Friendship has lost it's spark, but I can't end it.

[Clyde_C]

I'm not sure how to word this, so forgive my poor writing skill.

 

Around eight years ago, I met a woman who shared a lot of the same interests that I did. We ended up in a casual friendship where we would meet up and talk about our shared interests. Things were going great, we had a lot in common and were getting pretty close. But then one day a misunderstanding lead to two entire years of silence between us. While I had no hard feelings towards her, I felt like she had pretty much written me off.

 

About six months ago, I get a phone call from her. She is crying and apologizing, wanting to make peace with me. I had been going through a pretty rough period myself and welcomed her back with open arms. She had since moved far away, but always felt terrible about how our friendship ended.

 

It was like old times again, we were talking and hanging out online. But that didn't seem to be enough. We wanted to be as close as we possibly could, and things turned sexual. While we were still nowhere near each other, we would do things over the phone, and eventually over the webcam. Though we both told each other it wasn't anything serious. We just wanted to be close, and would probably stop the sexual stuff when we were back in each other's physical life. So I made plans to move to her town, and we would hang out.

 

Promise after promise was made that neither of us would abandon the other, no matter what. But lately, she's been getting really confrontational.

 

It started when her ex-boyfriend came back into the picture, and found out about what we had been doing. She then attacked me over the phone saying I forced her into doing everything, and that I had to learn that me and her could be friends, but not like that. I am not a forceful person, and never would I ever force myself on somebody else. But I understood that she was probably pleasing her boyfriend by making me the bad guy. So I dealt with it and told her that we shouldn't hang out any more.

 

A couple of nights later she calls me up, sobbing and apologizing, and saying she was terrible and wrong, and that she explained everything to her boyfriend and included that she was just to blame for it all as I was. He accepted it and gave her permission to be friends with me as long as we never took it to that point again.

 

On a side note, I am the type of person who avoids conflict. And if I can't avoid it, I give myself a few days to calm down since I easily fluster and say the wrong things in the heat of the moment. She is the opposite. Though these are sides of us that we have kept apart. We both understand that the other person handles things differently.

 

Lately, though, she has been very confrontational. If I try to just vent about my problems that don't have an immediate fix, she will tell me to either deal with them or ignore them, and stop complaining. I understand that it is annoying to hear somebody complain a lot, and I do keep it to a minimum. But she had always told me I was free to blow off steam with her whenever I wanted to.

 

So now she is being aggressive, unfriendly, and has no interest in talking to me about anything but her own problems and her sex life with her boyfriend. And if I try to pull away because her personality has obviously changed to somebody I can not get along with, she freaks out and cries, insulting herself and assuring me again and again that she still cares about me and doesn't want me to go.

 

She has sent me gifts in the past when I could send her nothing in return, sent me food when I was going through hard times, and sent me reassuring messages during my darkest times. And told me I do not owe her anything but my friendship. But now she's cold and aggressive with me, argumentative any time I have a point to make, and quick to swat away any claims I make that she's acting differently now.

 

I care about her like a sister, but I can't handle being treated like an acquaintance she tolerates. I don't know what to do. She has told me if I abandon her I will be the most cowardly selfish hateful person she has ever known, and I will be betraying her worse than anybody else in her life. And I feel terrible when I think about abandoning that sweet girl who was crying and calling herself worthless. She has done so much for me, but the person she is now doesn't treat me like a friend.

 

Any advice is appreciated.

[neowulf]

Sorry to hear about your situation. It sounds terrible.

 

I'm also sorry to have to tell you this.

 

You are allowing yourself to be treated like a door mat.

 

Healthy friendship is built on mutual caring and respect. This girl has shown you none of these things.

 

She is using you. I'm sorry, but reading what you've written, it's as clear as day.

 

The only reason she keeps you around is to use you to prop herself up. She's taking your support and giving nothing in return.

 

This is a classic, toxic relationship pattern and I'd urge you to remove yourself from this person's life.

 

Everyone, including yourself, is deserving of more respect than that.

[Tnd441]

Count your blessings, Clyde, and move on. She obviously is getting you caught up in a love triangle, and all that will happen now will be nutsville for you. Thank God you didn't move to her town- or you'd be SOL. There are other 'girls' who would welcome your company, so fan out and start looking around. All the best!

