Ending a friendship of 7 years.. Am I the bad guy?
I am going to be brutally honest and I am okay to be judged in case I am wrong.
The background story is that Laura and I have been friends since 2018, and we have gone through a lot of ups and downs in our friendship. In the beginning I strongly disliked her due to her explosive personality of being in everyone’s face and being pretty much a rude person disguising as “bubbly” and extroverted person. Because she integrated into my group of friends I ended up getting to know her better and sympathized with the way she is/acted due to her past/current traumas. I think this was my first mistake but I am a person that understands trauma and that can shape significantly a person’s personality so I decided that although she was a challenge, it was worth my time and energy to be by her side if she needed someone to defend and listen to her , which she didn’t have a lot of people like that in her life.
As the years went by she moved to Chicago, and after she left the pandemic hit and at that time our friendship was exceptionally strong because of the lockdown as we would facetime everyday. This built a lot of foundation to our friendship and even when we fought over our differences in personality we always came to a resolution.
Now onto the issue that’s made me realize I can’t continue being friends with her: she has a consistent pattern of becoming obsessed with men who either don’t reciprocate her feelings or are completely walking red flags, sometimes even borderline abusive. The first time this happened, I genuinely tried to support her! I listened,helped her with her feelings, and gently tried to guide her away from the situation, especially because the guy in question clearly disliked her and showed it in literally every way possible. And guess what happened? She turned on me. She accused me of speaking badly about him and said I wasn’t being a good friend because I couldn’t “see the good in him”, even though she had just told me the most awful things he had done to her?? This same pattern kept repeating with every guy she got fixated on. Eventually, we even stopped being friends for a while because she couldn’t respect my opinion or even just hear me out. I don’t expect her to follow my advice, but the LEAST she could do is listen to me as much as I listen to her! What hurt the most is that even when I was being nothing but kind and supportive, she’d be incredibly rude to me. On top of that, every conversation would become solely about the guy she was currently obsessed with. She lost interest in my life completely, to the point that I would be struggling and she would say things like “my life is so much harder than yours look what he said bla bla”. At a certain point, I stopped feeling like her friend and more like an emotional dumping ear. She just wanted someone to vent to, but had no interest in what I had to say, everything I shared was ignored.
Two years ago, she was in a really bad mental place because of one of the guys, and I decided it was time to fly to Chicago to be there for her. But once I got there, I was shocked by how much she had changed. She was like a completely different person with constant explosiveness, with mood swings that shifted by the second. I witnessed intense outbursts that honestly left me speechless, to the point that one of the days I was there she got upset at me and left me alone in a club all by myself while I freaked out trying to find her. This was in her words a way to get back at me.
I came back from that trip feeling drained and convinced I needed to end the friendship. But from her perspective, I had been a huge help and she was so grateful and kept thanking me for being there. And my heart literally ACHED. I still cared for her deeply, and despite everything, I chose to stay because I loved her and hoped things would get better.
Since last year, every single conversation we’ve had has revolved around this one guy in her life. And while he’s not necessarily a bad person, it’s clear he doesn’t feel the same way about her as she does about him and she is very much aware of that. Still, she constantly complains about him. I wish I were exaggerating, but literally EVERY conversation becomes about him. She’d call me crying and shaking because he took over 30 minutes to reply, or because he sent her a thumbs-up emoji, or mentioned another woman. She’d pick fights with him over the tiniest things, and every chat we had would spiral into negativity. And when I gently questioned her behavior or tried to offer perspective, I became the bad guy? It got so obsessive that she ended up moving in right next door to him, to put into perspective.
The hardest part is that, recently, I started distancing myself because I’ve been struggling with my own mental health. But every time I talked to her, I was reminded that my needs, my struggles, and even just my presence didn’t matter as much as what she had going on in her life. She would also constantly want to talk every day through facetime which sometimes was hard for me! The last time we spoke, she blatantly told me that she purposely ignores my messages because she sees replying to me, even when I’m LITERALLY just am checking in, as a waste of her time. That BROKE me. I’ve tried so hard in this friendship, and all I get in return is being made to feel like I don’t matter, that my opinions are not worth being listened to and that my very own problems are minimal compared to her problems.
After distancing myself, she not only did not noticed but when I tried to engage in conversation by texting to which not only she did not reply but was upset that I didn't call her and told me "less talking more doing"??
That was my breaking point where I couldn't take it anymore. The disrespect and disregard for me was so loud I needed to end for my own well being. I broke off our friendship, and do feel at a lost because I will miss some parts of our friendship but I also feel guilty over breaking our friendship.... Any advice helps!