All through high school, my best friend was a girl I'll call Jane.  Jane and I weren't the kind of best friends that were inseparable, we each had other friends outside of each other, but we were very close.  Every summer we went to Chicago to stay with friends of Jane's family and go shopping, do crafts and just be silly.  It was really great.  When I went to college, we still stayed close, but not as close.  It was hard with me being in Virginia and Jane in Sheboygan.  She started dating when we were in high school.  I was too scared and self-conscious to even talk to guys.  She always got really distant when she was dating someone.  She never talked to me about anything since she believed I wouldn't understand since I never dated anybody.  That really hurt my feelings, because maybe I wouldn't have had first-hand knowledge of what she was talking about, but I could still listen.  It also seemed that whenever she was dating someone, she could only be close to him and only came back to me if they broke up.  After college I joined the Army and Jane found a husband.  She got married shortly after I started dating Patrick.  I was the maid of honor in her wedding and caught the bouquet at the reception.  I got married five months after her and she didn't bother to come to the wedding and sent our gift three months late.  Shortly after we received her gift she sent me a long letter about how she didn't want to be my friend anymore because I was a bad friend and selfish person who cared more about myself than about her.  She said we were just "fun friends" that didn't have any substance.  I have to say that no one ever hurt me as much as she did with that letter.  

I went through a lot of therapy and dug into my relationship with Jane from every angle and discovered that I was NOT a bad friend and selfish person.  It took me a long time to realize that everything that happened between us was all about her and never about me.  I learned that when people are angry with themselves they accuse someone else of what they are mad at themselves.  I heard this all the time when I worked on the phones.  I got accused of losing a lot of people's money.  Usually they were just mad at themselves for not selling their mutual fund shares when the price was up.  Anyway, what I learned from the situation with Jane was that I never want to be that kind of friend.  Being without much of a social life except Patrick makes me hope that I am not that kind of person.