I messed up, then messed up again: is there any way to salvage my friendship?

I too have made mistakes, regretted it and asked for forgiveness. I never got it and it’s my punishment to have to live with the fact that I hurt someone and still regret it after 40 years. I didn’t deserve forgiveness. I haven’t forgiven myself either.

I’m sorry, sweetie. It hurts to lose a friend.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to be done. She has a right to choose who she wants in her life, and at this point, it’s not you.

Mourn the friendship, but don’t forget the learning experience here. A friendship is a two way street. You shut her out when she needed a friend, and came back to her, expecting her support when you were broken and missing her. Do you understand how she must feel?

Thank you for telling us. Letting others know about our own pain is a good beginning to healing.

This is my opinion, and I am not an expert on relationships. I suggest you let her go completely. Do not attempt any communication with her. Do not return the item you found after such a long time.

As @Seek_Kolinahr says, mourn the loss and remember what has been learned. Let your new realization seep into all your relationships and enrich them by not taking any of them for granted. Be a friend.

I’m so sorry to hear this but it sounds like this one is unsalvageable. My worry is that if you press any more she may get the police involved. I think you have to let go completely; she clearly doesn’t want the item back. Consider it a lesson learned for the benefit of your current and future friendships.

I am sorry for your loss. At this point you are one email/letter/phone call away from a restraining order. Honer her clearly stated wishes and stay the heck away!
She has moved on. It is time for you to do the same.

I’m sorry you are going through this, but I think she was very clear that she didn’t want you in her life any longer. Please leave her alone and move on with your life. It seems you are only hurting her more.
Good luck.

Been there myself and know how sad and helpless you’re feeling. But as others have said, it’s time to move on and try to learn from the experience.

Well, I am sorry that this relationship has turned out this way, but she does have a right to choose who she wants to be in her life. I always believe that if we truly love something we have to respect it, even if it means letting go of it. Even our parents who love us from birth, at some time in our lives has to let go and let us walk our own way. My best advice is for you to let go of her and pray that one day she would forgive you. It has happened to me as well. I broke up with my girlfriend that I had when I was 20 years old and it was totally my fault, and she got pregnant for another guy and did not want to see me or talk to me. Five years later whilst I was working at a bar, she saw me and she walked up to me and started talking to me. So sometimes people need their space and if you love her, respect her wishes and leave her alone. Life is unpredictable, and she just one day might see you somewhere and all could be well again.

I agree with the others that there is nothing you can do to change things now, she is not going to let you in. Your experience reminds me of a relationship I went through a while ago, in some ways, and in hindsight I realized that once trust had been broken we were really beating a dead horse the times we tried to reconcile.

What struck me most in your story was how she pointed out that your pleas for forgiveness were selfish and motivated by your ego seeking a boost, rather than being genuinely based in concern for her. That was a bit of an epiphany for me, and it makes sense to some situations from my past. I suggest that you contemplate that observation – because it does seem true that your concerns are only about yourself.

If you’re not already in talk therapy, I suggest you seek out a counselor/therapist due to your history of depression and to help process the experience and to learn and grow from it. The silver lining here is that you did once feel that open connection with another person, and you’ve learned how precious it is… when you experience that bond again, you will recognize it and you will make a conscious effort (a.k.a. commitment) to nurture it.

This may be the end of your relationship with this one person, but it can be the beginning of a time of evolution and enlightenment from which you grow into a better form of yourself – more humble, more empathetic, and more mindful – which can allow you to achieve a better, truer relationship with yourself and eventually with others. This has been my experience.

Yep, this one is gone and not salvageable. Time to learn from this, painful as it is. And bear it in mind when you are in your next relationship.

Next time, when a friend/lover is having a rough patch, don’t end the friendship. That’s when your friends need you the most. You say you couldn’t handle the pressure of your own problems. Well, I bet if you had helped her, she would have been there for you, and the two of you would have gotten through your problems much easier. And the two of you would be together now.

I don’t know if you believe in prayer, but if you want to get past the hurt and disappointment, every day for the next 30 days, pray or think good thoughts for her in a way that does not include you. Something along the lines of “I hope she finds her happiness.” Pretty soon you’ll realize she is your past, not your future.

Wow…these are all great answers and advice. I have felt your pain and can tell you only to give it time. It hurts, no doubt about it. One thing I realized after being in a deep depression and pursuing a man who dumped me for over a year is that other person just may not feel the same about you. The feelings you have of regret, sadness, longing…obviously she is not feeling that and has not for some time. Put this thought in your head…..YOU have made the attempt, YOU have asked forgiveness. You must forgive yourself to move on. Use this to better your next relationship. Words, words, words….but oh so true…...
That relationship I spoke of I was in…I tried everything to contact him, email, text, drive by, gifts….it was ONE WAY…..Well…..No one is worth begging…...chin up…you tried to clear the air, now move forward…you’ll be glad you did.

Forgiveness, like charity, begins at home.
You tried, it didn’t work, so yes, all you can do is learn from your mistake and forgive yourself.

