'My Ex–All-time Friend Is Talking Trash About Me to Other People!'

Photograph: Vicki Jauron/Getty Images

Dear Polly,

I recently ended the closest friendship I've always had. It was mutual — my friend believed I was in the wrong; I experience I'1000 doing what's all-time for me. At a stalemate, we stopped talking. Nosotros alive in the same neighborhood, and I share a building with mutual friends, who are squeamish to me in person but secretly believe I am a bad friend, according to other friends. I've connected existence neighborly, simply since learning how they truly feel, I wonder: How do you handle people who have sipped a bit of toxicant about you lot? And mostly: Am I a bad friend?

As for what happened with my friend: Her globe turned upside down when she discovered her fellow was cheating. When she institute out, I dropped what I was doing and rushed over to comfort her.Equally 1 should!When she finally broke upwards with him, I spent the evening supporting her, while minimizing that I had coincidentally ended my own relationship that aforementioned solar day.

In the days that followed, we had at least one three-hour phone call about her relationship, if non more than. Simply a week after their breakup, she called in tears, hurt that I had not been more available. She didn't want this to impact our friendship merely said that it might. I was shocked that our friendship was in question. Her issue: I hadn't reached out every single day (I had skipped at to the lowest degree i day). I said if a daily check in was needed, that'southward what I would practice.

She and her boyfriend had broken up before. Previously, I made myself extremely available: answering house calls in the middle of the nighttime, hosting her off and on for a calendar month, auspicious on her new sense of freedom and, ultimately, her decision to render to him. Just I felt invested in her care — and in some ways, her life — more than than my own. That's no longer who I want to be.

When they broke up this time, I happened to be in a very bad place in my life. Aside from my breakdown, I was unemployed and unable to pay my hire, and depressed to the point of feeling suicidal. Her fellow'south betrayal did seem like a more astute problem, and then I tried to avert talking about any of my issues and offer equally much support equally I could. She knew nearly my relationship catastrophe and my chore state of affairs. (My relationship was much shorter than hers, she pointed out, but time doesn't mensurate matters of the centre.) She did not know virtually my depository financial institution account (I was too ashamed, at the fourth dimension, to tell anyone) or the depth of my depression.

As the months wore on, I sensed consistent anger and resentment from her. She had a lot to experience angry and resentful nearly, but it was directed at me, and I didn't like that. After initiating most of our contact since she questioned our friendship, I eventually stopped reaching out entirely. We tried to talk about what was happening. I said I wanted to support her just was also in a situation where I really needed to accept intendance of myself. She said that in backing abroad, I had made the wrong conclusion.

Since then, I accept turned my life around and gotten on runway emotionally, financially, and with my career. I have wondered if things are going so well in part because I am entirely focused on my ain goals, and no longer putting free energy into a friendship that came with a lot of love and support, but also intense emotional drama.

We haven't spoken for months though I think about her every mean solar day. I don't regret walking away. I do regret non telling her more almost why: that I didn't like the style she was treating me after her breakup. And I'1000 angry. I'k angry for feeling similar my friend is the queen and I am her butler. I too feel like I've been kicked out of the club in a way that feels reminiscent of elementary school.

We're probably both feeling some of the same things: anger, injure, and deep down, sometimes, missing one another. I don't call back we can talk this through. She'due south often at my building with our mutual friends, and well, to be articulate:literally hanging out at my doorstep. She pretends not to see me, though they say howdy. I'1000 also a petty uncomfortable about these friends, my neighbors, thinking I'm a jerk. But isn't it upwardly to them to judge my character independently?

Codependent No More

Dear CNM,

People who won't wait at you or speak to you lot afterwards a breakup should be tagged and tracked by some primal Friendship Authorization, so that other people can be warned of their movements throughout the friend ecosystem. Unless you sent your friend anthrax in the postal service, slept with her young man, or put a severed horse's head in her bed in the heart of the dark, she has no possible justification for that kind of behavior.

Allow's say, for the sake of statement, that you were mildly neglectful of her afterwards her breakdown. People requite each other inadequate amounts of love and attention every unmarried day. As upsetting every bit it can be to experience lonely and injure in the wake of a jarring event, and as disappointed as she might've felt with you, that's an outcome of communication. As her disappointment grew, she could've told you, "I need more from y'all." She didn't. Saying nothing is fine and understandable in plenty of situations. But maxim nothing and and so going nuclear is for tantrum-prone children and rabid animals. That's not how nosotros exercise it, as nosotros say in my household.

So, should you worry about what this ex-friend is proverb backside your back? Should you try to go far your mutual friends' and neighbors' ears and convince them of what a selfish freak she can be, how her view of you is inaccurate, how angry and disappointed you were when she didn't step up and find that y'all were having a crude fourth dimension yourself? No. If they have brains in their heads, they tin see very conspicuously that she is young and vindictive toward someone she previously treated as her closest friend. Information technology should be obvious to them that her reasons for icing you out are weak at best.

And if these mutual friends don't know that, or it'southward more user-friendly to just keep the peace with your needy drama queen ex, or they actually find her tirades against you convincing, and so you don't need them in your life anyway. You know you're non a bad friend. Your paranoia about their attitudes about yous is closely related to your codependent urges. Codependent people tend to gather way too much data about what other people retrieve of them. It's a survival tactic common to those with less ability (or those who perceive themselves as having less power) (See also Jean Bakery Miller's Toward a New Psychology of Women). As understandable equally information technology is to want to know what others think of you lot, at some signal you accept to recognize when you're gathering information you tin't use. If we all had perfect intel on each other, we'd never trust anyone once again.

