Dear Mary:

Good morning! I am reading your recent post part by part, responding to one before reading the next part.

“Amanda proceeded to tell me that I make her feel annoying, overwhelming… I don’t make her feel loved, supported, or encouraged. I make her feel like garbage” – wait, wait, wait… you make her feel all these things. Is it that whatever she feels is a result of being made to feel this way or that way by a person on the outside? No connection between what she feels and her prior life experience, her childhood, her thoughts? Is she a passive agent, a vacuum that is filled by feelings others give her?

“I told her I appreciate her honesty and that I’m sorry my boundaries created these feelings within her” – but it’s not your boundaries that created these feelings within her, at least not in isolation. Her prior life experience and her thoughts created these feelings within her much, much more than anything you said and did.

“I apologized that I created this problem because I made myself too available and accessible from the start of our friendship, so I take some of the blame for why she’s been feeling this way once I started creating space” – you are apologizing unnecessarily, agreeing with her that you are guilty of something that you are not guilty of. People are not supposed to be stuck in rigid roles. Just because you were very available to her before, does not mean that you are supposed to be very available to her forever more. It is not a realistic expectation because our lives are changing, so a lot has to keep changing. We need to adjust to changes instead of demanding of ourselves and of others to… remain rigidly same!

“Her response to that was “Ok, I’m toxic now. Cool. Cool. I wish you the best.” I didn’t respond to that, but a few hours later she sent another text stating she forgives me… ” – sincerely, Mary, I don’t care anymore what she says. She needs quality psychotherapy so to take responsibility for how she feels and to perceive herself as an active agent in her own life, not a passive agent.

“With all that said, the point of me reaching out to you again Anita is because her comments upset me. I feel guilty and feel like I was in the wrong. Was I actually toxic and perhaps gaslighting her too?” – I just read Helcat’s reply of 4 minutes ago and I agree (I thought something like this myself earlier) that “toxic” is an inflammatory word, an overused word, often used incorrectly, and therefore it should be avoided. But I still stand by what I wrote above, in this post. So, without using the overused word, I think that it is a bad idea for you to have any further communication with her because she needs serious therapy before she can have a healthy relationship with anyone, including with her husband and kids. It is very sad to think that she is probably blaming her own kids for how she feels!

That you feel guilty is an indication that your own prior life experience, particularly in childhood, fostered a tendency to feel guilty whenever someone you care about is displeased with you. Amanda and you are like a match made in hell: she has a strong tendency to blame, and you have a strong tendency to accept blame.

“She claims (in the last message she sent) that she respected me and my boundaries and allowed me to be my true self” – she has no idea what boundaries are: she perceives herself to be a passive agent in her own life, one who passively receives feelings from another person, having no boundaries.

“I just need some guidance if I went about this all wrong and sabotaged this friendship…  Amanda really made me feel like I wasn’t being my best self. I’m curious to hear your thoughts” – I think that it is time to figure out when and how you took on the tendency to automatically feel guilty when others you care about are displeased with you.

anita

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by .