A
female
age
36-40,
*abeen
writes:i had a best friend i lived with for 7 years whose feelings i have hurt deeply. i don't know what i can do to change his feelings and show him i care about him and love him. he did sooo much for me, got me into school, paid for my tution,, did everything in the world to make me happy. if he was watching tv and i wanted him to stop watching it, he would just do it to make me happy.He was the best friend anyone could have ever asked for. He would go with me for my job search, made me breakfast, lunch and dinner and before i even asked for anything he did it for me. He treated me like a princess, i was just like a child to him, he kept me in his house forr 7 years and i didn't pay for anything and didn't ever ask for anything just did it out of love. but i feel so bad he introduced me to his girl friend and i was rude to her and told her he left me to be with you and didn't say nice things about him.i also asked them to leave his own house and he had to move to another place just to make me comfortable. i feel terrible and our relationship has changed since then. he does not tell me much about what's going on in his life anymore, neither does he come to see me, he still helps me and cares for me but does not love me any more after what i did. i apologized but i don't know how i could do that to him, i never did anything for him, that was the only thing he ever asked from me to be happy for him and instead i was jealous and tried to ruin his relationship and made him leave his own house. i feel terrible for the way i treated him and now his feelings have changed, he still cares for me but does not feel obligated to be there for me.All he wants from me now is to be independant and be on my own so i don't have to rely on him. how can i change his feelings? he does not say it but i know he doesn't expect anything from me anymore. i feel like the most terrible person in the whole world, he was my only friend and my strength and i lost him
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (15 January 2013): You should NOT even try to change his feelings. He has done the right thing. He spent 7 years giving you everything he had when he was getting nothing in return. That's not a healthy way to live because it's such an unbalanced relationship. He even paid for your tuition?? Did you ever pay him back??And he paid for your living expenses too. This is inappropriate since he was neither your husband nor parent. It was totally wrong for you to accept all his gifts and payments for everything you wanted. He is not your 'sugar daddy'. This was a VERY unhealthy relationship for BOTH of you. It was unhealthy for you because you were getting accustomed to being treated in ways you don't deserve, you developed a sense of entitlement and selfishness which isn't good for you. It was unhealthy for him because he was giving and giving and not getting anything good in return, that's being co-dependent and it was only a matter of time before he would get resentful that the relationship was so extremely unbalanced. And indeed that time came.After you treated him badly he suddenly woke up and realized that he has been in a very unhealthy friendship/relationship situation with you. It's GOOD for him to now want to distance himself from all of that.Even now you're still being selfish as all you care about is what you want and what you lost. if you want to show him that you care about him, then do this:1. Move out of HIS place, find your own place and support yourself as you should. Let him live in his own house for goodness sake.2. Pay him back for EVERYTHING you took from him the past 7 years: your tuition, rent, car (if he gave you one), food, clothes, entertainment, whatever. You, as an able bodied adult perfectly able to work, had no right to accept financial gifts totaling in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars from another person for no valid reason even if he was willingly offering it. If you have to take out loans to pay him back then do it, if you have to work 2 jobs for the next 10 years to pay off those loans then that's what you must do.3. Then leave him alone and don't try to get back into his life unless he first invites you to.
A
male
reader, anon_e_mouse  +, writes (14 January 2013):
 I'm glad he left you. You don't deserve him and showed him no respect when you had a go at his girlfriend. After everything he did for you too.
Me, me, me, me, me.
Grow up.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (14 January 2013): No offence OP but you know what I see in your question? "Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, ME!!!!!"
"How can I get him to change his feelings for me?" "I need him." "I feel bad." "I lost him." "I feel like the most terrible person in the world."
It's not him you have you have to change, it's not his feelings that are the issue here it is your insanely egoistic attitude and utterly self-centred view of the world.
Even now you don't actually care how he feels or how you've hurt him only how much it effects you and only in a way where you feel you've lost out.
Seriously OP count how many times you use the words 'I' and 'me'.
Of course he doesn't expect anything from you because you only care about yourself and when he finally woke up to that he realized you literally have nothing to offer him because all you do is take, even now, you know you've messed things up and you only care how this effects you. Now tell me all you want that's not true, that you do care, but you don't they're just words and your attitude is very clear.
OP I know you feel bad enough about this and I'm really not trying to make you feel worse but it's time you woke up to reality of what's going on here. It wasn't just that incident that drove him away, you've been slwly chipping away at this friendship for a long time. He was going to figure out all this at some stage, it just so happens this was the incident that showed him how much of a door mat to you he actually is/was.
You can't change his feelings but you can change you. Only when he sees that you're a person capable of giving will he ever think of you as a close friend again.
But I can't see you doing that to be honest and if you do it will just be another act of self-service. I used to be friends with someone like you, but was never their doormat, although a friend of mine was to him. He just always thought of himself, even when he did good things for people he did it in a self-serving way, a person with an agenda to use others to better himself. He's never changed and I don't hold much hope for you either but maybe you should try volunteering in a soup kitchen, animal shelter or local disability charity or something. Learn to give without asking anything in return, learn what its like to live a life thinking of others.
I wish you luck OP, because have a feeling even if you did these things it would be to serve your own agenda, go two or three times and then try and change his feelings that way.
Or I could have gotten you all wrong and you do do nice things for others and aren't completely selfish in life, only when it comes to this guy and how you interact with him. In that case you'll never get it back to the way it was because you never had a friendship OP, just an unhealthy co-dependency between a doormat and his master.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (14 January 2013): Omg your friend sounds like such a good man,more like an angel!I think you should just stay away from him
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A
female
reader, Euphoric29  +, writes (14 January 2013):
Dear Sabeen,You can't just change his feelings. At least not just like that. There's nothing you could say right now, because you really screwed up. The only thing you can DO is finally be independent, as he wishes, and leave his place so he can have his privacy with his girlfriend. After seven years of having you in his house, if he's tired of it, then that's okay. Maybe he's too polite to say it in your face, but he'd probably be happy if you left and I can understand.Stop expecting anything from him. Show him he's a friend, not a sponsor, to you.You had many privileges that are usually reserved for a girlfriend. Now he's found love and if you are a true friend, you care about his happiness and stop interfering. You need to move out, but not without showing him that you appreciated what he's done for you and that there are no hard feelings on your part. Maybe in time, the wounds will heal.
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