It'due south time to move past that at present. Yous did your all-time with your friend under terrible weather condition, and it wasn't good enough. She knows that now. She's heard directly from you that your reaction was formed from your depression and stress at the time. You say "I do regret not telling her more about why," simply it sounds like you told her everything. Moreover, it sounds similar she's never been that interested in what's going on with you in the first place. This is another common Codependent Butler behavior: wanting to explain everything, all over over again, to people who haven't shown the slightest interest in learning more than about the state of affairs from your perspective. At this bespeak, if she wants more data or closure from you, she tin can ask for it. That's non on you.

As a Codependent Butler type, yous have to start noticing these patterns of beliefs. You have to learn to stop request questions similar "Does she need more information from me?" and instead ask "Does she accept my phone number? Does she know where I live? Have I iced her out (the style she's iced me out) or can she speak to me freely and notice out more anytime she wants?"

People similar united states of america accept a bad habit of blaming ourselves for all of the things. Problem exists considering we did something wrong. People ice us out considering we're bad. And the fact of the thing is that people sometimes ice u.s. out Because THEY KNOW THAT WE'LL Blame OURSELVES FOR IT. Narcissistic succubi like your ex-friend can smell weakness from a mile away. I hate to demonize this adult female completely, considering I'm certain information technology's hard to exist her, but I'm sad, she has no example against you whatsoever, and her continued demonstration of babyish horseshit is an obvious sign from the Friendship Gods that yous are to sally forth without thinking twice about her. It's besides a clear sign from her that she'southward invested in your office as either butler or whipping boy. If you're in her life, you're her butler. The 2nd y'all reject her, y'all become a user-friendly target for her frustrations and insecurities.

SHE STILL NEEDS YOU, in other words. She needs you to blame for her bad feelings, her desperation, her loneliness. Past serving every bit a scapegoat for her anger and helplessness, you lot permit her to stay with her bad swain. You give her empty, sad oral cavity some words to say, considering she's got nothing else. Y'all permit her to play the victim the way she was born to practice.

There is null to fix hither. Yous need to stop imagining what she'southward proverb to these friends and acquaintances. You need to end imagining what she thinks of you, and what they think of you. You need to terminate picturing their reaction to how you lot human activity when you meet them, after you walk away. Every fourth dimension you think virtually asking a mutual friend what someone else thinks, stop yourself. Every time you remember, "But if I exercise 10, she'll call up y and they'll think z," stop yourself. Y'all tin can't invest in what random unproven friends and acquaintances think of you. Information technology's a massive, self-destructive waste of fourth dimension. Do exactly what you want at all times without managing their experience of you.

Believe me, I know how big a challenge that tin can be in your shoes. But it'll help you in then many means to mature by this state of wanting to be "good" in everyone's eyes. Information technology'due south only not possible.

The just thing you need to focus on at present (along with the work yous're already doing on your life) is cultivating friendships that are honest and real, in which y'all never feel even mildly butler-y or queen-y. That means y'all have to speak up for yourself and state your needs. That ways you have to notice when all you do is listen ("Well, I'chiliad doing fine, then I don't need to talk"). Good friendships are ever a two-way street, and two people are responsible for that, not just the person who tends to talk a piffling too much. Yous accept to push yourself to open upwardly and not just serve as a helper because that's what made you lot experience loved and valuable as a child (just a guess!). You lot take to cartel to show upward and be you, even when it feels more boring and boilerplate than any drama your friends have going on. And y'all take to notice when your needs and feelings are existence neglected. You have to notice the first few times it happens, and you either take to react with words or you have to resolve to dorsum away when y'all witness extreme abandon in others.

Don't wait until you're crying unexpectedly, considering you lot gave too much again and yous didn't find that your friends were taking advantage of you and not actually giving you the same amount of concern and sensitivity dorsum. Learn to pay attention to your own needs, and to ask for what you desire from others. This sounds self-centered, simply it'due south something that all Formerly Codependent Butlers need. You lot need to ask yourself "What exercise I deserve?" early on and frequently.

Maybe you deserve friends who you lot know for a fact won't talk a lot of shit about you to anyone who'll mind. Perhaps y'all deserve friends who wouldn't even dream of befriending or even hanging out casually with someone who'd behave that way. Mayhap y'all deserve friends who consider your feelings, who check in when you're going through something crude, who say they miss you when you leave town, who invite y'all to do things with their other friends at their places occasionally, who reach out and inquire you lot how you are, who love hearing well-nigh your successes equally much equally your failures. Maybe you deserve a friend like y'all, one who knows how to reciprocate.

Information technology'south truthful that concerned, considerate friends are rare these days. But that's all the more reason to hold out for them and treasure them once you lot find them. It'due south not up to yous to teach inconsiderate people how to communicate openly. It's non upward to you to ready everything with everyone. Write that on your wall. Resist the urge to fix this. I know it'south difficult — holy God, do I know! — merely you lot accept to acquire to drop your bad, circular thoughts about this woman and focus on your ain life instead. It's no coincidence that you lot've been doing bully since you let her go. She will keep pointlessly troublemaking without you, and somewhen she'll go bored and discover a new target for her insecurities, and then she might just reappear and effort to clear the air. Simply pray that shedoesn't, because that woman is a giant myopic drama-loving puddle of quicksand who will sap your energy and never pause for a infinitesimal to consider your needs, and honestly, that rarely changes. I'yard not saying that some difficult people aren't worth a little attempt. I have lots of difficult friends who I love a lot. Merely this adult female is a bad friend, full stop. Try to make better ones next fourth dimension.

Polly

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'My Ex-Friend Is Talking Trash About Me to Other People!'