Having best friends means being dedicated to loving, supporting and understanding each other’s deepest secrets and most daring goals. It is one of the easiest and hardest connections in the world to find and maintain, but it’s also one of the most important. I can honestly say I have a consistent ease of conversation with jokes spanning 10+ years of friendship. I’m able to walk into their homes and bond with their family like an extension of my own. And in them, I see their best qualities mirrored in my own reflection.
But sometimes, the unconditional love you have for someone is conditioned by a significant other. And it’s a blow to the heart, swift but brutal.
I have been crafting this bond since the 3rd grade when she became my first friend after coming to a new school. We were mortal enemies, both hating the things about each other that were the most similar, so voila, match made in heaven when we got over our 3rd grade grudges and bonded for life. Our friendship was the stuff of rom-com legends: mall shopping montages, Ben & Jerry’s binges, cringe-worthy makeovers via Claire’s blush and eyeshadow palettes. We live a mere three blocks away from each other and even that distance growing up seemed insurmountable, or at least a nuisance. We were inseparable, or so I thought.
Growing up, she was the ultimate cynic. She would make gag noises at sappy commercials, articulated that love holidays like Valentine’s and Sweetest Day were capitalist monstrous scams created to sell more Hallmark cards, and vowed to me that if we weren’t married at 40, we’d be each other’s true loves.
Enter problematic boyfriend who has regrettably become problematic fiancee; exit me as best friend.
It wasn’t immediate, the space that formed between us. Sporadically, she would cancel our plans to hang out with him or be ever distracted and in her own thoughts when she did want to hang out. And then gradually, I became the filler on Friday nights when he cancelled. Because I love her so much, I was willing to sacrifice the golden connection we had to being silver, the runner-up for the winner of her time and affection.
Sophomore year marked the first intense period of total radio silence. We barely made eye contact with each other, and if we did, there was a good chance it would be met with a tear or two.
How had one boy managed to drive a wedge so far between us?
That was the longest year of my life, and it honestly doesn’t even resonate as a memorable one because I didn’t have my best friend to confide in. Because it was his fault and he hated seeing her upset (even though he continues to be the source of all our fights and fallouts), he managed to bring us back together the summer before junior year. Unfortunately, that has given him leverage in playing the “I saved your friendship” card. Yes, you jerk, but you’re also the one who destroyed it.
And for a while there, junior and senior year were right back on track. We were planning our futures together, poring over prom and college catalogs. It was the way things were meant to be.
Imagine my surprise when she told me at the end of senior year that he had proposed, I would be named the maid of honor, and the wedding would be in 2019.
And it’s so hard upholding maid of honor duties when I’m in a different state which leads us to fallout #2. It is VERY hard for me to be supportive of their relationship because it is built on deceit, distrust, infidelity and instability. They claim all their mutual mistakes are a bonding agent, and they have been made better by remaining together. They see their flaws as something to love instead of addressing actual foundational issues in their relationship, and they are preparing to make a LIFELONG commitment to each other. And I can’t say anything because I don’t understand their love, I have never been in a relationship, and she honestly asks for my opinion just to prove that she still can.
My role as her best friend has been usurped by this ungrateful, unfaithful, unbearable boy who has broken her heart more times than I care to count but do anyway, because I continue to be the one that puts her heart back together. And I do it willingly, because the only quality time we spend together anymore is when we analyze how he can mend any mistake by groveling for her forgiveness. That to me is unforgivable… but nobody asked me or if they did, they didn’t listen.
Being the replacement friend . . . it truly is terrible. I still want the best for her, but my opinions on their relationship remain unactionable because hey, what do I know about their relationship’s dynamic? Any input I try to give turns into a double-edged sword that’ll soil the good times or create another argument in the future. Even being supportive is difficult because she accuses me of only doing this so I can say “I told you so” in the long run.
And as for me, well, I’ll continue to stay in the race for her love. I know it might look futile to people on the outside, but she is my better half, my person, and it just turns out I’m not hers anymore. Unless I want to lose her for good, I have to show up every day ready to race like hell. And even after putting all of my faith, hope and energy into the race, I inevitably resign myself to seeing him hoisted on her pedestal, leaving me as the perpetual runner-up relationship in her life.
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