Friendship Ending After a Decade; Would Like Feedback

Just a small update on this, though nothing significant - more of a curiosity, I suppose.

The other week I had re-added him on Facebook. Nothing happened since, no communication - as I said I wouldn't communicate again. However, he didn't add me back nor did he block me - it seems he simply allowed me to "follow" him on Facebook.

The question I'm asking myself is, why didn't he just block me straight out? After all, he had nothing to gain otherwise. He wanted to not pay me back and just forget I existed yet after I responded to him after the threat, he had every opportunity to block but didn't.

Again, this is just something I've been wondering more than anything else. I haven't contacted him since and have no intention to.

I guess what I'm getting at is that, if he felt the friendship was 1,000% done with - he would have just re-blocked on Facebook and Messenger, and not allowed me the opportunity to contact.

But he went from a complete block on both - to just allowing the opportunity to follow / communicate on Messenger.

That step-down is what I'm curious about. Why would someone move down a level like that? Perhaps there's nothing to it and I'm overthinking, but it is something I have been wondering about.

And to answer your question, I won't contact him to 'find out the answer'. I just wonder whether he is starting to regret the stridency of his position to begin with.

I'm actually really put off by these comments that there's something wrong with me for not "going to counselling".

I'm confident that counselling is very effective for many, many people. But I don't believe it is right for me. If anything, I'm pretty sure I could convince the so-called counsellor that they agree with me. I just don't subscribe to the whole counsellor thing, I'm really sorry.

I can assure you that it isn't.

I have multiple times accepted much of the advice and constructive criticism on this thread. Am I obliged to agree with absolutely everything? No, because I know the situation first-hand over many years in a way that writing on a forum cannot always accurately translate. I was recommended not to contact him, many times over, and I have since heeded that advice. Perhaps not at the very beginning, but to date I heeded it.

Furthermore, there's a gigantic world of difference between what is rationally the right thing to do versus what you emotionally feel is the right thing to do. Often we do things counter to what we know is probably the logical and "right" thing to do because an emotional reaction / perspective, takes over.

To give a parallel example; it's all very "logical" to advise an obese person to stop harming themselves by eating / continuing poor habits - which they would completely agree with - but far harder for most of those people to translate that logic into reality, immediately. Not everything is as black and white as you suggest because, if it were, there wouldn't be any personal issues to begin with.