Am I a bad friend?

LegacyUser

Sorry if this gets long but it has been on my mind a lot lately.

in my teens (early 20s now) I had a good best friend and within a year of us becoming really close our friendship ended. She used to write online about how she hated me, wanted to kill me, and had her new friends harass me. i know i wasn't a great friend to her towards the end of the friendship, and same goes for her, we were only 15/16 and would try to make each other jealous...frenimies i suppose. she was mad after this fella for ages and i was beginning to feel us drift apart then i texted him because i knew he fancied me and not her (also knowing he'd tell her about it)...awful and i understand that it was probably 90% my fault that friendship ended although it was 4/5 months after that text happened.
we talked a few weeks after falling out and she apologised about the harassment and we said we'd keep in touch but we didnt in the end..it was mutual. she requested me on bebo as a friend about a year later but i never accepted the request, not because of any bad feelings but i just had a new group of friends and she did too and i didnt want to go back to the past.


after her i made friends with a guy who was my first real close male friend. we hung out in a big group (i was about 16/17 at the time) and most of them were his friends rather than mine but i always had someone to text and chat with and always had people asking me to come into town. i was good friends with him for a year then he told me he fell in love with me and i said we would never happen as i only liked him as a friend and i value our friendship too much... i had a crush on one of his friends (long before my best friend told me his feelings) which he found out about and our friendship never really "recovered" since then. i couldnt talk to him how i used to and he told me how bad he always felt when i would cry to him about guys treating me like crap but i wouldnt give him a chance...fair enough.
we drifted apart but i still seen his friends around when we were out. one night i was talking to two of his friends - one was the guy i used to have a crush on...ill call him A. and the other B. well im talking to A. and one of my own friends is right beside me, then out of nowhere A. basically calls me a C-NT in front of the whole pub and shouts that im all these horrible words...bare in mind he was p1ssed drunk and we never hung out together or had a conversation but it really hurt me and i still think about it to this day. i pretended it didnt matter and said that i wasnt upset just felt sorry for him because he calls girls the c-word, but the truth is it hurt me a lot. i havent seen A. or B. since that.
i recently got back in touch with the guy i was friends with through facebook, i sent him a casual message one day just saying he was on my mind and we've been messaging back in forth..maybe once a fortnight or so, and i want to tell him i missed him but at the same time, i dont think its a good idea incase he takes it the wrong way so im keeping it casual. he was probably the best friend i ever had and i just miss him.


after i fell out with him i became friends with this girl, who was my most recent "bff". i was 20 or so and i used to hang out with her in my mid teens but we lost contact. to be honest i think we only became friends again because her group of friends dumped her and she wanted a drinking buddy. anyways we used to go out maybe twice a month to local clubs but for a few months towards summer we stopped because i was sick and she had exams in college to prepare for.
one night we were out and her dad came up the street and started hitting her (Boxing her face, pulling her hair) because she was out "too late" (note it was 2am on a saturday night and she was standing outside the chippers with a group of us! she was also 18 years old!) i spent the whole night crying and texting her, terrified he might have did worse when he got her home. she used to always tell me stories about her dad doing that often, and doing it to her mother, and how protective her parents were..and i was always so supportive. i didnt smother her but rather offered support any time she mentioned something was going on.
fast forward to summer and shes not in college and only working weekends so im asking her out for drinks every weekend and she always made excuses..work, work parties (how many can you have in a year?!) no money, etc. one sunday morning i began to realise she was lying so i said "hey were you out last night? my friend seen you out drinking!" and she goes "yeah we had a work do which was organised at the last minute" which was a lie..she just didnt want to go out with me.
my birthday was coming up and she organised this trip to the city for us to go shopping and buy new clothes to wear out on my birthday..we spent the whole day together having a great laugh and then i hear nothing from her until i text her later that week on my birthday and she says she cant go out...i remind her about my birthday and she says she can go out but her brother wants to come because theres problems at home - i said of course because i felt bad for them being in that situation. well her brother kind of let it out of the bag that things at home were fine and she was out drinking the night before (Wearing the new clothes she bought for my "birthday" - she actually wore old ones out on my birthday) with a group of guys we both were friends with including one i used to date. him & i remained friends so i dont think thats the reason she didnt tell me - i just think she used me and never wanted to go out with me.
all summer she barely talked to me, i would text and never get replies then i posted on facebook i was selling 2 concert tickets (i was supposed to go with her) and i suddenly got a text saying she was sorry, things at home were really bad, and she hoped i would still be going with her to the concert....we were supposed to stay in a hotel together but to be honest i was feeling so hurt i just booked it for myself (she had an apartment in the city for college so i knew she would be able to stay there)
we met up on that day and all seemed fine...like nothing had happened. had a fun day and after the concert we went drinking. now when we got to this pub there was 2 guys looking over at us and one of them (who we both were most attracted to) kept "eyeing" me up and i guess she was jealous so she said we shouldnt talk to them...i said fair enough. we went out to the beer garden and spent most of the evening just sitting there alone not talking to anyone but each other..although that was barely happening either. near closing time we were fairly drunk and heading home, on the way out of the pub a guy who was in a group of guys who had spoken to me earlier (she was just chain smoking in the corner) asked if i was leaving already and if he could have a goodbye kiss, i gave him a quick kiss on the lips...nothing intense or passionate, the same way id kiss my friends or relatives..and she made a big deal out of it saying "that guy you kissed was so f*cking ugly ewwwww" and kept going on about it even though she knew i only kissed him in a jokingly friendly way and even if i didnt..what business of hers is it how he looks..
later on we were approached by 2 guys on the street, asking us for directions which then became us agreeing to go to their hostel and drink/smoke with them. i was very suspicious of them because they seemed to be lying about their ages and i dont go to strange places with strangers! anyways we were halfways there and i realised i needed to get outta that situation so i said i had to go, i called my friend to the side and explained to her, she said she was going with them..now my friend was 18 and a virgin, and these guys were older and into drugs and had a lot of alcohol at their place..i just didnt want to leave her alone with them so i convinced her to come with me. she got a taxi home shortly after and was clearly angry at me. i hope it doesnt sound selfish but i would have felt so guilty if anything bad happened her- maybe they really just wanted to listen to music and drink/smoke but i had a bad feeling and her parents freak out if she stays out past 2, let alone go to a hostel room with strange men at 4am.

