This is a 10 year history made as utterly succinct as possible for clarity so please bear with me. I think my oldest friendship is in some capacity, or at least was, codependent. We met when we were teens. I was an addict then and intermittently homeless and he was the straight laced, wholesome 'white knight' sort. Despite our differences it felt like he was the only person I could rely on and the only person who really accepted me. He became my sole source of emotional support, I became his fixer upper, and that was basically how our friendship began. He was always rushing to save me from whatever crisis I was currently in and if there wasn't one I'd manage to create some paranoid panic in my mind for attention. I know, charming. 

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After high school I ended up moving across the state but we remained in touch and in the same victim/rescuer dynamic. Two years ago, he said he'd been in love with me since we met in HS. I was endeared, but didn't feel the same way and also felt it was disrespectful as he had a girlfriend (who just happens to look like me, play the same instrument as me, and studied the same subject as me, am I wrong in thinking that's a little uncanny?). I distanced myself from him after that only to get messages of 'I miss you so much, I think about you all the time, etc.' Okay, well, I missed him too but these texts were always late at night (1-4 am) and never just 'hey, I can't sleep, are you still up' or 'I just got off work, let's chat!' There was always an amorousness to them and again they were late at night though he had a regular day job and would ostensibly be in bed next to his gf when sending them. So, I felt uncomfortable by the effusiveness but it seemed paralyzingly awkward to bring it up so I never did.

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Six months ago I began to recognize the unhealthy behaviors in our friendship. I acted out when I was dysregulated, he'd pay attention to me and say all the right things and then we'd return to our respective corners for a few months again with emotionally charged texts and emails in between. That seemed to be the pattern perpetuated over the last five years, sometimes lessening but never really changing. 

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I didn't (and don't) think that's healthy and tried to talk to him about it. I explained what codependency was and its similarities to our friendship with an emphasis that it was BOTH of our behaviors which were problematic. I didn't want him to feel blamed and needed to acknowledge my own part in the relationship, however embarrassing it was to admit. I asked him if he agreed with my characterization and if so, if he was willing to work through these issues together in order to make our friendship stronger, healthier, and more equitable.

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He conceded to some points and said 'I needed you to need me' so I figured we had a start. But he went on to say he didn't care if I felt I had taken advantage of him because he took advantage of me too by enabling my learned helplessness and making himself feel useful. :/ I was glad I wasn't imaging all that but was concerned with his apparent comfort with the status quo.

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Afterwards, I didn't hear from him for a few months and he ignored my attempts at continuing the conversation but would hit me up occasionally like nothing happened. I eventually told him explicitly that our friendship couldn't continue as it had in the past and accepted that it might be the end of it all. 

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He reacted much more intensely than I anticipated, suddenly saying he didn't want to live a life I wasn't apart of, that he'd never get over my absence, etc basically all the shit I always thought I'd end up saying. Thanks, therapy, I'm finally at least slightly more self aware lol. Anyways, I got frustrated because he didn't want to do shit until I was ready to be done and was still acting like our previous conversation never happened. He said he'd 'visit me all the time' if that's what I want (I don't and didn't ask) and was also angry I'd suggested he'd been less than a decent friend (again, didn't say that, just that we might have some unproductive coping methods/relational skills with each other). He's not really one to talk about his feelings and after a decade, sometimes I feel like I don't know him all that well. I don't know if I can rely on him to be equally accountable in this.

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Ultimately he said he doesn't know what a healthy friendship Is supposed to look like and what appropriate boundaries are and frankly, neither do I but I know it's not this! Is there a way to move forward? Can you even change a fundamental aspect of how you relate to a person and still have a relationship? How can I tell him to not indulge me if I'm making a transparent bid for his attention? After all this, should we just call it a day and go out separate ways? Would that be a cop out?

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TL;DR: me and an old friend are codependent af. How and/or should we even try to fix things? Namely, ourselves, instead of each other?