Bubblegum Pink | Keep Him In The Friendzone

Bridge Mongs
Oct 26
9 min read

Author’s Note: This is a personal and introspective piece with sensitive topics such as sex, trauma, CPTSD, and identity. There are only mentions of these topics and no vivid descriptions or scenes, but proceed with caution! Also, yes, there’s a lot of personal shit in here - I write from the soul! If you don't like it, go read an encyclopedia or something.

When I was 17, I reached a particularly tumultuous point with my mental health. After years of struggling and trying to do the work - therapy, coping skills, essential oils, supplements, journaling - my primary coping skill, distracting body & mind with men (boys), was catching up to me.

I began fantasizing about falling in love in 5th grade, spending our camping field trip gazing up at the stars and imagining my first love with a boy I had structured in my head: respectful, gentleman-ly, handsome in a rugged way, soft spoken. While my actual first love had a lot less romance and a lot more … ~shit~ than I’d imagined in that fantasy, this started an unrelenting chase for that fulfilling, wholesome, healing love I’d imagined. From a man, of all things.

In the years between fifth grade and senior year, where this story takes place, I had put myself through the ringer; it wasn’t my fault (thanks, CPTSD disguised as ‘that bitch is so borderline’), but I had done a serious number to my body, my mind, and my reputation. One year after the next, I found myself entangled in situations with boys that I had romanticized to the point of extreme emotional pain, rejection, and betrayal. I also just experienced some really shitty men, and didn’t have the self-awareness or self-protection instincts (or care!) to do anything about it.

By senior year, I was lonely, confused about relationships, and turning to any man who could distract me for the night and possibly for a much longer duration in my head, if all the cards aligned right and he actually kept Snapchatt-ing me (classy) after the initial hangout.

So when a close friend of 8 years, that I had continuously held in the friend zone and pretended not to notice his puppy-dog-loving gaze, proposed a casual hookup to cleanse myself of my last hookup-gone-wrong, I figured “Eh, what the hell?!” This boy who I had known for so long now, first meeting him just one year after my original campground fantasy, had never been an object of my desire, but he was Kind. Kindness was something that I had never really tried in relationships, certainly not in sex, so I figured ‘what’s the harm’? What could go wrong? He had really come into himself in the last few years, he was always so sweet and supportive, and we were definitely old enough to maintain a healthy friendship with causal sex and not blur ANY lines (as if that even exists, regardless of age, is something I still ponder). What could go wrong?!

A few days later, we followed through on our plan. Still awkward teenagers, we fumbled around in the upstairs attic loft before relocating to somewhere more private - the backseat of my car. In classic Bridge form, I took us to Chick-fil-a after and we hung out. Things were definitely a bit awkward, in the way that these things are, but I felt a newfound connection, in the way that women often do right after sex with a new partner. Chemical or logical, who’s to judge?

Over the next few weeks, the tone shifted, and I believed myself to be catching feelings. When looking back at these years of my life, it’s hard to discern with certainty what I was actually feeling about a situation or person due to the sheer amount of chaos and static I drowned myself in, but I believed myself to be falling. I recognized the convenience and romanticism of it - I’ve known him all my life, he’s loved me all this time, it was just about waiting for the right time, we’re soulmates! These are the affirmations I decked out to my friends who (lovingly) questioned my sentiments from years and years prior of my platonic relationship with this boy. My parents, though, were overjoyed, as I was seeming to finally overcome my self-harm-through-men behaviors.

Things moved rapidly. The combination of senior year and a false sense of impending adulthood, decent sex (with nO eMoTiOnAl cOnS), the length of our previous friendship, and the personalities of our individual family units were behind a lot of this. One month into our relationship (which I refused to make official until a month after we first hooked up, claiming I wanted to be sure), we were basically inseparable, planning our futures together, enmeshing our family systems. His family treated me like one of their own, calling me a sister on day one and inviting me to events in years’ futures…

It didn’t take long for things to begin crumbling. As indicated by my previous stints with boys, I had an incredibly unhealthy attachment to boys and sex, as well as a LOAD of trauma that hadn’t even begin to come to the surface yet; regardless of the trauma that hadn’t arisen, I had re-traumatized myself over and over again for years leading up to this relationship, leaving me on a cracked and wavering foundation that I couldn’t even tell for sure was there, or if it was all in my head.

I was angry, reactive, incredibly sensitive; the slightest ‘wrongdoing’ was proof that I was disposable, something to betray, someone to let go of. I reaffirmed myself constantly that he knew all of this about me going in, he watched me with boys previously, he sees me. Not only that, he reaffirmed me constantly that this was what he wanted, that he wasn’t going anywhere, that we could figure anything out like we’d always done. With all of this working together, I convinced myself that he’s loved me forever and he’ll love me forever; after all, if the boy who’s wanted me since he met me can’t love me, who can?

Only three months into our relationship (but what felt like three years to us and those looking in), we had plans to live together after graduation, I had completely tabled any plans for college (classic), and his family was increasingly disapproving of me. I’m not stating I was perfect - hell, I wouldn’t want my son to date me back then! But the bullying and influence I experienced in those times was absolutely detrimental to my self esteem; I continued to reinforce comfort with the belief that he’s loved me this long, he’s not going anywhere.