so she text me once after that..asking if i could go down to her in college and stay the night to go drinking, i said no because i had no money and she never texted me since. i sent one text at the time saying i didnt think i had done anything wrong but i was sorry if i had and i hoped she was okay.

thing is...a while later i found out she had been lying to me about other stuff. like when we were out in a club i had no idea they had a drinks promo on (2 euro drinks) and she was offering to go up and get ours then telling me "8 euro" when she got back. and she was saying about this guy she was dating who she met through college but i found out she met him off a dating site..maybe she was embarrassed but she knew i wouldnt care about things like that. she also made up stories of meeting this guy and even showed me his picture but it was just a screencapture of this "youtube celebrity"

i am sorry i wrote so much but can someone please tell me what im doing wrong in my friendships. all of those were the only 3 best friends i had since my early teens. i always had groups of friends/people to go out with but now i have barely none. i have a great boyfriend but sometimes i wish i had a good girl friend to go shopping, drinking, girlie chats,etc. but i am awful at making friends and i am beginning to think i am a bad friend and thats why i have ended up with none.


i know i wrote a lot but it feels good to get it out. it didnt bother me much until very recently

Firetrap

No you're not a bad friend at all. You've just been unlucky or made bad choices when it comes to choosing friends. Perhaps it's a combination of the two - who knows?

Friend No. 1 = nutjob

She used to write online about how she hated me, wanted to kill me, and had her new friends harass me

:eek:

The guy friend. You did nothing wrong here either. You were straight up with him, that you didn't see him as more than a friend. He fancies you. Always tricky ground for maintaining a male/female friendship IMHO.

Bloke A that you fancied. Consider that a bullet that you've dodged.

Next BFF. Something tells me she didn't feel as strongly about the friendship as you did. As you said yourself, she fell in with you because she needed a drinking buddy and had been dumped by her previous group of friends. There may have been a genuine friendship there for a while but a lot of what you've written smacks of someone just going through the motions. She's also a liar, something that's a deal breaker in my book

The first thing you need to do is to stop thinking that you are a bad friend. You are not. You did nothing wrong in these cases. The only good thing to say about those female friends of yours is that they are in your past.

You can't be all bad if you have had friends in the past and have a boyfriend now. t's also worth noting that not all adults remain friends with their childhood/teenage pals. So don't be looking backwards but to the future. Are there any activities you and your boyfriend could take part in which would involve meeting new people? I'd not necessarily be on the prowl for a new BFF either. Not all women have these but instead find themselves with a group of good female friends.

LegacyUser

No your not the bad friend.

You actually come across as a very nice person. But what strikes me on reading this is your current friend does not value your friendship to the same extent. You are both young and as you move into your twenties you will find that not all friendships you had in your teens will stay the same. Some people move on a lot quicker, and some people take a lot longer to adjust. It sounds like you are the one putting all the effort into the friendship - doing the calling, organising, caring and not getting much in return. Perhaps it's time to take a step back and start focusing on yourself and work on your own happiness.

That doesn't mean you have to burn any bridges or make dramatic moves, just look around you and see the people that make you happy right now, not those from the past.