Why would a friend pick a fight to accuse you of a betrayal that they were doing to you?

When I was sick, my friends disappeared. For two years I didn’t hear from a one of them. I got the impression that they no longer cared for me. Finally, when I got better, they started appearing out of the woodwork, as if somehow the news had gotten around that I was no longer sick.

However, in my first conversation with one of my friends, he started picking a fight. He took an innocent comment of mine and twisted it around so that he could accuse me of never contacting him, and of hating him. It didn’t matter what I said, and I called him several times; he’d always bring the conversation back to this issue.

Finally he got me so angry that I realized I could not be friends with him any more. I had tried, but there was nothing there any more. He sent me a last email after that, telling me that I was schmuck, and then he said that he had heard I was sick, and he didn’t like sick people, so he actually had been avoiding me.

What’s up with that? Why did he have to add insult to injury? It hurts more than any regular kind of ending of friendship. We could have just drifted away and it wouldn’t have been nearly as hurtful. But he deliberately smashed me.

Just as a note. I really don’t think this has anything to do with it, because we’d been friends for years and years and it had never been an issue. However, he is gay.