When I was in 9th grade, I use to get really butt hurt about my best friend choosing to spend time with her boyfriend over me. I grew up with the girl, so going from never wanting to even think about boyfriends, to suddenly wanting them more than we wanted each other-was hard for me. It was the reason behind a lot of fights we had, and it even caused a little separation between the two of us for about a year.
I wanted her to be able to watch movies with me every Friday night, or make cookies in our PJ’s just for fun. I didn’t really want to be put on a schedule or plan. I wanted it to be spontaneous, but more than that, I wanted to be the kind of friend to her that she wanted to make random, spontaneous plans with.
We ended up getting over that, but I think I was always a little bitter deep down because at the end of the day, I still didn’t feel like being put second, when as selfish as it sounds, in her life, I use to always be put first-besides her family of course.
The thing is, my best friend was and is in love. She literally met the man of her dreams, and I know the day will be coming when he gets down on one knee and I get to stand by her side when she says I do.
As you get older, we do pick our boyfriends over our best friends. That’s just how it is. You can fight me on it all you want, but at the end of the day, that’s just life. We are dating our boyfriends to figure out whether or not we want to spend the rest of our life with them. We are deciding whether or not we want to build a family with them, grow old with them, and show every single flaw and vulnerability to them. Chances are, we can’t figure all that out, always putting our best friends first.
There comes a time when we make the decision to put friendships on the back burner while seeing how much we are capable of loving someone else. At the time, I didn’t realize that because I didn’t want to love.
Now that I’m significantly older than I was when I was upset with my best friend for putting me down at number 2, I am actually in love myself. I feel very hypocritical because I don’t alway make time for her. Our plans sometimes clash, and we choose to spend nights in bed with our boyfriends instead of movie nights with one another. That doesn’t mean we don’t make time, it just means we don’t make as much.
It was hard for me to get past the fact that things would never go back to how they once were. But when I realized that my best friend was happier than she ever had been, it was much easier to come to the realization that I’m okay with being pushed to the back burner sometimes. As long as every now and again, I’m brought up to the front.
My best friend chooses her boyfriend over me, but I do the same. We both have accepted the fact that it’s nothing personal, but we want to spend time with the people we’re most likely going to spend the rest of our lives with, than one another. We still make time when we can, and at the end of the day, she is still what she was to me in 9th grade, my best friend.
And after getting to know the guy I’m stuck behind, I have to admit, I kind of love him myself.
