‘I Don’t Want To Lose My Friendship’

Q:

I have been friends with a woman for many years. As time has moved on I am among the last one standing in her friend group. By her account everyone else has let her down, including her friends of days gone by but her family. She is smart and funny and creative and I have enjoyed her company immensely over the years. She is also the most negative person I have ever met and this fuelled by her perception of any inconvenience being a direct personal attack. Regardless of how small – for example a restaurant doesn’t have any drinks she likes; or the public transit system has a shut down; or how reasonable, ie her friend with small children in another city does not come for overnight visits. For the most part, I have handled her negativity by maintaining contact every couple of months – so not to be too overwhelmed.

A year and half ago she got sick. She has no one. She needed support – and I made that commitment. We have seen each other weekly if not more, text or call every couple of days since then. At times I have thought I would lose my mind at just how self focused, negative and relentlessly overly sensitive she has become – but I have hung in there because I genuinely care about her and didn’t want her to go through this alone.

She is much better now – but doesn’t seem to know how to give up the “I am sick” persona of the last 18 months. And more challenging is that she has come to rely on me for everything.

I know I need to step back for my own mental health – she is not open to any feedback about her behaviour. I am finding it really hard to do this in a way that doesn’t lead to me becoming just another person in her life to abandon her. I don’t want to not see her – I enjoy her in small doses – we can have great laughs together. But I know that there is no middle ground with her. I feel so conflicted – this is a friendship of over 20 years. What is a gap to do?

A:

Okay so I think you meant “What is a gal to do?” at the end of your letter, but I went ahead and left your typo because I feel like it was psychologically fitting, perhaps a little missive from your subconscious. Because clearly this is a friendship in which there are significant gaps: gaps in awareness, communication, and even gaps in care. Gaps in friendships are possible to work on and repair, but when left to their own devices, those gaps can widen and begin to feel impassable.

I do want to commend you for trying to make this friendship work. In a time when people are pretty quick to throw away friendships pretty quickly in the name of boundaries and self-preservation, I think it’s actually really refreshing to remember that sometimes friendships are work in the same ways familial and romantic relationships can be. I encounter people these days who will cut a person off just for running late to plans — all the while never actually trying to work on communication with said late friend. I dunno. I get it. Friendships should feel safe, nurturing, easy. But to suggest that all friendships are perfectly healthy all the time is to reduce friendship, I think. Friendship can be complicated!

I imagine this letter only presents a limited view of your friendship with this woman. It’s a friendship of over 20 years. That’s a very long time! I’m sure some people might look at your situation and say “CUT HER OUT” without hesitation. But it makes sense to me that you feel so conflicted about this. You do like this woman. You wish you could experience her in smaller doses and on terms more within your control. But as you put it, there’s no middle ground with her. It’s all or nothing.

And while yes I do think it is commendable that you’ve done so much to make it work, I also think it’s pretty clear this friendship has tilted from complicated into toxic territory. I don’t use that word lightly, because I do think it’s overused and often applied to inconveniences rather than dynamics that are as deeply imbalanced and detrimental as yours is with this friend. You supported your friend through sickness, and instead of that care leading to your friend appreciating you more or perhaps becoming more aware of her own negativity, it has only caused her to become more reliant on you even when she doesn’t actually need that support anymore. I strongly believe it is possible to make friendships work where one person is giving more than they’re receiving, but not when the gap between those things is vast enough to engender long-term resentment, and that’s the path I believe you’re on right now.

Because the fact that you can’t find a middle ground with her is not your fault at all. She has put you in the position to choose between continuing to endure a friendship in which she is relentlessly negative and self-focused and does not offer you the same support you’ve given her and then total abandonment. I so wish you didn’t have to choose between the extremes, but by your own account, there aren’t really other options, especially if she is not open to feedback on her own behavior. But that kind of tells you everything you need to know! I can put up with a lot in friendships, but a refusal to listen to someone about how their behavior impacts others is a pretty insurmountable barrier. All people need to be open to at least hearing feedback, even if they can’t commit to immediate change!

I know you don’t want to become another one of those people in her life who abandoned her. But you can’t let that guilt be the only reason that makes you stay. That’s not ultimately a real friendship. It cannot be said that you did not try with this friend. I can tell you have a big capacity for care and love even in trying situations. Maybe she will just reduce you to the narrative she has chosen for herself about people always abandoning her, but you have to remind yourself that is not the truth. You have agency. You have a say in how you’re treated and in who you give your care and energy to. In some ways, it is kindest to both yourself and her walk away from this friendship while you still do have nice things to say about her instead of reaching a point of total resentment. In the face of your friend’s negativity, you have still found really positive things about this friendship, and I think that’s beautiful…if also further proof of the wide gaps between you.

You already know you need to step back. So if what you need is someone else’s encouragement, well, you have mine. I sat with your letter a long time, hoping I could find a way in that would allow for a middle ground or compromise. But she has pretty much ruled that out for you, leaving you in this shitty position of being the one who has to walk away. It will suck. It will feel bad. Let yourself feel all those things, all the while reminding yourself how much you tried. I would hope that you taking a step back from this friend would lead to some massive self-interrogation on her part, but we also can’t count on that happening. I think you will likely need to treat this like a big breakup and decide what you want your boundaries to be: no contact, limited contact, etc. Twenty years is a long time, and this is going to feel big. If you have other friends who you can talk to about it, definitely do. Most of us have stories about big friendship breakups, and sometimes it can help to hear about other stories like your own. I hope others might share below.