Might be long, I don't want to drip feed.
I met my best friend in 1997 and we always were confidents and very comfortable with each other. He knows me better than anyone else and by his accounts I know him better than himself and he tells me thoughts and feelings he can't tell anybody else.
Because I moved countries a few times and communication wasn't as easy in the past as it is now, there were periods when we didn't talk often but it also felt like time never went on.
About 11 or 12 years ago we were exchanging emails constantly and he was telling me how happy he was in his relationship and that he found his soulmate. Then he stopped replying to my emails - I didn't have social media so we lost contact.
Then about 6 years ago, I found him on instagram and sent a message. We reconnected again and he said his relationship had broken down and explained that he became engaged with the soulmate and she demanded he stopped speaking to me out of jealousy - I was in a different continent at that point, married and with one young child, there was nothing going on - but he obliged. Now that they are not together he was keen on reconnecting again and apologised profusely for stop speaking to me - he was in a very hard place and over the months and years that followed I helped him process his heartbreak (the relationship seemed very toxic) and process his new flings and the relationships he had after. He did the same to me and we had a great time talking about each other's dramas and supporting each other.
Until summer 22 when he met a new woman while still in love with a previous one - so a lot to process and talk about. This new woman was already displaying jealousy and controlling tendencies and he used to be very unsure about her and the whole situation - plus still holding a torch for the woman before her - their relationship started becoming kind of toxic pretty quickly to the point where once when he was sick on a hospital bed she took his phone and read all of our messages and heard all of our voice notes - she made a scene, cried, insulted him, broke up with him just to ask him bak a few days later...roll following month, she is constantly checking his phone (and this makes him to constant delete our conversations) and being very controlling and he expresses to me the desire to break up, explaining the whole plan. Then he disappears for a week and comes back sending me photos of them together drinking champagne at a concert, saying that they worked it out and are meant to be together.
At this point I told him that I didn't want to get involved and hear about their relationship anymore but of course we could carry on being friends and talk about other stuff.
So we continued mainly discussing work, politics and world events plus my issues in my own life with my daughter which were (and still are) very tough and he was a great source of support.
He becomes more absent but messages me on his birthday explaining about a drama created by his GF. I make a fuss about his birthday and offer some general support not going into details or getting involved in his relationship again.
Comes Christmas time I ask him what his plans are etc and he says he will be with his family - asks about mine and I say I have no plans and will not celebrate New Years at the party I go every year, because it is being a very tough month and I'm not in the mood.
So on Christmas day I see phots of him on IG with her and his family - so he took her to spend the holidays with them and some more travels for NY and after. It seems like they had a lovely time and underneath every photo they are proclaiming their love to each other. But what made me sad is that he never messaged me during the holidays, no Merry Christmas or Happy New Year at all and granted I didn't do it either but I was kind of fed up of me always initiating conversation lately - also as I was having a very bad time it would have been nice for him as a friend to reach out.
Anyway, he messaged me today asking if how I am and if I'd gone to the NY party that I had said I was not going to go (?) - I had been so sad all this time because I wasn't hearing from him and I did not want to spoil his holidays messaging him but now I just don't feel like talking to him anymore and I think it is maybe time I stop relying on this friendship so much. I am also feeling kind of yucky because I know well that at the beginning of the relationship with this woman he was there just because of her looks and easy sex while still dreaming about the ex before her and even mentioned that he wanted the ex to feel jealous by seeing them together in person or on IG. I know his feelings might have changed but I am just feeling so uncomfortable at the moment.
Gosh this sounds like I am 15 or something, but I needed it out of my chest.
If I feel like replying one day I will but not in a hurry. I feel like he would dump me again in a second if this new woman asked him to, in fact I am believing she already has.