When friendships die

It's a sad day when you realize that the person whom you thought was a good friend turns out to be secretly harbouring resentment towards you.  You may think you're getting along great but if you listen closely to that little voice in your head, you know there's a quality to the relationship, a tension that doesn't exist in your other friendships.  It's that feeling that even though it seems like she is being agreeable,  somehow you need to tiptoe around her feelings.  Sometimes the friendship just explodes when the resentment comes pouring out of the other person and you are left absolutely stunned.  At other times, it just fades quietly away, as if both parties acknowledge that neither one of you can keep up the charade any more.  Either way, it is puzzling, hurtful and not a nice experience.  You think to yourself, "How could I have been such a bad judge of character?  Were there signs I missed?".

From speaking with friends for whom this has happened and my personal experience, I've concluded that very often it is envy that is at the root of this evil.  The very thing about you that attracted the other person to you and wanted them to make you a friend, superficial things like the way you look, the people you know, a fun life, turns out to be the thing that they think they are missing.  So they live vicariously through you for awhile and then the frustrations mount because you are living the life they want.  Of course, you don't realize any of this, you only notice that as time goes on, you find yourself watching what you say around them and steering clear of some topics because it tends to upset them.  As you don't actually think your life is so charmed that someone else would covet it anyway  it doesn't occur to you that, that may be the case until too late.  Another scenario is they meet you when you are at a particular down period in your life.  They come in, comforting, offering a shoulder to cry on and are so supportive, but as you slowly rebuild your life and become who you used to be, or you evolve into someone much stronger and self sufficient, they can't handle the shift in the relationship.

Is this something that only happens to women?  Do men have friendships like this?  Of course not all friendships end due to some unnamed resentment.  Some are meant to just be temporary, to share some common experiences and then move on.  The key is to distinguish between the intense but short friendships and the low key rest of your life ones.  Easier said than done I think, much like most of life.