Hi Anita,

That is a great point, and something I didn’t consider before. You’re absolutely right: I momentarily get a “feel good reward” for her supposedly looking up to me. Subconsciously I feel that maybe this means I am not as worthless as she always claimed me to be. But you’re right, nothing was ever fixed. She ended up confronting my dad after ranting to me about it and he got angry at her and told her to leave him alone. She showed me all of the texts and conversation and of course I gave her empathy, saying she did the best she could etc etc. I had no idea I had fallen back into this trap of her extracting energy from me. Of course my dad continued to do whatever he wanted. But did she really expect he would listen to her? Maybe it was just a show to get empathy. She always would do stuff like this: talk about how hard her life was, how hard she works and how my dad treated her so badly. But she never takes responsibility for her part: no one forced her to marry my dad, no one forces her to live in an expensive house and spend so much money on material things. No one told her to buy my sister another car when she already got into 2 accidents. I realized as I was reading that my sister does the same thing! She rants and complains and asks for advice but she never does what I say. And I feel a false reward, but the truth is she doesn’t look up to me either. So I’m left spending this energy on people who don’t appreciate it and it does no good. But who can I rant to when I am in trouble? I have to figure everything out by myself.

People dumping their emotions on me has happened to me my whole life. A friend I had from high school would do the same: every time she was in trouble (which was all of the time) she would call me to complain, and I would be supportive. I gave her money when she needed it. Even in the middle of the night I would wake up and listen to her complain about whatever predicament she had got herself in. Finally one day she borrowed money and didn’t pay me back. When I asked for the money back she paid me less of what she owed me. I told her she didn’t pay me back the full amount and she laughed it off and said she would pay me, but never did. That’s when I separated myself from her. And one again, I got the reward of  her saying I was such a good friend, I was always there for her etc. But she was never there for me. She would talk about it, but not actually follow through.  Even my ex did this, all throughout the relationship and even after the breakup. She talked about how bad things were for her, she got sick, her family was mistreating her, she’s disabled, no one cares about her, so on and so forth.

I have never been in a relationship with someone who actually genuinely cared about me. It’s always been people draining my energy. Maybe that’s why I am so tired all the time.