Failed friendship

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Hi. A couple of months ago I started chatting firstly by email, then on msn, with a female colleague at work. Within a few weeks we'd got really close to each other, sharing so much about each other and helping each other. Most of our communication was done electronically, but we'd go for a walk together each lunch time too. We've both got partners and neither of us wanted it to be romantic, and it wasn't. I was just so happy that I'd finally found a best friend I trusted and who I thought loved me as much as I loved her.

Anyway, over the Christmas break, we kept in touch mostly by text message and email as neither of us like talking on the phone. She'd been going through some problems with her partner, and I got really worried for her when she said she'd 'pretty much' split up with him. But after that all her messages were frosty and she told me she'd speak to me when back at work.

When we were back at work, she sent me an email saying our friendship had started to take over her life, and caused her to stop communicating with her partner and friends, and that basically she didn't want to be the same sort of friend anymore.

This really broke me up, I really believed her when she said she wanted it to last forever. So it felt like she'd become a part of me, and then just ripped my heart out. I responded to her email telling her how much I'd miss her and that I didn't think cutting me out of her life would help the problems in her relationship with her partner.

For 48hrs after I got the email, it was all I could think about, I got more upset about this than I ever have about anything before. I couldn't eat or sleep. This happened last Monday, I took wed, thu & fri off as sick as just couldn't handle things mentally and by this point the stress and lack of food and sleep had lowered my immune levels and was feeling physically ill as well.

She still hasn't responded to my email and hasn't tried to contact me at all.

I just can't understand how she can just switch off like that after we were so close, it really broke my heart.

Tomorrow I'll need to go back to work and seeing her again will remind me of everything.

I have just been through something similar, but with a girl I was having a romantic relationship, she just for no reason broke it off and now I have to suffer seeing her at work. I am consumed with pain, and ofcourse with my autistic problems I just can not handle the emotions.

It seems that women have the ability to control their emotions and use them as a tool, their emotions are subject to them, whereas men are subject to their emotions. I assume I have done something wrong, and was completely oblivious to it due to the fact I don't have the personal skills needed to make a relationship work. But I also know she just dumped me for no good reason, and gave me no notice, just dumped my via text message.

People Equal s**t.

I don't see the two situations as similar.

There's a huge difference between breaking up with a significant other versus ending a friendship because the friendship harms one's relationship with one's significant other. The only similarity is, ending relationship, and not understanding why.

As far as the original post, I say, take her at her word.

But, along with that, note that she didn't say she doesn't to be friends. Just not that same sort of intense time consuming friendship that it's been. It's a matter of figuring out what the new terms are. And you deciding if you are interested in a friendship that's not best friends.

Hi, can I suggest that you take a step back, and give her the space she has asked for? you are obviously deeply hurt by this, but if you care about her at all, you'll let her sort herself out in the space she needs, she probably has a huge amount of stress flying about her head right now, trying to hold her family together, and you are not going to get your friendship back, or help her, by being clingy. You have no reason to feel offended or hurt by any of this, remeber she is trying to keep her family together, and even if you do not completly empathise with her doing this, remeber it is important to her.

I went through the same thing last year, and yes it sucks. I had this person as casual friend since I was a little kid and we have know each other for 25 years.

He was elected the mayor of his small community, and the community was hit by a flood. It was my first inclination with my other friendships and life experiences to go out to his community and help him with different aspects. The only thing I wanted back from him was a little bit of friendship. After about 6 months of helping him, he told me via a terse e-mail to back off. This was after him and I had gotten somewhat close with one another during this period. I was absolutely devistated and depressed since it seemed that the two of us not only shared a history of growing up with one another, but shared common interests and personalities.

In the year since we broke it off, I have learned multiple things about this episode. I got obsessed with him and his community's recovery. Even though I did a lot to assist him in bringing his community back, my over-involvement in his community, made his wife, three children, city councilors and others uncomfortable. People also thought that I was getting a little two much power in assisting him. He was also fighting personal and family issues at the time. Lastly, with everything going on at the time, he didn't have time for friendship. In his mind, the best thing for him to do was to put me out of the picture.

I have run into my friend a couple of times over the last year and he has been congenial. He even signed with a personalized note and presented me with a book about the flood that our local newspaper put out. He still listens to my advice on civic matters when I run into him. Transversely though, he has denied Facebook friend requests from me, and does not return my e-mail and telephone calls. The friendship is kind of at an unknown if it will continue, and if it does I am not sure what form. The not knowing is the worst for me.

It got "weird". At least, in her eyes it did.

Even if you didn't really want a relationship, it's entirely possible that she was turning to you because of her relationship problems and was flirting with the idea of leaving her partner for you in her head.

She realized that she was getting in over her head with this fantasy and the problems with her partner got to a breaking point. Now, she really regrets considering anything with you and wants some space to try and figure things out.

I know that this is difficult, but I think this situation is one of the few situations in which "It's not you, it's me" might actually be accurate.

In the mean time, I would try and find something to do during your down time to occupy your thoughts. I would still be there to listen if she needs someone to talk to, but I wouldn't get too involved if she wanted to be friends again. For now, keep it to lunches at work.

Thanks for all your insights, I wasn't sure what I wanted to get out of posting this here, but getting opinions of different people has helped. There's still been no contact from her, and to be honest I'm not sure if I'd want to get so involved again after the pain it has caused me.

Even though I constantly get urges to contact her to see how she's doing, I know it would be the wrong thing to do. I don't know if she really cares what I've been going through, she has plenty of ways to ask if I'm ok.

I just feel very sad that what seemed at the time to be a real connection we shared, has fizzled into nothing.

Could it be that her partner is jealous? Maybe she was getting a lot of pressure from her partner, who didn't understand how you two were so close, when maybe they were not.

There are many people out there who will tell you that guys and girls can not just be "friends." I don't believe it. I think some of the best friendships I ever had were with men because men aren't typically gossipy. They can understand things that my female friends can't. As a female, I can share things with my guy friends, such as emotional things that they may not see on their own. That is just 2 examples, but you get the idea....

I wish it didn't hurt you so much. I hope it gets a easier day by day.

I have never been good at making friends. I have always been an outcast. But when I started my freshmen year at college, I found myself befriending a very nice girl who lived down the hall from me. We spent a lot of time together and seemed to be getting along. But after Christmas break that year, she started acting very weird towards me. She didn't want to spend as much time with me and often yelled at me for random things. I asked her what I did, and she said she just needed space. But honestly, how much space does one need? I have never understood that concept. After a few days of "space" I asked her again, but she was very standoffish and mean to me. I really still wanted to be her friend though, because she was my only friend. When we went home for the summer, I continued to keep in contact with her, but eventually she just started to ignore me. When I could finally get an answer out of her, she just screamed at me that I had "changed" after Christmas and that I bothered her too much and that she did not want to be my friend anymore. I cried for DAYS. I am still not sure what I did wrong.

I've come to understand that when people need space, it's because there are bad boundaries in the relationship.

Boundaries would be, like, well, I guess you could say, it's about what the parameters of the relationship are, and what's acceptable to each person. (There are books and websites on the topic of boundaries.)

I think those of us on the spectrum, it's more likely than with NTs that we won't pick up signals that something's out of balance, that the boundaries are weak or unclear.