Thanks for all the replies. I'm asking about all this because I find that after I had to end a "best friendship", I just am ungrounded and like, I make excuses too easily about their behaviour and like I don't *truly* know or remember anymore what a real friendship is supposed to feel like. I know in theory but I don't *feel* it or *believe* it.

It's like they were manipulative about how them not checking up on me, not initiating contact or not being emotionally supportive of me was a "normal" thing to do. And that me wanting that or periodically trying to contact them was "not normal". Them being manipulative about this still has an effect on me. I know that sounds horrible lol, I need to somehow move on from feeling like that and that is why I made this thread

The other reason I'm interested in this thread is that I saw someone else on this forum talking about how she doesn't want someone flaky in a friendship, how she contacted friends to cancel plans when she got in the hospital for an emergency operation. And the way I felt reading that, I realised that since my ending that "friendship", I can't even imagine that anyone can be really like that reliable in reality. It felt like, unreal. But it was good to see that maybe it does exist. It lifted my mood a bit to see that even if I also felt like I was disbelieving that I could trust anyone to be like that, that reliable and attentive or caring. (Other than family members)

It's like I paid attention, I was caring & reliable like that in this "friendship" but somehow because of the manipulations I ended up not being able to believe that that's normal in a friendship. Either from my end or from the other person's end. And if I could truly believe it again then it would help with my mood too and my healing and getting functional again in my life.