I feel trapped, but guilty...

[Muzatsu]

Hey guys and gals of enotalone! I need some advice...sorry in advance for the long and winding rant!

Pardon the several grammatical mistakes, it is very early in the morning.

 

I have been "best" friends with this girl since 1st grade. I am currently a sophomore in college, so it's been roughly 14 years. From a very young age I was very shy and quiet. She was always extremely outgoing, but also vain and stubborn. My earliest memories of this friend is me being a mere lacky for a kid that was obsessed with popularity at way too early of an age.

Basically, since she was seven years old, she thought she was the shid.

 

She had a hard childhood and I feel like throughout that time, I was too passive to really be able to help, and because I was also a child, I had no way of helping. When we were young, her mom would beat her in front of me with a belt, and although this was the typical punishment common to many of my friends with immigrant parents, as well as me, it was very scary for me and embarrassing to her for me to witness her get punished. She also had to deal with a lot of deaths in the family before even reaching middle school, including the traumatic death of her sister in a car accident. I feel that to escape this feeling of inferiority by her mother and her other problems,, she had to act like the cool kid all the time in school, and this included regularly humiliating me or making me bully other kids in elementary school.

 

When we started going into different classes in elementary school, she told her mother that I was in the stupid *special* class and that her class was more *advanced*. I then went on to feel very badly about my intelligence until high school. Also, when I started to make other friends besides her, she got very mad and hated all of my other friends. She was very jealous and always fought over me with another friend of mine, which made me feel objectified. I was and still am a very soft-hearted person, who often cries and because i often got upset when she bullied me or made me feel less than human, her mom got angry at her for being mean to me. I think that she grew up resenting me for being a cry baby and even told me I cried on purpose to get her in trouble.

 

As we grew older, she continued to harass me but then told me to not take shid from anyone, including her. However, when I stood up for myself, she hated me. In high school, when I got my first bf, she thought I was neglecting her and that I placed my bf higher than her, which was very far from the truth. She had always been a hit with the boys since middle school and was dating before me, but when I got my first bf she was angry because i managed to maintain the relationship for 3 years, unlike most high school relationships.

 

She also resented the friends I had made after her and always said I left her out, although I could not include her in my hangouts with other people because of her hostility. She had made friends with the "popular" kids and yet she said I was leaving her out, as if I could not also have different friends besides her. When people spread gossip about me saying I was a lesbian when I was straight, and people asked her, she said she didn't know what my orientation was, as if she didn't want to be associated me. Also, probably eternally resentful of the fact that I had other friends who didn't treat me this way, she told her other *popular* friends that she only hung out with me when there were no parties to go to or no boys for her to have sex with. The friends she told this to ended up getting fed up with her B---hy attitude and left her after they had gotten into a fight.

 

At the times when she lost other friends, she leaned on me heavily, but then when there was a socialite scene underway, she would openly ditch me for it. She also asked me to be her wingman at clubs, and not subtly, she basically told me to be the ugly friend that guys have to talk to in order to get to her. I told her I didn't want to be her wingman and she got pissed. She does not understand why since college, I do not talk to her as often or try to hang out with her.

 

I am so emotionally worn out and I have so many self esteem and social issues because of her domineering relationship and it almost feels like I am a battered woman seeking escape from an abusive man! I know many people say I am an enabler, but from such an early age, I felt guilty about her personal life and made it my duty to overlook her aggressive and possesive behavior because of it. I always saw the good deep within her even when my friends hated her after a huge falling out between my group of friends and her specificallly (for a time my friends and her were all tentative friends). It was easy for other people to stop being friends with her (she says she feels sad that everyone doesn't want to be her friend) but I feel so guilty and our history kind of makes me feel indebted to her. She has many friends who are not really friends but party people, and I feel she takes for granted the fact I am there for her.

 

Recently she got mad because I didn't call her when I came home for winter recess. Our mutual friend told me she was mad and yet I talked to her and she seemed fine, but once she got off talking to me, she told our mutual friend once again that I was a terrible friend who has not the slightest consideration for her. I feel like a bad friend, but when I look at how she has treated me and how it affects my current ability to make friends, I feel so unbearable mad, but also so guilty for letting her treat me like this for so long. I don't want to stop being friends with her, but I know she doesn't even value me as a friend and just turns tables on me to make me seem like a bad person all the time. I can't even really trust other girls and I feel as though my current bf is my only friend besides the mutual friend with my "best" friend and a few other people. I feel like a wimp and at some points I feel so bad I don't even want to live anymore and I am sure that even though she complains a lot about my increasingly avoidant personality, she does not feel as deeply affected as I do about things.

 

I really don't know, I have even told her how she makes me feel, so it is not like I am a complete wimp. She simply said I should speak up more and then proceeded to revert back to the same behavior after a few months. I feel like talking to her does nothing and I am at a loss. I cannot bear to end things but I cannot go on feeling so much guilt and inferiority either.

 

I do not want to become a hermit, but after being treated so badly by a friend most of my life, I don't see the point in trying to get close to that many people, or being a warm person.