[Ross MwcFan]

I understand this must be hard. But you've got to tell her to quit treating you the way she's treating you, because it's making you feel terrible. And if she doesn't, you are walking away from the friendship.

 

The ball is then in her court. If she carries on treating you bad, you walk, and she can't blame you (although she may try too). If she doesn't want to lose you, and knows you are being serious about what you're saying, then she should start treating you a lot better, a lot more like a friend.

[Clyde_C]

Thank you everyone for your helpful advice over the last few days.

 

It helps to see what people think about this. I haven't felt like this situation was right, but I couldn't trust myself to see things as they are since I care so much about her. I decided to talk to her about it last night. She got defensive, calling me paranoid, then got upset, and then hung up on me. A few hours later she called me about ten times and left a voicemail saying she really wanted to talk to me.

 

I called her up and talked things out with her like an adult. She admitted that she has been really rotten towards me and promises she will change. I know enough to realize this doesn't mean anything. So while we are still talking, I have told her I no longer plan to move to her city for now. But that I may end up moving one day. I have to see how much she can stay with her claim that she won't do this sort of thing again. But in all honesty, I don't have much faith.

 

I am curious if I should even be giving her a second chance, though. I don't want to lose the person she was before all of this. But I'm thinking it's not worth risking a worse result later if she pulls this in real life. It's depressing to think my best friend no longer exists in her. Heh.

[Clyde_C]

So basically the next day she was back to her bad habits. I had been quiet and busy because I just found out my grandfather died ( and told her this ), and she starts posting passive-aggressive things on her Facebook wall about being abandoned by her best friend and going back to hanging out with the friend she had before that one. Then left me a huge message online about how she can not wait on me to come back all the time.

 

I finally decided to just lay things out for her tonight, and told her how much she hurt me, and made me feel badly towards myself for things that were not my fault. She did have a profound effect on how I saw myself. Even right now I feel like I have no right to even blow off steam here because I always seemed to be wrong about everything with her.

 

She did not answer her phone so I left her a message, which is admittedly less brave than talking over the phone, but I'd rather she not start crying and acting sweet and innocent, because I will go back on what I said and go right back into the same situation again.

 

I feel terrible, though. I can't fight off the memories of when she was nice and friendly and somebody I felt really close to. But that's not who she is any more, and I can't hang onto the past and put myself through all of this in hopes that things will go back to the way that they were before. This means I no longer have any close friends, though. So I have to wonder if I'm going to be any better off now than I would have been actually having a friend who only made me feel like dirt half the time.

 

She will undoubtedly try to call me, and leave angry/crying voice mails begging me to talk to her. And might even drive the eight hours back here to bang on my door. But I can't do it any more. I feel justified in getting away from her because the friendship was becoming toxic. But I don't feel justified in abandoning her.

 

Has anyone dealt with a situation similar to this? Or am I really just making a bunch out of nothing and need to apologize to her? Thanks for any advice in advance.

[neowulf]

Has anyone dealt with a situation similar to this? Or am I really just making a bunch out of nothing and need to apologize to her? Thanks for any advice in advance.

 

In short, yes, I've dealt with this kind of situation before and *NO* you shouldn't back down.

 

What you are describing is actually a form of emotional abuse. She's basically stringing you along, playing emotional games with you and manipulating you, through your concern for her.

 

Everything you've described tells me this situation is toxic. You mention having no friends and wondering if you'll really be better off.

 

Yes. Yes you will. In the short term, it may be difficult. Think past that. You can make new friends, better friends. "Friends" don't treat each other the way this woman has treated you.

 

If you feel you need some additional support during the transition, I highly recommend seeing a professional to help you through this.

 

Life is short brother, don't waste it on people who exist for no other reason to use and hurt you.

[Clyde_C]

Just giving an update on that whole mess. I did stick to my plan and haven't talked to her since. No idea how upset she got, but she never made another effort to get in touch.

 

I can't say things have been sunshine and roses since then. My social life is a corpse. I've been sleeping all my spare time away. Looking into therapy, but there are too many financial and legal hurdles to jump.

 

However, I know if I had gone the other way and tried to stay in touch with her, I would have been back here every day with an update on how I was still making the same mistakes. I just wanted to thank you guys for reassuring me that I was making the right decision.