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The original was posted on /r/relationships by /u/knightsrook6 on 2024-01-24 02:24:12+00:00.
Tl;dr : friend hasn’t been putting any effort into our friendship, considering telling him I won’t be part of his wedding party.
Hi everyone, looking for some advice on how to proceed with my friendship here. Sorry for the essay.
I’ve had a very rocky friendship with one of my (31M) longest friends (31M) in my life for the past 5 or so years. We’ve known each other for about 20 years, went to same schools, studied the same thing, and generally spent a lot of time together in our teens + early 20’s, went on trips, etc.
Over the last 5 or so years , our relationship has changed. I don’t know exactly what caused it, but it started happening around the time that we both got into relationships. For some reason, he started becoming very distant. I met his girlfriend only a couple times, and he would say it’s because she wasn’t social at all and didn’t really want to hang out with any of his friends.
Him and his original girlfriend have since broken up a while ago, and he started dating a new girl about 2 years ago, and they will be getting married later this year. I’ve had the same experience with this girl as his ex. I’ve met her only a couple times, and they only wants to hang out with my girl and I about once or twice a year.
To be clear, we only see each other about 3-4 times a year total now, independently of our girlfriends. And this is primarily when I initiate things. I feel like over time, he’s stopped caring about our friendship . Obviously I don’t expect it to be like when we were 20, but I do except some minimal amount of effort and to initiate things every once in a while.
Now, later this year he’s going to be getting married. He asked me to be a groomsman last year, in addition to 5 other of his friends. I think that he’s trying to act like everything’s cool, even though it’s clearly not. As he was asking me to be a groomsman, he literally talked shit about 2 of the other groomsman and was telling me how he didn’t feel good asking them. Keep in mind that he hangs out with these 2 groomsmen way more than with me.
I do acknowledge that I haven’t always been the perfect friend, but he hasn’t asked out to hangout in months. We text every once in a while, but the last time I saw him was in November when I initiated an escape room with him and his gf and my girl. The last time he “initiated” something was back in March to grab drinks for my bday, in which he spent about 80% of the time telling me that he was going to propose to his gf.
I’m somewhat considering telling him that I wouldn’t feel appropriate being a groomsman at his wedding. I feel like that should be a special role dedicated to someone close in his life, and that is not me at this point. At this stage of our lives, he spends considerably more time hanging out with other friends , some who are in the wedding party, others who are not. Like I said, if I wasn’t initiating, we’d see each other twice a year.