Dear RedDress:

You asked: “Am I really the problem… Why does this keep repeatedly happening to me..?”

My answer based on a previous thread: it keeps happening to you because on one hand some people are truly unreliable, dishonest, deceiving etc. But this does not explain all of your experience. The explanation to the consistency of your experience with friends is that you were raised to believe by your parents that everyone will betray you, that no  one is trustworthy.

You wrote about your parents: “all they talk about is how this friend betrayed them, berated them, made fun of them, annoyed them…I don’t fully believe my parents”- see, you wrote that you don’t fully believe your parents. It means that partly you do believe them. I think you believe them a whole lot.

So basically, in your mind, in line with your parents’ mind, there are only enemies out there. It is impossible to make friends with enemies. Isn’t it?

anita