Enmeshed adult friendships?
I am a 34 year old man who grew up in an enmeshed family. My mom's emotions were always my responsibility, she never respected my boundaries, I felt shame leaving home and was guilted to go to the local college just 10 minutes down the road and live at home. She always called me to help her with her anxiety, wanted to know where I was, and saw my relationships and the time I spent with their family as a threat. Christmas is always a struggle with splitting time across significant other's households. She would lash out and use guilt if I wasn't where she wanted me to be and questions my loyalty to the family (I have set huge boundaries here). Nothing is more important than our family and I often heard "Why? What else do you have going on that is more important that you can't be here with the family?". I won't go deeper into this. I eventually moved 14 hours away.
I had a friendship of 17 years where Maria (34F) is the social hub. She needs to know everything that is going on (including personal and private details), sees me making decisions on my own as a threat, me telling other people things before her as "sneaking around her back" or "hiding things from her", and has demanded everyone's iPhone locations to be shared indefinitely. She would then gossip and weaponize the information she learned. She often "corrects" me and frames herself as the superior or adult in the room when I have a house on my own, a career, and upkeep my life just fine. She is allowed to make rules for the group, but does not need to follow them herself. I stopped sharing my iPhone location with her and she went ballistic. She also has doubled-down that I am unstable, rude, and nasty because I stopped sharing details with her and have largely pulled-back entirely. She blames me and has pulled-in other people to spy on me to feed her information about what is going on in my life and has started to smear campaign me. Unfortunately this was a terrible decision, but I live 5 houses away from her and she has texted me at times asking who is at my house because she can see the car. I am working on a plan to get out of this neighborhood. She believes she can make my decisions and calls me rude and punishes me and I have to fix her emotions. I am not a victim, I am just trying to recognize these patterns and stop them from happening moving forward.