Storytime:

Both my sister and I played soccer growing up. We were pretty competitive, mind you this was middle school, but we both spent a lot of time with teammates. It wasnt just a sport, we had to communicate among ourselves and get along. My teams had few problems. If we didn't like someone in group, we just didn't talk. It didnt affect our playing. It didn't affect our lives. Some personal relationships don't work and that's fine, it's a fact of life. But we got over it.

My sister's teams were completely different. Each team had clicks within clicks and drama over who was destined for the cute cashier at the McDonalds over by the soccer field that they might play away at four times per year. Clicks break apart, things get petty, Nicki wont pass to Charlotte because she looked at the cashier for too long, and the team drastically suffers at different periods throughout the season. Things get worse before they get better when shit hits the fan after the games. People choose sides and clicks reform so that Nicki and Charlotte aren't in the same group any longer.

And the result is that my sister has NEVER had a single long term friend until at least after high school. Even then, they're all dudes. I've had a best friend since I was 6 months old. I'm 21. He's not a standalone though, it seems easier for me to get friends like this somehow.

Throughout highschool the same things kept happening. The difference was that people were dating now. For me, things were about the same. For my sister and her friends, it seemed that a girl that gets commited to a relationship leaves her group. Even if there wasn't bickering over a boy, the friend support group becomes unimportant once the girl becomes cuffed. The girl just abandoned the rest of her life to become dependent on the dude. Often this turned into a cycle. Once one relationship ends, there's a race to catch another dude before the chick gets too lonely.

As you might tell, I really pity the girls that find themselves in this situation. There's so much faith and hope put into the relationship in the beginning. But when the girl expects the same from the dude, it's just not resonable. That's not how relationships work. It's unfair to expect someone to completely drop their lives for you. Many people, dudes included, don't understand this (Seems like the "niceguys" mostly). People defined by a single relationship - in a personal sense, not a romantic one - become dry when the relationship gets dry, and then the relationship turns poisoness. Both parties are unsatisfied. We need a support crew in our lives.

Fast forward to recent memory, for which I am saltily writing this post.

I started an internship. Specifics mostly are not important. I was assigned a mentor and her job is to teach me how things are done, since much of what the group does is way over my head. Personally, we hit it off big time. We don't have a great deal in common, but somehow we understand each other. We met up way more often than necessary for work to eat or discuss what we were working on at the time, and things are great. I was just enjoying spending time together.

And that was the extent of the relationship. She had a long distance relationship throughout all of this, which I had known about, so I made no attempts to move anything along. I didn't want to either, we had what I would call a very close friendship.

Then, you guessed it, shit hits the fan. She had invited me over for dinner, something that had never happened before. We have a fine time, talk a lot, take a tour of the apartment, cook dinner, and then go our separate ways.

A few days later she's very distant. No interest in meeting up, which was very unusual in our timeline. I start asking for work help because I have literally no clue what I'm doing and she's not responding to shit. The next weekend I recieve an email from her about how I'm not getting the most out the internship and threatening how she would report poorly to our bossman if I didn't step up, audaciously citing such work as the things I was asking her to help with. The message is urgent and aggressive to a tone that was never present in any previous communication. I respond as distantly as possible for the records, should bossman ever look over what happened.

The next time we have a scheduled meet she apologizes. Apparently she and her boyfriend got into a fight. But what does that have to do with me? The result of all this is bossman now believes I've deteriorated drastically since all of this. All he has to go on is her word and my work, which I can't do without her feedback. There goes hope for a place in the group or a letter of recommendation.

Again, why me? The only thing I can figure is the boyfriend was jealous that I was in the picture. She would've been forced to lash out to protect his interest, even at the cost of her closest material friend. But there's a thought I can't shake. What if she had feelings? What if the night at the apartment was a failure in her mind, that she was tired of long distance but realized I wouldn't be the one to take a step in the direction of cheating?

I apologize for the amount of drama in this post, this isnt r/dating_advice, but this thought just won't leave. What if she had no sense in her mind how to maintain a friendship to begin with? What if modern conditioning eliminates the possibility of having any kind of friends in the world? And all that matters is maintaining a romantic relationship to have someone to depend on and ask things from and abuse, if it felt right? And they'll stay for the brain chemicals. They'll stay for the sex.

Sorry for all the details, but I feel they are necessary. This sub does a great job at identifying the problem. But how do we change this cycle which leads people to create poisoness relationships? Simply go our own way? There are dudes that behave like this too. Basically r/niceguys in a nutshell.

All feedback is appreciated, please criticize supportingly.