[catfeeder]

I hope you can appreciate the value of writing this all out. I also hope you'll read it again and again, and compose your own replies to it offline as though you were writing to a younger version of yourself. Be kind but strict with your replies, and you'll resolve your own problem--you're more than half way there already.

 

Big caution, though. Don't prescribe your future based on the past. In the larger scheme of your life, you'll look back and see her as a significant but finished chapter. You're too intelligent to work against yourself, and assigning prophesy to your future social life based on the pathetic neuroses of one other person could be self-fulfilling--and a waste of your gifts to this planet.

 

Tell mutual friends you'll gladly discuss anything on earth with them except for this person. You don't need people baiting you into feeling guilt that isn't even valid, much less productive.

 

You've already endured the discomfort of growing apart from this person, so it's not a big stretch to move forward and stop looking back. People cycle into and out of our lives all the time as we grow older, and the most important ones who are capable of meeting us on higher ground will do so. She gets to pick whether she's ever ready to do that--so squelching your own acceleration is foolish.

 

No one person can be another's 'everything' the way we believed when we were kids. Finding different friends to meet different needs in our lives is a sign of maturity. Don't prevent yourself from forming healthy friendships out of some misplaced loyalty to martyrdom. You have gifts to offer others, and you have options. Decide wisely.

 

In your corner.

[Muzatsu]

Thank you for the advice and insight catfeeder...I really hope that one day we can be mature friends. Right now I do not feel like pouring all of my energy into a friendship where she claims she puts in all the effort, when I always have to endure her belittling and her selfish attitude. I can't keep telling myself that because her childhood was less than pleasant that it is my duty to bear her taking out her shortcomings on me and bringing me down with her. Perhaps one day she will mellow or realize how selfish she has been. For now, she is a conceited and self absorbed socialite, but maybe when we are all out of college and away from such immature environments, with careers, marriages, and the like, she can be more civil. I know I feel guilty, but I should feel more badly that I let myself feel enslaved to someone who doesn't even appear to reciprocate that kind of loyalty. If it takes some ignoring on my part, maybe she will change her behavior, since that reacting negatively only makes her want to do these things to me more.

[catfeeder]

[...]I really hope that one day we can be mature friends. [...] Perhaps one day she will mellow or realize how selfish she has been. For now, she is a conceited and self absorbed socialite, but maybe when we are all out of college and away from such immature environments, with careers, marriages, and the like, she can be more civil.

 

It's smart to make room for these ideas about the future, even while you don't need to put up with mistreatment today. You seem to understand that it's not necessary to villainize someone into eternal banishment just to block them from causing you harm at the present time.

 

Right now I do not feel like pouring all of my energy into a friendship where she claims she puts in all the effort, when I always have to endure her belittling and her selfish attitude. I can't keep telling myself that because her childhood was less than pleasant that it is my duty to bear her taking out her shortcomings on me and bringing me down with her.

 

I understand this. I'm in my 40s and only last year cut contact with a best friend since my 20s. When we were younger I always felt pushed around by her because she had a party agenda, while I was trying to focus on night school and quieter pursuits. I let her push me around because I was insecure, and she was quite the salesgirl--but over time I resented her and started to grow a backbone.

 

We had a 'break up' in my early 30s because of that backbone, and while I missed her occasionally over the course of 7 years, I didn't regret being apart. In my late 30s I was open to her heartfelt apology; she expressed such clear recognition of her mistreatment that I wasn't interested in dwelling there--she got it. We shared some great times over the next 6 years or so, but there were a few bumps. I saw a pattern; whenever she got into a pressure cooker issue with her family, she came out sideways on me. Last time was last straw; and I'm sorry to say that she lashed out even more hurtfully when she realized I wasn't playing anymore--I was done.

 

I can see that I hung in the last few years because her family is flaky and her Mom is gone, and I felt sorry that she was so isolated and alone. I do love her, even today, but I don't accept a social worker assignment for this woman, and her choices to blame everyone in the world but herself are not mine to manage. This recognition is sad, but it's also liberating.

 

I know I feel guilty, but I should feel more badly that I let myself feel enslaved to someone who doesn't even appear to reciprocate that kind of loyalty. If it takes some ignoring on my part, maybe she will change her behavior, since that reacting negatively only makes her want to do these things to me more.

 

Sure, I understand. Think of assigning blame, to yourself or anyone else, as a waste of energy and a barrier to problem-solving. Funny, it was business that taught me this valuable social and emotional lesson, because the only people who contribute to resolving issues are focused on changing a process going forward, not ducking blame or trying to make anyone else 'guilty'--that's just staying stuck in goo. No value.

 

So I started making my private problems about recognizing my own part and changing that going forward as well as recognizing my response to others' mistakes. Faulty response is as much mine to control as my initial assumptions or behaviors--so it's not about trying to control anyone else; both guilt and blame miss the whole point.

 

Learning is the point. Whether you caused a harm or you responded badly to someone else's harm, all you can ever do is offer what you believe will aid reparation--and only if it's worth your investment. Otherwise, you can still change your part in similar situations going forward. That's learning. Assigning permanent characteristics to yourself based on poor performance in one instance is NOT learning, it's of no value. Kindness with yourself teaches you how to apply same to others--and there are plenty of people in this world who could use that kindness.

 

In your corner.