A few weeks ago, a Beyond Blue reader asked me what to do regarding a toxic friendship. She wrote:
I’m in the process of dealing with a toxic friend. She is broken, …
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I’ve had two such friendships. And I don’t mean to hurt them, but sometimes you evolve past a certain point in your life and those friendships keep you tethered to the way you were. In the first instance, this person was great fun when I was single, but her partying ways never changed and I matured out of them.
The second person was a narcissist. In a very bad replay of the relationship with my mother, I would acquiesce to her spiritual superiority. Then, as the relationship progressed, it was ALWAYS about her. Every minuscule breakdown was over dramatized. I just couldn’t keep draining myself to make her feel better. It is an exhaustive pattern that I’ve repeated two more times since and I’ve allowed the friendships to just fizzle out.
At least now, I’m wising up more quickly.
As always, your posts turn my mornings into introspection.
Thank you for keeping me grounded, today.
John Scott Smith
@JohnScottSmith
Who you remove from your life is often more important than who you decide to keep. People are very much like the company they keep. As I continued to learn and grow after college, I found myself shedding friends left and right. I had found that the older the friend, the greater the chance that we have little to nothing in common anymore. Realizing that all you have in common is a past life, the decision to move on became easier to make.
Very valuable writing.
I think everybody experience such situation in their life. I would stick to the facts that :
1. We cannot satisfy everbody.
2. When a friend get hurt and come to us, we should be glad because it means that s/he believes us. We are the place for him/er to go. We are the shoulders for him/er to cry on !
3. Give him/er the best medicine in the world : Unconditional Love.
4. Keep him/er as a friend. We might need him/er later.
* * * * *
My daughter-in-laws mother is a wonderful person,however she has an alchol and suicidal problem. Has tried to commit suicide twice recently, currently in the hospital to have surgery where she slit her wrist. She has financial problems and uable to work now as she is a massage therapist. She is severly depressed and upset with her financial burdens. She needs inpatient pch. help but has no money and can’t go home alone, if anyone has any advice on how and where she can get help please respond, thank you.
Hi everyone – I found this article very interesting because I have turned away from a narcissistic former friend, for my own health, but I still feel like an a**hole for doing it.
This person and I were friends at college and for a few years afterwards, but it was a very unequal relationship. When I first knew her we both had severe personal problems, and both of us really needed help, so we gravitated together but the set-up became one where she was superior to me and I was the weak, ineffectual one. However, since I went out into the adult world and made a success of work and life, she has been unrelentingly negative and unpleasant, ripping me to pieces verbally (preferably in front of other people) and denigrating anything I think or say. After spending a holiday with her about 10 years ago and ending up so stressed that I needed medication and therapy, I started pulling away, not answering calls or e-mails and focusing on other people and things. Yet she is still trying to reel me back. I am not letting myself be caught, but I feel like such a bad person for ignoring her.