Brown Sugar Reminds Me of Friendship, one in particular

When I see this movie or hear the soundtrack, it reminds me of only one person. This friend was at one time my best friend. Unlike the movie, we didn't meet in childhood, we met as adults. He was newly separated from his wife, and I was a single mother of a two year old. There was an instant attraction and an instant friendship - later we were much more than friends. Within a few months, I realized that my friend was still very much in love with his wife. I backed up from the relationship, first because I truly loved him as a friend, and secondly because of my respect for the sacrament of marriage. If he wanted to save his marriage and reclaim his family, I also wanted that for him. I loved him enough to let him go and be happy.
We remained friends, but when he and his wife divorced our relationship eventually resumed.

Our friendship was really special. We laughed a lot. Mostly at each other and ourselves. Everyone felt that we were destined to be together, but things did not work out that way. Through the on and off love relationship as well as both of us getting married and then divorced, our friendship remained strong. We could talk about anything, from the details of intimacy, to politics, to the details of our childhood along with our dreams and fears. At that time there seemed to be a great deal of mutual respect and no judgment.

I know you are wondering as many have already; what happened, why didn't this have a happy ending. I was young and and some ways immature and my friend needed a woman that wasless independent. There was a happy ending, just not the one everyone expected.

An older woman once told me that it is a smart woman that knows how to be independent and dependent at the same time. Understanding that a man's nature is to provide for and protect what he deems to be in his care.

Well our friendship is starting to change at a time when I now understand what it means to be independent and dependent at the same time. My friend now seems to need a woman that is even more dependent than before; more dependent on him and less dependent on her self. I am not that woman.

I have become more dependent on myself than ever before. Not that I don't need anyone else, but I have learned to trust my feelings and my thoughts more than I have in the past.
We have grown in opposite directions. I guess this is what it means to grow apart.