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female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes: How do I break of a life-long “friendship”?You know how they say that you do not choose your family? In my case it works just as well for a friend. Well, let’s call her Anne, is definitely not someone I would have chosen as my friend as an adult. I don’t want to bore you with details, suffice to say that we knew each other since birth and that her mother somehow imposed that idea that I was “older and wiser and should always take care of her daughter”. Anne is a textbook narcissist and I want out. Even though she puts up a show she doesn’t really care about anyone else but herself. She’s the kind of a person who calls or texts people “to see how they are”, but really wants to talk about herself and her problems. Fortunately we do not live in the same state anymore, so she cannot just pop by to “see how I am”. But she certainly uses all other means of communication to vent and to track people. This last thing is really, well, weird. Let’s say she sends you a text or calls you and you do not respond. She will then call you. And if your line is busy (which means that you are “online”) and you do not write her back or call her, then she will get upset and write something like “your line was occupied just a minute ago and now you’re not answering your phone”. She’s someone who’s unable to deal with her own emotions and blames others for them. If you ask her how’s she doing (a general question), if there’s something that’s been bothering her she’ll go on and on and on about it. When you say that you need to go (after about an hour of conversation), she’ll be upset that you are now “leaving her” when it’s your fault that she is stressed again because “you brought that up”. You didn’t “bring anything up”, you just asked her how things were.I’m really not exaggerating when I say that in the 40 years of our friendship, I was the only one who was there for her to offer her support of any kind. Whenever I needed something and asked for it, she would say yes (she always says yes to everyone because she wants people to like her) and then does nothing unless it’s something she really enjoys doing. So I stopped asking her a loooong time ago. But the same goes even when she offers to help. She makes so much fuss about how she will do something for you (and if there’s someone else to see it, the better), then she wouldn’t do anything. There were even some situations where she would undermine me to get what she wants. When her mom’s friend needed an assistant and she had recommended me, Anne put a pressure on her mom saying that she needed that job. In the end Anne decided not to do it, she did that only so that I wouldn’t get it. And her mom was so ashamed that she LIED that her friend needed someone with different set of skills. I learned what really happened YEARS after, when that friend of hers asked me why I changed my mind after having accepted to work as his assistant. I felt so bad that I never talked to my friend about this. Because she always lies and twists things. I still had the need to make her see things how they really are, but she already knows, she will just never admit!When I write this down, it really sounds bad, but please take into account that she is someone who was always present in my life, like a sister. It takes a lot of time to wake up and then especially to start talking about it. I’m not the only one. Her own family has started distancing themselves from her as soon as her mom died. They had tried talking to her but to no avail. She refuses to go to therapy. She says that all the problems she has are someone else’s fault. The fact that she has always been single (because she keeps choosing unavailable men) is also someone else’s fault. She hates the women she doesn’t even know, just because they are married to men she is interested in. They are “stupid boring housewives”, who do nothing with their lives and do not deserve the men they have… and then says how she wouldn’t mind stopping working if she found a man who could support her ?!?Anyway, I don’t think I could sit and talk to her directly because she always twists things around. I can’t just ghost her (I wish I could) because we have some friends in common. Who btw, treat her as a patient, not a friend. The same way I do :(What I realized is that for some time subconsciously I was trying to provoke her to say or do something to me which I can use as a pretext to put an end to our relationship. And that’s so lame. I would ignore her texts and not answer her calls, not just because I wanted her to say something nasty to me (she never does, because she knows that she would lose me), but because if I answer I let her drag me into her vortex and my energy gets drained.About twenty years ago, in an episode of rage (she gets those, once she jumped at her mom’s throat – I’m not kidding she grabbed her by the throat) she said some nasty lies to me, when I couldn’t leave my work to accommodate her needs. I didn’t call her for over 4 months, while I still stayed in contact with her mom, because our moms were friends. And I would NEVER have called her hadn’t her mom begged me to do so, because Anne was having a nervous breakdown, because yet another unavailable young man has refused her advances. So, how do I end this friendship?Thank you all in advance!
