LogFAQs > #950621329

I want to sum up my feelings with an example.

A few years ago, I got an internship at a business that buys and trains racehorses. I told my best friend the day I got the position, and he was happy for me. I went to his place to hang out and celebrate.

When I walked into his house, his mother jumped up and congratulated me, and shook my hand. This made me uncomfortable because I wanted to tell people about it - but my friend meant well, and they got me a cake, and it was nice. There was no malicious intent, and while it bugged me that I didn't get to tell people my own news, I knew that happy news tends to get spread around like that.

But then I spoke to my other friends who I was planning to tell, and he had already told them about it. I would go to lunch with someone, and they'd open up by congratulating me on the position. And it began to get to me, because when we would both hang out with someone who hadn't heard yet, he'd tell them I got the internship while I was right there. I told him that it was bothering me, and he didn't understand why telling everyone about it before I did made me uncomfortable. In his mind, he was being supportive.

Imagine I was gay, and he did the same thing. He told other people, including people I wouldn't have told about it right away, and because he told them in good faith and he told them to be nice about it, he didn't understand why I was so upset about him sharing it. Imagine if the news was something positive, but personal and private.

Then consider that when a mutual friend of ours was having issues with his sexuality and confided in my best friend with the strictest confidence - he told me about it. And he told at least three other people, which I was there for.

So why the fuck would I ever confide in my best friend, considering how he's handled information around me?

Why should I feel comfortable around him when as recently as last night, he deliberately touched me to make me feel uncomfortable?

I haven't felt comfortable around my best friend for years, and I don't think I ever trusted him. And there are people in my life who make me feel secure and comfortable, who I feel like I can confide in. One of them is a mutual friend who was in the same group in high school, and I've only come around to being comfortable in his presence because I'm not around my other friend.

I felt pressured to share information with my best friend for the entire time I've known him. I have people in my life who I feel secure in telling anything, who I've known for half as long and who I've spent a fraction of the time with. It took finding that community to realise just how fucked up my feelings are about my best friend.

Edit: I just remembered. When I had a crush on this girl who moved back to town recently, he would bring it up to a bunch of our friends and put me on the spot about it. I'd tell them if it came up and if I felt like telling them, but by alluding to it, he'd put me on the spot and I would have to tell the other person. I hadn't told her, and I wasn't sure that I would end up telling her, but my friend made it a thing around other people and I would have to let them in on it because of that.

This was happening some time in the past 6 months. We're both 25, and this sort of shit is still happening.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
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