Hi Layla,
I just read this and wanted to respond. To respond also simply to acknowledge it being read. I had no idea what to say though. Do I agree? In any case it's not really a matter of agreement. But I do agree, completely. What bothered you was not that he hit on you, that you could understand, but that you didn't exist really for him, him a good friend (a brother?), except as a certain part of a story he wants to tell (himself) about himself. To claim our own existence in the world, not to be taken as an object in someone's story and feeling about themselves, but be considered as a person - isn't it amazing how difficult it is. The feeling of all of a sudden seeing yourself as simply being a role in his (or hers) play.
One has to demand, to claim, one's existence in the world. To demand others to acknowledge you as existing. I remember feeling similarly a couple of times with women I was involved with. It wasn't clear if I was anything unique to them, or simply a role. It is a disgusting feeling.
(Am I sure I was correct about them - hard to say. They changed I think. It can be responded to).

Many people are in relationships with people only as they fit a story they want to tell of themselves-in-the-world. Others think they make a good couple, others think s/he is successful. Whatever reason, many relationship are like that. Moreover, when relationships get wrecked, people don't want to tell a story to themselves of failure and stay in bad relationships. But you don't need to go to other people. People wreck their own life for many stories they tell themselves and don't treat themselves as a human being.

I'm saying all this as I want to ask, if I imagine this person character - how is/was he such a good friend? Mostly, I can see many people like that, but why would any of them be your fried?
But then, as I said, maybe most people in the world are like that. And maybe, you can talk to him and explain to him that it is unacceptable to be treated like that. You can see how he'll react, but of course bringing it up could bring many things up so I'm not sure you want to go there.
Hope you're feeling better already.

Layla, I can really sympathize. Plus at the moment I am feeling incredibly annoyed at people's thoughtlessness so there's an intensity of feeling looking for an outlet. Of course stories like the one you describe happen all the time with people we barely know: Mia had a nice rant here about it. But somehow with people you know there is much more of a sinking feeling as you start to see how much of your time was wasted on this person who would have been equally happy talking to a large-breasted rock, or what's worse, to someone with just slightly more conventional tastes than yourself ("philosophy in the boardroom," say): to you without your essential originality.

I've been thinking a lot recently about this shifting back and forth between someone relating to you as a person and as a kind of object; it happens more often than one might hope (not sexual object necessarily, but certainly a relation to you which has nothing to do with who you actually are) e.g. the student/teacher relationship. Sometimes the resolution is in focus, sometimes it is out of focus. I take things personally and find people interesting and hierarchies much less so, but others seem to have the opposite view.

Anyway, these are of course different cases because they involve various kinds of judgment and obligation. What I was wondering was whether one could define friendship by virtue of this total lack of obligation or ties (familial, sexual, bureaucratic...): a relation which has nothing to sustain it except itself, somehow. I think I half-believe this, and furthermore feel that this should mean that friends see my qualities as essential and irreplacable components of the friendship.

I'm not sure most other people feel this way though. Look how indiscriminate people are in other basic things: in what they eat, in where they live, in the kinds of questions they spend their life trying to answer.  I think for many people friends are people to hang out with so as not to be alone, even if it's dressed up with other things. Not exactly out of fear, but so as to avoid a certain responsibility of having constantly to figure out what to do. In this case one is never exactly unique nor irreplacable...