I have a bestie. We met in second grade and have been best friends since then for 36 years now. She slept with a boyfriend of mine in high school, I was even in the house when it happened but I forgave her. I was the popular one, the skinny one and the one that got all the guys, and I’m not being conceited that is how she saw it, she was heavy, pretty much always. So, I forgave her. Years later, my fiance and I separated, we were still in love and we were trying to work things out, I was down in southern ca and he was in northern and he came to visit. I was extremely messed up at that time and she saw her opportunity and took it. Yep, she slept with him. And then she flew up there and did it again in our bed. Yeah, that one took some time. Two years of refusing to talk to her. She is Jewish, I’m not and he was. And he was very successful. All her life her mother had been telling her that was who she was supposed to be with, the nice successful Jewish boy and then I got him. Doesn’t excuse her but again, eventually I got it. What it came down to for me was this, men have come and gone out of my life, but she has always been there. She knows every skeleton, dirty secret and all of me and I know the same about her. She is more my sister, than the two actual sisters I have. Had she lied about the sex that would have been different but she didn’t. Its not her way. I can completely understand why you cut off your former bestie, what she did was a horrible betrayal on so many levels.
The blogging thing can really play havoc with you. My now ex Master (oh hell I don’t know what he is really we still talk and say we love each other but eh its messed up)he had been reading my blog for years before we ever met and he had paid attention. That was strange. He knew all these things about me. In retrospect, I don’t think he would’ve gotten so close to me so quickly and gotten past my walls so easily had he not known so much about me. Kind of a double edged sword there.
Anyway, you’ve never stuck me as the bitchy or standoffish kind of person, though we haven’t met and I think just exchanged a message or two on fet. But you do strike me as someone I would love to meet and talk with. And to think I lived in Wisconsin for 3 years. Actually I don’t know when you were there or where but I was in Kenosha from summer 2000 to spring 2004.
Wow that is long, sorry! And struck me sheesh
I don’t have a bestie, either. I’ve had some over the years, then they’ve walked away from me. I honestly and truly have absolutely no idea why. Clearly it’s something with me, since they’re the ones that walked, but I don’t have any idea why whatsoever. But, there are many times in my life I’ve wished I had someone I can pick up the phone and call when I need someone. It sucks when there isn’t anyone to call. ((HUGS))
I do not believe that the concept of ‘bestie’ necessarily persists into middle adulthood. I’m out here in the age range you’re in, Kaya, and have lived a life very unlike yours, but the concept is just very rare at this point… but my colleagues a decade younger than I still have this bond. I’m not sure if the pair-bond so many of us have made (and some of us have unmade) by this time replaces (or conflicts with, and causes the destruction of) the BFF bond, or if we just transfer our BFF bond desire into our pair-bond desire, or what. But what I suspect replaces that position – the BFF – is what I think of as the Silent Friend. This is the friend you can not talk to for six months, and instead of that causing you to be distanced from him or her, when you finally do catch up it’s like you last spoke yesterday. It’s not as intense or consuming or as likely to get messed up as a BFF; it’s also far more faithful.
I agree…I think once you reach this age range, “friends” tend to be more situational…like you have a friend where you work and when you change jobs, you drift apart. I also agree on the concept of the Silent Friend…I have several of those . Kaya, this struck a nerve with me because I’ve been stung by so called “friends” before (but girl, not as bad as your story that’s a tough one), and I do the same thing you do…when I feel that someone gets too close, I fall off the face of the earth. I even feel bad in advance, because I KNOW I’m going to do it at some point. WTF.
I also want to add that after about 15 years, one of the friends who betrayed me the most recently started messaging me on Facebook. Ugh. I responded politely and casually and got a barrage of messages that were designed to make me feel comfortable sharing information and were really attempts to find shit to hurt me with. I’m too old to play games like this, and have no interest. We have nothing in common except we went to school together and were friends then. I don’t want to compare incomes, kids, home square footage, bra size or how big my man’s dick is compared to hers. Ya know?
oh yeah. i had that too, twice, once from someone i was friends with as a child (but our parents were friends too so even after we outgrew the friendship there was some contact), and someone i was friends with in my twenties who was an emotional vampire. both contacted me on facebook, and i didn’t approve them, just chatted via message for a while, gave them a chance but they soon showed their true colours – the childhood friend getting all competitive, and the other reverting to her emotional vampire tactics. the childhood friend i just never replied to and never approved, and the emotional vampire i told she hadn’t changed and i wasn’t interested in picking up until she did change. boy. she let rip on me after that. i think i read 2 sentences and deleted the rest unread once i realised what it was. best thing i ever did…. facebook is great, but man, it also has a lot to answer for!!!
High five, Keth!
Hey, don’t feel bad, I didn’t even know the word “bestie”. I’ve seen the acronym BFF, heard my sisters years ago use it, but “bestie” is new to me….
Back under my rock.
Don’t feel bad hun.. I don’t see the stand off-ish side of you either. But then I have a very large one of my own so I don’t always pick up on others.
I’ve had the transition from suspecting a guy was cheating to realizing that they were. I’ve had the “bestie” stab me in the back… several actually. I don’t have any close friends in real life… at all. Sephani and I are close.. on the internet. In person I’d probably push her away like everybody else.
I don’t think it’s so much an age thing as it is an experiences thing. Some people have more of them at a younger age, while others manage to get through their entire life never having that bad experience to ruin things.
I think we’ve both definitely had some bad experiences. Hell, I just lost my master… my best friend since I was 16 years old. I lost everything I relied on for several years all in a matter of minutes. Those deep hurts… they aren’t easy to over come.
Just wanted to let you know that I get it.. and you aren’t alone.. and you know where to find me on facebook if you ever have news you want to share. I promise to squee with you :)
Serene
Serene´s last [type] ..Every Girl Deserves A Pearl
jeez, women can be some crazy-ass butthorn-bitches
All my best friends are male. We are Best Bros. I can’t do anything more than a close acquaintanceship with women my own age.
-hug- Sorry for that crazy bullshit you had to deal with
Hi kaya,
I don’t think I’ve commented in years on your blog although I’m always here reading. I could relate to your post a lot. I had a friendship that was kind of similar in many ways.
I only have one close friend now and have a very hard time trusting others. I could relate to your post a lot.
Hugs,
padme
padme amidala´s last [type] ..Life changes
I relate very much to your post. At 48, I don’t have a bestie anymore and it seems silly, I guess, to be concerned with getting one at this stage of my life. I like my own company pretty much, been hurt/betrayed bunches of times…meh, why bother when I’m really ok as is?
wow…shockingly painful betrayal, and totally underscores why you won’t get close…
i have two sets of friends, a bff for the vanilla side of me, and a bff for the D/s side.
i don’t make apologies for my choices, not anymore…but i do have great empathy for what you have gone through to get where you are today.
nilla
nilla´s last [type] ..The Surprise
Yeah, pretty much same thing here. My BFF is Gary. He’s the closest thing to a girlfriend I have.
slaveindenial´s last [type] ..Warning: This Post Contains More Red Flags Than Communist China
Oh Kaya…I can imagine how much that hurt. That’s a deep, deep hurt. :(
I know how much it hurts and the shock over being betrayed. Not that my ex-BFF cheated with my ex while we were married but the feeling of being jolted down to my toes having trusted a friend so deeply with your heart and soul and then they shit all over you, like you’re nothing, oh yeah. It hurts *bad*. {{{{Kaya}}}}
*just hugs you and says nothing, cuz nothing in the world can make that kind of betrayal feel any better*
uncanny i tell you- no shitting almost same exact story as to why i haz no bestie anymore…