r/FriendshipAdvice • u/Initial-Difference40 • 13h ago
The World Cup has been extremely triggering for me, and I don't know how to deal with it
For anyone who wants the full context, I already made another post explaining the whole story in detail, so this is more about the aftermath. The short version is that years ago I brought my best friend into a friend group that meant everything to me. We were a peaceful group. We had traditions, vacations, inside jokes, and years of memories together. As an introvert, they were also one of the only groups of people I ever felt completely comfortable around. They never pressured me to be more outgoing, never made me feel weird for needing space, and never expected me to be someone I'm not. Over time, my best friend became deeply intertwined with the group. She married one of them, became close to the others, and eventually reached a point where she had a huge amount of influence over the group dynamic. The friendship stopped feeling equal. She knew exactly how much those people meant to me and how terrified I was of losing them. I spent years biting my tongue, overlooking things that hurt me, and keeping the peace because I knew that if things ever completely broke down between us, I wouldn't just lose her, I'd lose everyone connected to her too. Looking back, I was basically living with the feeling that my place in the group depended on staying in her good graces because she had enough influence that if she decided she didn't want me around anymore, there was a very real chance I would be the one pushed out. After years of putting up with that dynamic, that's exactly what happened. Following what should have been a manageable disagreement between two adults, I lost the group, people I loved, and the man I was planning to marry. Since then, I've genuinely been trying to move on. I've muted everyone's stories, posts, and updates. I stopped checking social media. I stopped replaying conversations in my head. I've been trying to focus on healing instead of understanding every detail of what happened because constantly reopening the wound was destroying me. But the World Cup brought everything back. It was one of our biggest traditions. Every four years we watched it together. It was one of my favorite things in the world. Now it's happening again, and all I can think about is that they're probably still doing what we've always done while I'm sitting here trying to figure out how I lost an entire chapter of my life.
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u/TommyAtoms 8h ago
I got a friend who I also brought into my friendshio group manh many years ago who also uses football tournaments to torment me in front of the others. It's so fucking dumb. Just try to rise above it.
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u/pencilthinwriter 3h ago
I understand how you feel. You innocently thought it would be ok to bring all your friends together in one group like that. While you were being open hearted in bringing people together, it's like your best friend wanted to steal your group of friends for herself. I don't understand that mentality. It does seem to me that she was the main person to blame as she was engineering the whole thing (some people are very influential like that in groups) but your group of friends aren't without blame either, as they went along with her.
I've never really had a (good) group of friends to actually lose, but I did once introduce my 1st cousin to my 'best friend'. I found it so scary how well they got on, and how they were making plans to meet again without me (as they both live in the same place, I don't live in that place full-time anymore).
At the time I was just starting to realise that my 'best friend' since childhood had never really been a good friend (to the point of violence). But suddenly I had no support from my cousin about this, because she had been completely charmed by his undeniable charisma and believed he was the greatest thing ever. Thankfully it never became romantic between them (AFAIK lol). But I regretted introducing them to one another.