The Emotional Toll of Being Unavailable: Lessons Learned from a Lost Friendship 💔

Why It's Important to Show Up for Your Friends (Even When It's Hard)

I remember the hurt and anger in Ben’s voice when what I hoped would be a spontaneous, romantic night between friends, turned out to be traumatic.

Because of me. 

It was the first time I felt how much he didn’t like me – and how hurt he was. He was always so clear and passionate about his feelings. 

I fell for that quality. I envied it. 

He was my favorite person to be with.

He taught me how to win at quarters with his friends in high school.

He cleaned my parent’s kitchen after parties — better than my Mom. (She’d come home and say, “Ok, I know you had people over, the kitchen’s spotless, Ben was here.)

He took me car camping for the first time with friends.

He had a blonde, buzz cut (sooo 80’s) and baby blue eyes that used to show me what he was feeling. 

There were photos of us in our living room at my parent’s house.

He hung pictures of us up on his college dorm room wall. 

But that night – it was all about the hurt and anger in his voice as he described how he felt when he flew out to visit me at college and spend the weekend.

And I didn’t treat him like it was special.  

What was even more hurtful was how I didn’t bother to fly out and see him at all that year.  And our schools were so close. 

He’d been talking to his buddies about me. Telling them how I was one of his best friends. Of course, I would come to see him. I wouldn’t flake on him like that. 

I flaked on him so hard my heart still hurts writing that sentence. 

I got a boyfriend. My first real boyfriend. 

And I was clueless and ignored my best friend’s feelings. A best friend who I had romantic feelings for. And we never became more than that because of me. 

Photo by Martin Péchy on Unsplash

And that night, at 3 am, while he was processing his pain, I realized our friendship was over. 

Lying awake many nights at 3 am, I’ve had to own this one.

Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

When his feelings started to change, and he tried to talk to me about them, I was impossible to talk to. I remember my heart being totally closed off. 

I looked into his piercing blue eyes and had nothing meaningful to say. 

While he recounted, in detail, each time he felt let down.

I played dumb for as long as I could, hoping things would just stay the same between us. 

I had no emotional vocabulary to work with.

So what do I regret today? 

All the cues I missed – and how deeply my own emotional unavailability hurt him. 

I wish he could have felt how sorry I was that he was hurting because of me.  

And how much I cared for him. 

I didn’t have the empathy, or the skills, to show that tall, athletic teenager who was becoming a man — how important he was to me. I didn’t know how to make him feel special. Or I would have done it in a heartbeat. 

Now, I realize it was mostly because my home life was crazy. And I was hiding it from him. 

My brother and sister were fighting over money. My Mom was fighting with her brothers over my Aunt’s estate. (My Mom’s attorney made me sign an NDA – story for another time.) 

And there was no one to talk to about Ben, or the tenderness of that first love. 

On top of everything… my first college boyfriend had just broken up with me. (I was so emotionally unavailable he also moved on to someone else.) 

And that was how my friendship with Ben ended. With a plethora of unresolved emotions and unspoken feelings swirling around inside me. 

Years later, when he was in a relationship (with his now wife), I tried to reach out. 

By then I had a vocabulary. 

I had some context about why I was so emotionally unavailable. (Therapy was a start…)

But he just kept blowing me off, until I finally stopped trying. 

I’ve reflected a lot on how I treated him and how much I hurt him.

Part of me feels like I was protecting him from getting more involved with me. Instinctively, I knew how emotionally traumatized and unavailable I was from living in such a chaotic and closed-off family. 

His words, “You never tell me anything, and I tell you everything,” still ring in my ears sometimes. 

And those words have transformed how I show up in all my relationships. Now, my friends know how much I care about them.

I know how to listen and show up for myself. (Essential life skill)

So when a friend needs me, I understand how to be there for them. And I can put aside whatever I’m going through to be kind, funny, patient, or simply tell them the truth. No matter how awkward or vulnerable the conversation has to be.

I’m not perfect – but they know I care. 

And even though it’s been 25 years, if Ben ever decided to reach out… I’d have a lot more to say this time.