Losing friends…

Life in Recovery
1

hey everyone :pray:t3: about 5 good friends excused themselves from my life over the course of 13 years during active addiction. they just didn’t wanna be close to me anymore, and i totally get it. i’ve accepted it.

now, even though i’ve been sober a little over 6 months, someone who i consider to be like a brother to me has just told me he also does not want to be my friend anymore.

many of his reasons are due to my sketchy and selfish behaviors/attitudes when i was drunk with him (which happened for about a year, from right when we met until i got sober in september) - and some of those behaviors and attitudes have naturally continued on thru my recovery because well hey we don’t change overnight!! i’m working on it!!

(this person and i also have a strangely intense and platonically intimate bond, and i think the triggers have all just gotten to be too much.)

i do take accountability for my actions and attitudes and why they’ve led to my friend not wanting to be close to me anymore. i also recognize what a huge role addiction has played in me being a sort of shitty person - and although i am now working every day on recovering my body, soul, heart and mind, i can see how actually broken i became from 13 years of alcohol abuse. i am still sick in many ways and need time to heal. my friend doesn’t wanna stick around for all that.

so, i have to let this person go. i have to accept their feeling and decision. and i have to love myself thru this loss, i cannot allow shame or guilt to overtake me or cloud my sense of self again. i’ve been thru too much already. :heart:

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This is the only thing we can control. Unfortunately not everybody’s gonna stick around for the ride. Even if we feel like we would do it for them. It does suck sometimes, but the only thing that really matters is your sobriety and well being for you and the little guy. You’re doing great. :v:

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Yes your are doing great like @Jasty2 mentioned, just wanted to add that in there :smiling_face:
Sometimes the problem isn’t always us though.
You need/want friends that want to be around you at your best, not just your worst. If they run when your at your best maybe it’s for the best.
Really proud of how far you have come. Love seeing your pics with your little one.
:sunflower:

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I will add too. That se people don’t like us in sobriety, because when they see it. It forces them to take a good look in the mirror and their own problems

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I only know my experience, but there’s no way I would have tolerated my behavior if I were my friend during active addiction. I absolutely lost a number of friends during that period. The only thing this says about them is that they had appropriate and healthy boundaries around my bullshit. To judge my friends for not remaining my friends takes away from the actual problem, which of course was me.

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