3 friendships - Let them go or fight for them?

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I need some advice on broken friendships and how/which ones to repair. I have 3 friends who have been 3 of my 4 best friends and my relationships with all of them are broken and have been for varying points. I am mid 30’s and have Asperger’s Syndrome not being diagnosed until adulthood which has created challenges and as such did not have a really great childhood and have had a lot of difficulty making friends. I’ve also struggled professionally because of my social limitations and making bad choices.

Anyway let’s call these 3 friends Samantha, Allison, and Bob. Also figuring prominently in the story is my friend Melanie. We all met through the organization we’re involved with except Samantha and Allison who were childhood friends and Samantha got Allison involved. Also Melanie and Bob dated for a time after meeting once we all knew each other but had a falling out. I used to have feelings for Samantha then for Allison but neither was interested. In the case of Samantha it wasn’t as intense as with Allison who I was madly in love with.

Anyway Samantha is late 20’s highly successful in her career and we met 7 ½ years ago and became really close friends. I was very instrumental in guiding her career and helping her along with getting where she wanted to go. She is also very aggressive and very difficult and demanding of everyone in her life. She’s never had a real boyfriend and just one pseudo-relationship. While she presents a public image of complete confidence and arrogance she has privately confessed some insecurity to me. However I have seen her be very nasty and abusive to others and change history to fit what she wants and stab people in the back to achieve her ends.

Allison is also late 20’s and grew up with Samantha and we all met Allison through Samantha. Allison has moderate cerebral palsy and can walk on her own but it is very noticeable in how she “walks funny” as someone said and affects her balance and movements. She’s generally nice to people and thinks she’s a happy person but also portrays an image of arrogance and despite never having had a boyfriend or anything close thinks every man wants her even though most people have said I was the only one ever interested in her. She denies her disability affects her in way but most people notice it. She’s recently moved to another city to begin her career with a job she got but is not so far away that nobody sees her and is still part of things and is extremely close with Melanie.

Bob is in his early 30’s and unemployed. He didn’t graduate college and lost his labor job due to his own fault. He’s also very arrogant and thinks every woman wants him and has had moderate success with women but he also has a bad habit of cutting people off if they have “wronged” him and has a lot of enemies.

Melanie is in her late 20’s and has had more success with relationships then Samantha or Allison. She and Bob dated for 6 months after meeting through our group and after breaking up had an incident that has caused Bob to decide he can never speak to her again. I was usually the 3rd wheel in their relationship. She is generally sweet and big hearted but when she gets upset she has a temper and is known to explode.

Anyway in the past number of months I’ve had falling outs with Samantha, Allison, and Bob. I wanted to know what people thought in regards to whether these are relationships worth saving or not.

Over the years Allison and I have had a number of issues and big fights that have culminated in periods of not talking but eventually making up. She had a lot of difficulty handling my feelings for her but eventually they subsided and we moved on. For a long time I thought I would marry her and most people felt we were perfect for each other. She never said it but it was clear because I wasn’t far enough in my career she felt I was beneath her. After our fight last year (resulting from a major fight at a public event in part precipitated by our friend Bill who Allison has pined away for but he isn’t interested) we actually grew closer and she began to open up to me in ways she hadn’t before and started to share more personal details and for a while me, Allison, and Melanie were kind of a threesome and were always together. Anyway a few months back Melanie and I were in the city Allison moved to for an event and stayed with her. Anyway Allison kept nagging at me about my appearance (weight, clothes, hair) and saying that I reflected upon her and criticizing every little thing I did and I finally got fed up after she said I was being unhelpful to our friend Nancy who I was actually helping a lot and Nancy later admitted I was being really helpful and supportive and that Allison was off-base. Anyway I finally snapped with all of Allison’s criticisms and said something insulting about her emotional well being and lack of ability to get men. Nancy calmed us both down and we had a long talk and were seemingly ok but later that night back at her place with Melanie there she got mad at me for something minor and had a meltdown and attacked me and started kicking me and saying that she was a good person and why did I make her do this. After that things were not good and deteriorated and we tried talking after I had gone home but then she decided to completely cut me off but before she did one thing I have gotten from her was that she can’t get over that public fight from over a year earlier because “someone she cared about so much embarrassed her so badly” even though nobody else cares she said she cared and can’t get past it and since she stopped speaking to me. She also said she just cannot accept my disability. Melanie has told me she doesn’t care anymore and has given up any ability to care about me. Other friends have also indicated that my career issues bother her and she has real hang ups about why I’m not more successful and my disability and how that’s an issue between us.

After the falling out with Allison things were ok for a while with the other 2 until recently when Samantha started getting weird and being difficult. We have had a number of fights in the past and I’ve seen her do a lot of things I don’t think are appropriate including trying to destroy people’s careers because she doesn’t like them and changing history to suit her needs. After I liked her (before Allison) Samantha eventually got over it and we moved on and were normal for years with no issues. She even got really comfortable around me that she wasn’t with other guys. I haven’t had any feelings for her in around 5 years. Anyway we had a fight a while back because I got annoyed at her being shady and not honest and had never confronted her about some serious lies she told me in the past so I was holding on to them and blew up. After a while I tried apologizing to her and Bob for separate incidents because we were all supposed to go to the wedding of 2 other friends together (I ended up not going to avoid drama) and got a nasty reply from Samantha and no reply from Bob so didn’t go. Anyway after that I tried reaching out again to Samantha and got told off and cursed out and told how everyone hates me and only pretends to like me (I found out that’s not true) and blaming others for her lies and not taking responsibility and saying other things that turned out not to be true and how I’ve done nothing for her and was a liability to her when I’ve had her back time and time again and lost other friends for her defending her (at the time she said they didn’t matter). We had been drifting apart for a while and as I was closer to Allison her jealousy set in and she felt left out especially when she felt Melanie “replaced” her in the threesome. But now when I wasn’t talking to Allison she attacked me and made me the bad guy in everything including many lies and trying to turn me against other friends. She’s also angry that in some professional matters I am not on the same side as her. She also banned me from her recent birthday even though we’ve always all spent our birthdays together.

Bob and I have had fights in and out through the years including a period years back where we didn’t talk for a few months. He usually has been sensitive to my needs and is always available to talk but has had a nasty habit of cutting other friends in our group off at times for years if they “wrong” him and after his blowout with Melanie he got very bitter especially since she has a new boyfriend we all know. Anyway as with the 2 women I’ve given more to this relationship then I get back always catering to him and he’s very lazy and selfish. He has made no effort to get a job and insults everyone else for having a college degree because he thinks it’s a waste. He told me something in confidence and I hinted at it to Melanie (for other reasons) and she figured it out and he got mad when she did and has said because of it he cannot forgive me for betraying his confidence. I apologized but he cannot get over it and as I said did not reply to my email about the wedding I did not go to. He has said he feels I “chose” Melanie over him. A lot of people don’t like Bob and he and Samantha both have a long string of enemies professionally.

What do people think? Worth trying to keep these friendships? I always fight for friendships sometimes too much and with the asperger’s its hard.

The way you describe them all they sound like very unpleasant people, is there anything good about them? Have you ever had any fun times with them? Maybe you need to write them down too and if there aren't any then it is not worth it!

The way you describe them all they sound like very unpleasant people, is there anything good about them? Have you ever had any fun times with them? Maybe you need to write them down too and if there aren't any then it is not worth it!