Dear Caroline:

I happened to look at the title of your thread, “Is my  friend    abusing  me?” You didn’t ask: is this person abusing me? You asked: is this friend abusing me, as if it is possible that a friend will abuse a friend. A friend makes mistakes, like any human, a friend disappoints from time to time…  but a friend does not abuse.

In the first paragraph you referred to him as a friend four more times: “I have a male friend... This  friend…. We were friends after university, very close friends“.

All along, what was behind that “friendship” is a desire born in childhood to turn hostile family into loving family. The word Family starts with the same letter as Friends, and it is supposed to mean something lovely, something safe and loving and wonderful… so we try to change them into wonderful and as adults we try to change other hostile people into wonderful. And we fail because … they are not wonderful.

I hope that you turn your back to him and to the quest of changing abuse into love… love and friendship is where there is no abuse, not where there is abuse.

anita