I lost a chess friend. My achievements feel a bit bittersweet lately.

I had a close friend from this site for about two years. She was much higher rated than me and often helped me with skills.

For two years we got on really well and then...things went a bit awry.

We were oil and water personalities and mainly bonded over the fact that we both loved chess. She was a Christian and valued things such as modesty, decorum and not swearing. I am a potty-mouthed metalhead, an atheist and a nihilist.

I didn't mind changing certain things about myself out of consideration for her. It's not a big ask to quit swearing or to curb my very off-color sense of humor. Not everyone likes fart and bathroom jokes.

I will also be fair here and point out that I have my failings and I wouldn't blame someone for deciding those were dealbreakers. I'm not fun to be around when I'm tilted - and I tilt hard and easily. I totally acknowledge that hearing my tilted rants and comforting me after blunders and losses probably got old.

But over this last year, smaller and smaller things became sources of friction: She didn't want to see my blitz or bullet games because she found them 'painful'. Fair enough. I completely understand. Watching someone else blunder can cause a lot of second-hand stress.

She complained that it had become a bit much to hear about 'zombies and explosions' and other violence-themed motifs. Again, a fair criticism: I am working on writing a series of zombie apocalypse novellas - and they are dark. I don't mind not discussing my writing after someone has had a long stressful day.

But then she came for my beloved hyperbullet and ultrabullet. 

She'd increasingly raised frustration that I liked extreme forms of speed chess so much, citing feelings that I was wasting the useful advice she'd given me. I talked this out with her more than once, pointing out that I do also play long-form rapid and correspondence chess. She built up more and more bad feeling and even accused me of 'not caring about chess' and only playing for the adrenaline rush.

The last time this came up...she got vicious. I tried again to explain that I DO play longer time controls and she said 'Fuck you. I don't want to be friends with you.'

I gave up swearing for this person, and her first response to me disagreeing with her was to break out the F-word.

I will be fair to her: she apologized, admitted that she was the problem and came up with a list of self-improvement steps she planned to implement. I will also be fair by pointing out that I suspect this wasn't really about chess; she had recently escaped an abuser and I suspect that sheer stress colored her perspective a dark shade of red that would not normally be there in a healthy unstressed person. But I cannot go back to trusting someone who turns on a dime so drastically after two years. What else was she hiding that might take another two years to come out? 

I found out recently that I won the first two rounds of a correspondence chess tournament on gameknot.com. And that was bittersweet. Normally she'd have been stoked for me. We'd have bonded over it.