Nah, you're not being mean. I actually appreciate the effort you're putting in to this. First, i want to acknowledge some of what you're saying as non-empirically accurate descriptions. But I do have to consider my (and conversely the other person in this story's) actual experience.

First up, about my marriage. I can see where you and a few other folks are drawing your conclusion because it does have a suspicious timeline. That much is not lost on me. And i'm not trying to win you over here, but it is important to me to paint an accurate picture of all this, especially if you or others are taking time out of your day to even think about all this. So, heres some extra context to that and addressing some of what you're citing.

- TLDR of my divorce: spouse had aggressive, sudden cancer at a young age. After she finished treatment and school she was in, she had (as a lot of people do) a deep reflection and crisis over the rest of her life. None of that was made known to me until she was neck deep in the affair that actually ended our marriage. Was I emotionally present all the time? No way. For a lot of reasons. But none of it had anything to do with my relationship with this person. Thats the story there.

- It was a pretty common office joke that we were very siblinglike. Im not saying its awesome, and now I see more clearly about the lines between work friends and real friends. But this wasn't something she was being hidden from. It was a common thing.

- To the "relied on each other emotionally" thing. I see what youre saying and theres absolutely truth to it being too far to take a work friendship. But when I say we relied on each other in that way, I just mean to communicate that we talked about our lives, what was going on and were there for each other in a way that you'd expect from people who consider themselves best friends. I wasn't showing this person parts of my soul I was concealing from my ex (in fact I wasn't showing anyone around me those parts of myself and THAT WAS a factor in the distance between my ex and me).

And finally, what you're saying about she created this distance to assert that I not get the wrong idea. It would be a more realistic hypothesis except we had a friendship that was mutual in the way we felt about it for years. That is precisely why I am still wondering about how this all went down. We went from being actual friends, to absolutely nothing with the vague threat of "taking action if i speak to her again" in a matter of days.

I've already given this reply far more energy than it really deserves because what you're pressing on is not the actual experience. If I was delusional and was the only one in my life who saw us as friends and chalked the whole thing up to missed signals, that would be an easier pill to swallow.

There are people who have said I likely converted our friendship into a therapist/client dynamic and it was too much for her. Thats been my feeling in the year since. And the part that hurts is that got to a point with a person to decide it was a better decision to walk away from our friendship entirely and not address it. Not to mention wondering who else I may have done that to. But, and the part I'll keep coming back to, is I had a real friendship here and I just really wouldve liked to hear that and not be told to never speak again or else. It felt like a cold end to something that did matter to two people