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Dear Captain Awkward...
May. 21st, 2012 07:43 pm I need a good way to stop being best friends with my former best friend. I don't want to hurt her feelings any more than I might have already have, but the relationship is seriously not working out for me in a bad way.
Brief recap: Former best friend (FBF) was in a poly relationship which ended explosively and which because of various reasons (her reactions to the situation, namely) tore up the entire social circle. She and I and her boyfriend live in the same housing situation numbering seven in all. There was lots of drama for four months. Then things got more-or-less resolved. Now she is trying her best to turn us back into "bestest buddies ever" and I just can't do it. This is because I genuinely feel like she doesn't care about my feelings or my needs at all if she has any sort of need or upset. She always comes first, even if it means she has to disregard my stated needs for sleep, for boundaries, for "I don't want to talk about it, I can't talk about it because I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown".
Recently, she told me that she would get depressed and paranoid if **I** didn't make the effort to chat her up every so often. It doesn't count if she initiated the conversation other times, the clock doesn't get reset unless I seek her out and talk with her.
Asides from my work, which is amazingly busy right now, I have no problem with talking to her -- I just don't want to have it be mandated "or I will be depressed, non-functional, and paranoid" because this is part of the entire reason I can't be best friends with her: she seems to be incapable of not going Hulk-like when her feelings are in question and when she's feeling hurt or "abandoned" or "dismissed", nothing else matters except that people must put down everything and anything to make her feel better.
Then, the day before we were going to go out to a board game night at the local bookstore, she informs me that she "feels like she and her boyfriend are always the ones being **abandoned** to take the T home **alone**" and if I could "reserve two seats" in my car for her and her boyfriend to go home with us at the end of the night.
I calmly told her that since there was six of us and my car only seats five, someone would have to take the T home. She responded with "I would feel abandoned if I and my boyfriend would have to be the ones to take the T home alone" and then also "I feel like it negates the point of hanging out with friends if we don't get to go home together at the end of the night".
For reference, the board game night was going to start at 12:30pm and last until 10:00pm. We were probably going to stay for most of that.
I honestly didn't have a good response to that because I didn't want to just point out that if she wanted seats in my car, which was never made clear to me the entire 20+ days previous to this that she had known this event was happening, then one of our other friends would have to take the T home alone, by himself, unless someone else wanted to be a hero and take the T home with him. So I said "right" and let the conversation end.
Part of my problem with this is that she is the one who sold her SUV because "I hate owning cars" and "you don't need a car in Boston" and "there's no way my life will be badly impacted by not having a car" and so my mindset honestly has always been: you didn't want a car, you sold your car, and you have your boyfriend for company, so someone needs to take the T home, it should be the people who **didn't have previous dibs on seats in the car already**. But no, now I would have to either ditch the car and take mass transit with her, or boot out someone I had already promised a seat to, or she was going to feel abandoned.
The next day, first thing that her boyfriend asks when we show up is whether or not we have seats in the car for them. I curtly tell them that friend J would be taking the T home, alone, so they could go home with us in the car.
Later on, couple of hours later, I tell her that we're going to the local thai restaurant to have dinner and that she should join us once she was finished with her game and if not, oh well -- she tells me, again, that she would be very upset if we "left without her" and "abandoned her without telling her".
I was drained, upset, completely set on my ear by the amount of abandonment guilt tripping going on and at this point I'm ready to not go to any events with anyone with my car (which because of my energy levels will mean I don't go out and do anything) because life would just be simpler that way.
I really, truly, don't want to cut her off from my life entirely. Despite the four months of drama we went through, I still wanted to be friends with her because I thought that she would regain equilibrium and we could all stop flinching around each other. However, I don't want to be "best friends" with her anymore because I honestly don't trust her not to cut me dead if it was me or her feelings on the line.
tl:dr -- How do I stop being someone's best friend while still being a friend without hurting their feelings?
-- completely at a loss
Brief recap: Former best friend (FBF) was in a poly relationship which ended explosively and which because of various reasons (her reactions to the situation, namely) tore up the entire social circle. She and I and her boyfriend live in the same housing situation numbering seven in all. There was lots of drama for four months. Then things got more-or-less resolved. Now she is trying her best to turn us back into "bestest buddies ever" and I just can't do it. This is because I genuinely feel like she doesn't care about my feelings or my needs at all if she has any sort of need or upset. She always comes first, even if it means she has to disregard my stated needs for sleep, for boundaries, for "I don't want to talk about it, I can't talk about it because I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown".
Recently, she told me that she would get depressed and paranoid if **I** didn't make the effort to chat her up every so often. It doesn't count if she initiated the conversation other times, the clock doesn't get reset unless I seek her out and talk with her.
Asides from my work, which is amazingly busy right now, I have no problem with talking to her -- I just don't want to have it be mandated "or I will be depressed, non-functional, and paranoid" because this is part of the entire reason I can't be best friends with her: she seems to be incapable of not going Hulk-like when her feelings are in question and when she's feeling hurt or "abandoned" or "dismissed", nothing else matters except that people must put down everything and anything to make her feel better.
Then, the day before we were going to go out to a board game night at the local bookstore, she informs me that she "feels like she and her boyfriend are always the ones being **abandoned** to take the T home **alone**" and if I could "reserve two seats" in my car for her and her boyfriend to go home with us at the end of the night.
I calmly told her that since there was six of us and my car only seats five, someone would have to take the T home. She responded with "I would feel abandoned if I and my boyfriend would have to be the ones to take the T home alone" and then also "I feel like it negates the point of hanging out with friends if we don't get to go home together at the end of the night".
For reference, the board game night was going to start at 12:30pm and last until 10:00pm. We were probably going to stay for most of that.
I honestly didn't have a good response to that because I didn't want to just point out that if she wanted seats in my car, which was never made clear to me the entire 20+ days previous to this that she had known this event was happening, then one of our other friends would have to take the T home alone, by himself, unless someone else wanted to be a hero and take the T home with him. So I said "right" and let the conversation end.
Part of my problem with this is that she is the one who sold her SUV because "I hate owning cars" and "you don't need a car in Boston" and "there's no way my life will be badly impacted by not having a car" and so my mindset honestly has always been: you didn't want a car, you sold your car, and you have your boyfriend for company, so someone needs to take the T home, it should be the people who **didn't have previous dibs on seats in the car already**. But no, now I would have to either ditch the car and take mass transit with her, or boot out someone I had already promised a seat to, or she was going to feel abandoned.
The next day, first thing that her boyfriend asks when we show up is whether or not we have seats in the car for them. I curtly tell them that friend J would be taking the T home, alone, so they could go home with us in the car.
Later on, couple of hours later, I tell her that we're going to the local thai restaurant to have dinner and that she should join us once she was finished with her game and if not, oh well -- she tells me, again, that she would be very upset if we "left without her" and "abandoned her without telling her".
I was drained, upset, completely set on my ear by the amount of abandonment guilt tripping going on and at this point I'm ready to not go to any events with anyone with my car (which because of my energy levels will mean I don't go out and do anything) because life would just be simpler that way.
I really, truly, don't want to cut her off from my life entirely. Despite the four months of drama we went through, I still wanted to be friends with her because I thought that she would regain equilibrium and we could all stop flinching around each other. However, I don't want to be "best friends" with her anymore because I honestly don't trust her not to cut me dead if it was me or her feelings on the line.
tl:dr -- How do I stop being someone's best friend while still being a friend without hurting their feelings?
-- completely at a loss
