Dear Andi:

You wrote that you are confused and baffled. I want to rewrite what you shared so to try to understand better what may have happened:

You (35) were friends with Lisa (about 35), went to the same schools, “did everything together.. Very close“. At about the age of 30, you were a victim of revenge-porn (“the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent… to blackmail.. coerce.. punish.. silence,, damage their reputation, and/or for financial gain… uploading of sexually explicit material to the Internet to humiliate and intimidate a subject”, Wikipedia).

As a result, you experienced “the worst anxiety and depression.. trauma” and you’ve been in therapy for it, therapy that helped you. At the same time Lisa received a diagnosis of General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). When the revenge porn experience was happening to you, you talked to Lisa about it, and she told you that you made it up, that you lied and that you were delusional. You had proof of the revenge-porn but she refused to look at the evidence, told you that she was setting  boundaries with you, and didn’t want to talk to you about the issue anymore: “She just hung up on me screaming that my therapist is wrong and that I am delusional”

Later on,  2 to 3 years ago, Lisa got engaged, asked you to be her bridesmaid and wanted you to fly to France for an entire week for her wedding. You couldn’t make the time due to work, so you offered to fly to France for the weekend. Her response: she told you that your compromise it was unacceptable, and again called you “delusional and a liar”, screaming at you, telling you that you should prioritize her, having been friends for 20 years, and hung up the phone on you.

After that the two of you “smoothed things out to some degree“, and you flew to her wedding in France for a weekend, as a guest (not as a bridesmaid). During the weekend she got very drunk, told you that she loved you, but when sober she ignored you and in all her speeches, she kept mentioning another friend as her best friend. Since the wedding, you made some effort to contact her, but she made none, and recently blocked you on Facebook.

You asked and shared: “was I wrong to try to talk to my friend about it? Why was this her reaction? Was she ever my friend at all? Why can’t I get her off my brain?… How could I spend 20 years of my life with somebody who just behaved this way. I am so confused!.. She just blew up at me all of a sudden and then acted this way, I am to this day still baffled… It’s literally been two years since we spoke and I cant get her off my brain at all”-

My input today: there is no way for me to know, of course, what happened. What is clear is that she has been at times very angry at you and that she expressed her anger in abusive ways such as screaming at you and ignoring you at the wedding.

Possibilities as to why and what happened: (1) mind altering drugs may be involved (on top of her alcohol intoxication during the wedding weekend that you attended), (2) there may be significant parts to your relationship with her and to the story that you didn’t share, parts that would have shed some needed light on what you did share. For example, it may be that the man and his group of friends involved in the revenge-porn were also her friends.. it may be that she was involved in it.. it may be that although you didn’t lie to her about the revenge porn, there may have been lies before.. I don’t know and there is no way for me to know,

(3) it’s likely that in the root of her GAD diagnosis is her own trauma, maybe a sexual related trauma, and when you talked to her about your revenge-porn trauma, a form of sexual trauma, it activated her own and that’s why she said that she needs to set boundaries with you and not talk with you about the issue anymore, (4) it may be that her relationship with her then boyfriend, now husband- is abusive or otherwise very unhealthy, causing her to behave erratically as well as getting drunk during her wedding weekend. It is possible that she is so engrossed in a toxic relationship with this man (and/ or with another person, perhaps a family member) that she is .. unavailable to you.

In any case, “Ex best friend” is an appropriate title for your thread. I hope you heal and recover further from all that needs healing and recovery!

anita