Moirail texted me today to say that I'm not being much of a best friend to her, or any kind of friend at all and I'm panicking. This pushes my self loathing button hard. I have this whole thing about being unlovable, unlikable, and just a shitty person to know. She feels like I'm avoiding her and... I maybe kind of am? We've been through very bad times together, but now that times are good and her life is good and eh especially able to be happy I feel like I need to five her room bc I'm just unable to be happy and I don't want to bring her down. And she tends to catastrophic thinking, so she interprets as me avoiding her when I'm really just avoiding, like, my entire life. I don't know what to do. I don't know what I would do without her friendship but I don't know how to save it. I worry that the things I want to say would be manipulative and I just... I need help.
Okay, 1) talk to her, tell her about this. Knowing what's going on helps everyone. Like, if you have a really hard time articulating it, just send her a link to this thread.
seconding this. communicating can be hard and admitting to purposeful less-than-ideal behavior is even harder but being straightforward is best here.
As someone who's had this exact issue, going back and forth with both of us doing it (avoiding the other excessively) with my moirail... yeah, talking it out is the only way it's going to get better. It might get messy and painful in the middle, but choosing to bring it up is a way of saying "hey this is not okay" which is an opportunity to try to fix things. *hugs if wanted*
Talking was good. She genuinely thought I didn't want to be friends anymore. We got some communication going. This has sort of made me realize that I really need to get help. If my depression and the behavior it compels is hurting people I care about, I need to address it. She's going to help me start the process. ETA: Thank you all for being here.