Sounds like you bailed on her when she needed you most….and she can’t get around that. You said it took you a couple of months to realize you missed her? Wow. Maybe she realized some stuff during that time too. Sorry.

We’ve all been there… She’s done. I feel your pain and I know it’s hard but you should focus on you right now and let her be a memory.

It is a mistake to write to her.

The way to respect her is to listen to her and believe her. She is not interested in your apology or explanation. Please leave her alone. You are bordering on obsessive and harassing.

Please re-read what @hearkat wrote.

I want to thank everyone for their replies and advice.

I just want to clarify that I wasn’t reaching out to this girl because I was going through a rough time or seeking her support. Quite the contrary: I’ve been going through a period of reexamination and decided that I wanted to live up to a standard: to take responsibility and try to do the right thing.

When I thought about how I had treated this person that I cared so deeply for, I thought I should step up and try to repair the damage I caused. She was always very sensitive and, I believe, may suffer from borderline personality disorder (she mentioned it herself and she seemed to have the signs for it). She also seems to have no middle ground: she either loves or hates you with no in-between. These qualities have always made it difficult for her to maintain friendships and relationships. I may have been one of her longer ones. I helped her get into therapy but she also needed someone who could be a pillar of strength and support for her while she was learning to deal with her issues. I wasn’t ready to take this on then because of sudden issues of my own (which she was not understanding about, but understandably so, because I had not talked about my anxiety with her).

Recently, I suppose I felt ready to take on this task. Unfortunately, 10 months is a long time for some people (though admittedly I had reached out 6 months ago as well with the birthday card mentioned earlier). Also, this is the first time in my 32 years that someone has simply cut me off. I’ve always had very amicable breakups and “end of friendships” (I still talk fairly often to several ex-girlfriends).

I guess I’m taking it pretty hard that there’s someone out there that hates me so much when I want to help them out. I basically think of her as family and you don’t give up on family. To be cut off like that… well, it hurts.

@drdoombot ”I guess I’m taking it pretty hard that there’s someone out there that hates me so much when I want to help them out.”

As with her own comment to you about the selfishness of your attempted apologies, this statement is about you feeling better about yourself by seeking forgiveness from someone you hurt, and now you’re hurt because she doesn’t have faith in you. There is little sense of humility or true concern about her well-being that is coming through here. Sometimes letting go and learning from our mistakes is the best thing we can do for someone. Sometimes damage is irreparable, regardless of intentions.

@hearkat Yeah, I should rephrase that statement. Maybe what I meant was that it hurts when you care about someone and they hate you. It’s disheartening. It makes me feel like there is no room for remorse or even mistakes in the first place. No room for change or growth. Like we’re always stuck in our worst moments.

Do I seem I don’t have true concern for this girl? I ask this question honestly. I don’t feel like I’m doing this for myself. I’m not seeking her forgiveness (I don’t think I deserve it nor do I think getting it would lessen my guilt). I spent months worrying that she was hurting herself or contemplating suicide (she talked about it a lot).

I wouldn’t say this to her directly because I think she would be hurt by it, but she tends to repeat the same cycle with every person she meets. I’ve been through the cycle (and witnessed the beginning of another one as she pursued a coworker at her job and started falling apart when he wasn’t interested). Unlike most of her exes, though, I didn’t come out of it hating her. I feel her pain. I think I could help her. I worry she will continue making the same mistakes over and over.

But maybe I’m so far into this that I’m just not seeing things objectively.

@drdoombot I actually wondered if one of the two of you had borderline. Thanks for the clarification. I know this is hard for you.

She will continue to make these mistakes with other people. You can’t fix her. I know you think you and your friendship can help her, but that would only be true if she wanted your help. Perhaps you are seeing the big picture of her and her life/struggles better than she is… but she is in charge here. You have to “let” her keep at this cycle until she decides to change things.

In what way do you imagine you could help her? Is she under the care of mental health professionals? Are you a qualified mental health professional? Have you offered to love her just the way she is, even if she never changes?

I’ve been in both sides of the “rescue” paradigm. I spent many years hoping and praying for someone to pull me out of my own depths; and I also got involved with people whom I thought I could help. In hindsight I realized that it was a mind-game, where trying to ‘fix’ someone who was ‘worse’ than me was simply deflecting the spotlight off my own flaws onto theirs, and trying to boost my own ego in relation. Ultimately, they wound up resenting my ‘help’ because any improvement that is not self-motivated eventually feels less genuine. I had to let them go, and one did die from his own behaviors within a couple of years and it broke my heart all over again, but I know that it was the choice he made and he’d have brought me and our son down with him had I tried to stay together.

I’ve learned that no one can really ‘help’ someone else, they can only be there for moral support. The person who is in need of rescue needs to do the work themselves or else it never ‘sticks’. Accepting the past as unchangeable and taking accountability for one’s actions in the present are all that any of us can do to try to influence our future. Sometimes, learning to reach out and ask for help and support is a part of that growth, but having helped forced on us usually backfires.