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female
reader, Youcannotbeserious  +, writes (1 August 2020):
 How do you end a lifelong friendship? By asking yourself what is most important in your life and then insisting on it. Is keeping your friend happy more important to you than your own peace of mind? Whichever decision you make, it will come with a price (as do all decisions in life). Stay friends with her and you will keep her (and her mother) happy but YOU won't be happy. Draw a line under the friendship and you will have an unhappy ex friend (for a while at least) and an unhappy friend's mother but YOU will be in a better place.
However, there is, I feel, a third alternative here, and that is to continue to offer support as and when needed but start to handle it better. You can't control your friend's behaviour but you CAN control how you react (or DON'T react) to it. Stop being drawn into her dramas. She sounds like she just wants someone to talk at. Let her talk but don't let what she says get to you. Just make the right noises as and when required. ("I know what you mean" and "I know what you are saying" cover most requirements without even having to listen properly). Don't offer advice. Don't offer solutions. Just let her ramble.
I give this advice based on an ersatz friendship I had many years ago, where the "friend" involved just wanted someone to talk at. I could go for a walk with her and just keep making the right noises of agreement without ever actually listening properly or engaging at all. She would occasionally throw in a question (to make sure I was listening I suspect) but this was always easily fended off with "I know what you are saying". Then she would be off again, rambling on about whatever the latest crisis/drama was in her life (anything from problems with work colleagues to someone giving her the finger while driving).
The key to YOUR happiness is to take back control. Don't allow anyone to invade your head space without your permission. Don't allow anyone to make you feel guilty. Don't allow anyone to steal your time. They cannot do any of those things without your permission.
A
female
reader, Honeypie  +, writes (30 July 2020):
 YOU grow a set and TELL her;" Anne, I have thought about thoss for a long time and I don't see this friendship being something I want to maintain. It doesn't add anything positive to my life, only stress and negativity and I'm at a point in my life where I am working on being my best self. Therefore I will wish you all the best in your life and I will cut all contact."
And then you DO just that... BLOCK her from ALL social media, CHANGE your number (yes, that drastically if blocking her number doesn't work.) and anyone you SHARE in common (friends or whatnot) you tell to NOT give her your new number as you have ended that friendship, (if they ask why, you tell them it's not something you want to talk about but what you needed to do).
And then you live your life.
There is a lot of blaming HER for things in your post, something you criticize HER doing. You have some responsibility too. YOU allowed all this to continue for 40 years. And it's been EATING at you for that long. THAT, dear OP is on you!
You dig up stuff from 20!!! years ago to paint her negatively, that is ON you. And honestly, immature AF! YOU have made choices because you didn't have a backbone or you had a massive soft spot for her mom, but in reality, YOU got something out of this "friendship" even if it was drama. Otherwise I think you would have summoned some courage and self-preservation and ended it a LONG time ago.
YOU are holding ON to stuff she did a LONG time ago, like you are some saint or victim, come on! Woman up, tell we are done being friend and CUT ALL contact and LET it go! I can see in your writing just how poisonous this has been for you, YET you stuck by it. You say to make her mother happy, but seriously? for 40 years? Stop drinking the kool-aid if it makes you ILL! You two are in this co-dependent yucky orbit. YOU can stop that.
You are in your 40's. You have 1 life to live, LIVE it as you should. Cut the bad part of the apple off and MOVE on. People end friendships and relationships for less than this.
You say you can't tell her in person, really? Sure you can. If she wants to twist it, WHO CARES? I think it WAY more likely that you just don't want to be the "bad guy" who dumps her. BE that bad guy for YOU. Just do it in the kindest manner you can.
Own it. You don't WANT to be her "therapist", or friend or have anything to do with her. So, DON'T.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (30 July 2020): Some friendships do not work out, others are not worth the bother, others were never meant to be but it takes you a long time to realise it. Your friendship is one of these, you know which one. Now it is up to you to deal with that in an adult way. You say she goes on and on about something and then blames others. So do not fall into the same trap of going on and on about her and blaming her for how you feel. If you choose to still be in touch with her that is your choice, then you have to take the good and the bad that goes with it. You decide if she can make you angry or upset again, nobody else can.
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