Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

Philippa wrote:

I've been having a lot of problems with my best friend, B.

B and I are the type of best friends that never do anything apart, but since the beginning of my senior year, I've been having problems with her. B broke up with her boyfriend, who's also one of my very good friends.

Since they've been broken up she's been messing with another guy. She liked him while her and the boyfiend were still together. Well this new guy called me and told me that he's liked me since last year and told B this.

Well B never told me this, and told him that I didn't like him, even though I did ... [and more]

Dear Philippa,

When I hear the term "My Best Friend", I reach for my shotgun [not really]. It is a horrible term, suggesting two people joined at the hip, manacles, marriage and forced loyalty. Once you call someone your best friend, you can then demand total, unswerving, inhuman, impossible levels of loyalty.

Is that fair?

No. it's set up to fail, and allow you to feel sorry for yourself, while blaming her. Don't get me wrong, Philippa, I'm not being personal, this might not apply to you at all. But if a friend doesn't act like a friend, they are not a friend, are they? It's a sad, but unchangeable fact of life that friendships, especially deep ones, grow, mature, explode, fade and die.

Some never existed. I've known people have a 'best friend' that they never liked in the first place - it was an alliance, not a friendship.
What I'm saying (I think) is consider what's happened - things you said and did that were unfair, as well as what B said and did.

Is there a friendship there? If so, fight for it - don't let rivalry over some geeky guy destroy it. Above all, be honest. If you can't do that, forget it. forget her, forget him. There are 11 billion people in this world of ours, find the good ones!

Laurel Adds:

I was thinking about the term 'best friend', and how people use it everyday, but really they don't think about the meaning of those two words. I think that you hit the nail on the head.

I remember through school, people would ask 'who is your best friend?', or 'is that your best friend?'.. it's almost like a competition in life to gain all knowledge and rights to another person, and boy no one else will get near him/her!

More people need to realise that even though you believe you can give yourself wholeheartedly to your 'best friend' (partner, relative, whoever it may be), there is really only one person that you can almost call your best friend .. and that's yourself.