My Best Friend Break Up With A People Pleaser

I had a best friend for a few years in my adulthood. She was so very special to me, but after those few years, she ghosted me and then blocked me. I was really confused for a while, and also extremely heart broken, because I couldn’t understand what on earth happened that caused her to do this. Especially at a time when I really needed her (I’d just had surgery to do aesthetic flat closure post mastectomy due to ongoing complications with implants). I was flat, I was super sad and insecure, I needed help with my daughter (to which she agreed to support me with…) and I was grateful to be able to lean on her.

But then, after some communication hiccups via text, she literally bailed on my life entirely.

It took some time to understand and to try to work through this heart break, particularly because I had no closure and no clarity about what really happened. But in pondering our relationship further and in reflecting on who I knew her to be as a person (given her trauma, her attachment wounding, and her patterns of behavior in relationships), it all started to make sense.

I was a fixer (and recovering people pleaser) and she was a full blown people pleaser, silently building resentment on the inside while failing to set boundaries with her loved ones on the outside. She expected to blow the fuck up on me if she were to communicate her feelings honestly because she didn’t have the nervous system capacity to hold space for anger; so instead she avoided it and suppressed it as much as she could (why? Family trauma). This beautiful girl held rage within her that wasn’t being effectively addressed. She needed boundaries. She needed to be able to tell me “No Gaby, I’m at capacity and I can’t help after your surgery” or even “Gaby, I feel frustrated because initially you did tell me ____ and now you’re telling me _____. I can’t make it because I didn’t plan for that.”

(It’s true, I was a hot freaking mess, emotionally, leading up to this surgery… I was super forgetful and my communication was failing because stress and… unmanaged ADHD symptoms at the time)

Instead of telling me how she felt, instead of communicating her boundaries, instead of expressing her feelings of hurt and of anger… she ghosted.

And I get it because I’ve done it (just not on such a grand scale).

I’ve also distanced myself and avoided people when I didn’t know how to set boundaries or when I felt overwhelmed. For so long, I’d rather avoid people than actually speak up to them. And sadly, all this results in is further emotional distance from the people you love and want in your life… and then life ends.

And you don’t get another chance.

Neither of us was fully wrong or fully right in this scenario, but this experience really frames what can happen in relationships with people pleasers that aren’t really looking inward and doing the inner work.

As a recovering people pleaser myself, I can say that we often assume other people are the problem, when they’re not the only problem.

We often assume, “they should just know what I’m going through” or “they should just know how I feel…” and it’s really not fair.

We assume that other people can’t tolerate boundaries and hard conversations, which also isn’t fair (and is really just a projection of the people pleaser’s inability to tolerate boundaries and have hard conversations).

Do I miss her?

So much.

Will I welcome her back into my life?

I don’t know.

Will we ever be the same again?

No, and that’s a good thing.

Will we ever be best friends again?

Never.

Do I hope we can both find compassion for ourselves and healing for ourselves, absolutely 100% no doubt, I certainly hope so.

And I hope that every people pleaser in the world, carrying attachment trauma, relational wounds, and the fear of speaking up can do the deeper work and the deeper healing so that they don’t get to the ends of their lives thinking, “damn… I could have still had her… we could have had more laughs, more cries, more walks in the mountains, more Harry Potter movie dates, more sushi, and more tearful hugs whispering “I love you so much, you’re amazing”).

If you’re a people pleaser that doesn’t want to lose what could be amazing, don’t miss the opportunity now to do the internal work that needs addressing.

Looking for a therapist in California that get it? Book your free intro call today via the “contact me” page.

Or check out The People Pleaser’s Guide To Setting Boundaries With Family to unravel your own people pleasing patterns and to step into a confident, healthy, bad-ass version of you. https://stan.store/therapywithgaby/p/the-people-pleasers-guide-to-setting-boundaries