Until he did.

It was a Friday in December and he was away with his family for the weekend; this sort of things always made me anxious, not because I craved control but because I possess an innate belief that I am destined to be ignored and forgotten if I am not present in someone’s life, even for a day; even for the boy who’s loved me our whole lives. I had a particularly bad feeling about this weekend, like some familiar feeling that I remembered but couldn’t place was sneaking up on me and about to round the corner. That evening on my way to get the ‘We’ll Be Alright’ tattoo that sits on the back of my left arm, he sent me this text:

Just stop texting me. I can’t do this anymore. It’s over.

I audibly laughed when I read it, mom and best friend in the car. “He broke up with me!”

My mom slammed on the breaks on the main road. “What?”

I cried through the entire tattoo session, pretending that the tattoo had some profound deep meaning to me (it does, or did - but at the time, nothing prevailed deeper than the sense of betrayal and confusion). I was in shock; the message was so unlike him. There was no ounce of care, of sweetness, of negotiation. The conversation was started and stopped in one message, no real explanation. My mind raced with possibilities - it had to be a fluke, right? We’ll work this out when he comes home, right?

I know now that situations are more grey than this, that he isn’t just some evil narcissist that flipped the switch on me for no reason ~~(though I definitely still engage the possibility that there’s something seriously wrong with him, for other reasons)~~; there were reasons, and I’m sure he was hurting too. But none of the made sense; it completely shattered the framework of my reality, the world I had been so comfortable to plop myself into and live happily ever after.

The next two days are a blur. I watched him post on Instagram in his stupid suit and tie, the look garnished with $20 shoes from the Payless clearance section that I helped him find. In that one Instagram post, I knew deep down in my soul that something had changed. His eyes were vacant, his posture was overly confident, his chin was jutted in an ugly, overeager way; this was not the person I knew. Rather, the person I knew wasn’t real; this is him, hovering beneath the cracks.

I spent the weekend in my mother’s arms, my mother’s bed, sliding down the wall in my kitchen with the most gut wrenching pain that I can still summon now if I try. I knew inside of myself that this reaction couldn’t be coming from a three-month-relationship and some okay-sex that I spent eight years knowing was just a friendship, even if it did develop more in the end.

This was a wound that went much deeper. A wound that confirmed everything my body thought it knew - I’m unlovable, I’m good for one thing until I’m not; I destroy everything, it’s all my fault and I was asking for this.

But confronting that wound wasn’t possible at the time, even consciously knowing about it wasn’t quite ready to come to the surface. So I grieved for this boy, for our brief love, for our dead friendship, for his sisters that built me up so high and tore me down to my lowest, for my family that considered him family, for my body that could never go back to being untouched by him, for the money I spent on gas driving his stupid ass around, for the time I could’ve been single and truly reflecting or damn it, even fucking other guys that are more fun and less all-consuming!

I spent months in a miserable haze; my existing mental health issues, which I no know specifically surround around sex, attachment, and relationships, were in full swing. I went into school sobbing, begging my teachers to help me, somehow, PLEASE! I passed him in the hallway and saw him wearing the dumb anime shirts I bought him at Christmas, days after we broke up because I still believed he’d change his mind (he didn’t, but he accepted all of the gifts).

I trusted every TikTok tarot reader that resonated, and scorned the ones who told me the truth; I bought my own cards and twisted the readings for my own comfort. I paid for an Etsy witch to tell me what was really going on, I planned elaborate photoshoots with my new car (I may or may not have crashed my car into a tree right before the new year) and posted the photos imaging what he’d think when he saw Me. Me without him. I didn’t even know her; I didn’t know me without anyone. I didn’t know me, how could anyone know me?

I don’t know what finally pulled my head out from under the water. Summer came, I graduated, and life went on. I went on senior week, matched with guys on Tinder, hooked up with my girl friends for fun, deciding I was really going to explore my bisexuality this time instead of allowing myself to be engulfed by the attachments of boys and their stupid, ugly penises. We never spoke again after graduation, and I doubt we ever will.

Many months later, I met a man, a real man (okay we were 19, but still, in Spirit, he’s a real man), who was actually one of my first Tinder matches after the breakup, who I didn’t meet in person until October of the next year. We clicked instantly - a real click, not a ‘we’ve known each other for so long…..’ or a ‘he’s always liked me so much, so….’ The rest of that story, as they say, is history, and also for another time.

Not only is this man my partner, he’s my best friend; he’s helped me open doors to myself that I didn’t even know existed and allowed me to pull out all my nasty gunk so I can heal it and become anew. He loves every version of me, the one that’s pulling out the gunk and sobbing on the floor, and the one that’s spinning in his arms on a Friday night after a few glasses of wine. And more than anything, he loves me and all of the me’s I’m yet to become — not the version of me he constructed at a young age and held onto until it squeezed the life out of us both.

There isn’t one definitive point to this story, no one cosmic lesson to discern. This brief and all-consuming relationship was set on a framework of illusion, but gave me no choice but to confront the void within. And I’ve been doing that ever since, but now I’m no longer doing it from a place of pain; I’m doing it from a place of support, and love, and evolving into the best version of me that can love and be loved in ways I never could’ve dreamed of back at that campground all those years ago.