You weren’t there when she needed you, so there is no reason why she should think that she could depend on you now. That is the way life is… no one can be with us 100% of the time and no one else can be inside our heads, so we must each learn to rely on ourselves. She will probably continue to repeat the same mistakes as long as she continues looking to someone else to rescue her. Change has to come from within. We have to find our own selves worthy of that investment of time and energy. Any time someone else shows interest and tries to love us, we question their intentions and find excuses as to what they’re getting out of a relationship with us. We have to love ourselves before we can accept ourselves as lovable by another.

Do you love this woman unconditionally (whether as a friend, or romantically), or do you see her as something that is broken that needs to be fixed? Can you understand how loving someone as they are without judgement is the only place from which you can truly offer support and encouragement? Do you see that when someone already views themselves as damaged goods, you wanting to ‘help’ them only reinforces their self-perception that they are not ‘good enough’?

I don’t know if she is under the care of mental health professionals at present. She had just started around the time we stopped talking. It seemed like it would help her and she mentioned several times that she needed someone to support her through it. At the same time, my insurance had expired and I couldn’t get any more SSRI’s for myself. The withdrawal symptoms from the meds were pretty bad for me, and coupled with school and other pressures, I found myself withdrawing from everyone while I coped. She couldn’t understand that and gave me a hard time. She insisted that I declare our friendship was over; that she needed to hear me say it. In the heat of the moment, I did. Being your typical insensitive male, it wasn’t until I was feeling better and my other responsibilities let up that I realized how silly and stupid and I had been with her.

Even though it is a late realization that probably took far too long, I know that I love this girl (without conditions). I’m not a mental health professional, so I don’t pretend to think I can help her in that sense. But I’m a person who underwent self-therapy using CBT (which is great for BPD, I’ve read), went to therapists and took meds. On some level, I understand the kinds of things a person needs to hear and what kind of support they need. I don’t judge her because I went through something similar. Having had the time to think about it, I finally understand what she needs. Unfortunately, as she told me on the phone that day, “Too little, too late.”

In the end, I think the tragedy is that I needed a little time to gather myself to be of help to her, but that time is what removed me from being in a position to do that for her.

@hearkat You weren’t there when she needed you, so there is no reason why she should think that she could depend on you now.

That’s the most painful part of all. I regret that more than anything. As I said to a good friend the other day: No matter how much you regret something, no matter how committed you are to repairing a wrong you’ve done, some people will not allow you another chance.

And there is one point that sticks for me, that I keep turning over and over in my head: She asked if I was the one that had placed the birthday card on her windshield, and I admitted it was me. When I explained that I was using her item as an opening to talk to her again recently, she said I should have signed the card, that “that would have been an opening.” But… wasn’t it an opening? It’s clear she knew it was from me and it shows that I had tried long ago to get into contact with her… Argh, I guess I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all.

@drdoombot – Once trust has been broken, it’s nearly impossible to earn it back and can only be done if the other party is willing to take that chance. Clearly, she isn’t willing to do so at this point. Respecting someone’s wishes and giving them the space they ask for is also an act of love. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Maybe your paths will cross again, maybe they won’t. Be grateful that you had this experience from which you have learned a very valuable lesson.

Anonymous birthday cards are just that, anonymous.

And why do you think she hates you? That’s a huge overstatement. She wants no part of you in her life because you have been upsetting and disruptive and not supportive. She doesn’t hate you, she is indifferent to you, because you failed repeatedly to provide meaning or connection in your relationship with her.

@zenvelo You don’t know her the way I do. She is a splitter: she can only love or hate things, there is no in-between for her. It’s pretty common for people suffering from BPD.

She definitely hates me. She told me at one point that I was the worst boyfriend she ever had, and that’s compared against guys that openly told her they were using her for sex, guys that mistreated her with no remorse and even one guy who raped her. I think the way she deals with her frustrations with people is by finding excuses to hate them.

During our relationship, I was her lover, best friend and confidant. We spent a lot of time together, but she became resentful and clingy when I attended to other people in my life (my mother in the hospital after a car accident, my friend’s house for dinner, etc.). She guilt-tripped me for being busy with my other responsibilities when she wanted me by her side. She always thought I wasn’t trying hard enough to be there for her.

I don’t blame her for these things because I realize it is a result of her psychological condition. I do, however, have enough experience with her to know how she will feel about me; it’s her way of coping with it, I guess. I don’t think she knows how to be indifferent.

Aha, @drdoombot, you have just succinctly summarized what every one here is telling you:look at yourself and your inability to be in a relationship with her. You just gave four paragraphs about it being her situation and her fault that you are not together.

Blaming aside, she is in no shape for a serious relationship long term. Unless something changes in her psychological make up, she’ll never get there either. Your relationship was co-dependent to the extreme. It would have been a nightmare to live with long term, regardless of how much you love her, and even if you hadn’t made mistakes.

Learn your lesson, and move on, friend.