Dear Paradoxy,

How could people assume that I was interested in her just cause she inspired the melody for a song?

Because men usually make serenades to the women they have feelings for? 🙂

But okay, if you are a professional musician, or aspire to be one, then anything can be an inspiration for a song, that’s true. So if you were inspired in a professional sense, then okay, I get it how you didn’t have any romantic interest and could stitll write a song about a girl. (Although be honest with yourself – you later started developing “infatuation” for her…. so a romantic interest has crept in, eventually).

Nevertheless, a bigger problem that I am noticing is you making such a huge deal of him telling this big “untruth” to B, when I am sure that even if he said you were not romantically interested in that girl, B would NOT have believed him. And would have used it to accuse you of cheating nevertheless. Because she doesn’t need much to accuse you, and you writing a song for a girl is definitely a “capital proof” for her. Even if your friend had tried to convince her of the opposite.

What I have been noticing so far (but perhaps it lessened a bit in your latest post) is that you are more angry at your friend than you are at B, who actually stole your chat and was interrogating your friend and is making false accusations against you whenever she can.

I think it’s very important to be clear who the real abuser is – who is the person who has really hurt you. Because if you get more angry at your friend (who is just a foolish guy whom she managed to manipulate) than at the real abuser, you won’t be able to heal properly.

I am glad that you see that he is in the gray zone though, and not some big villain. You’re even aware that he didn’t want to be mean when he told her he knows about her prostitution. But that she was actually interrogating him and making him confess everything he knows:

Nah he was definitely not trying to be mean, he just cracked under pressure when B asked him a thousand times about whether I told him what really happened.

So he broke under pressure – he didn’t want to (and probably couldn’t) lie. He didn’t tell her that to be mean, but because she was pressuring him to confess.

He said that he thought it would be okay since we had already broken up. He seems to have cracked under the pressure B was putting on him when she was hammering him with a lot of questions. Besides, it is kinda hypocritical for me to blame him cause B told me to keep the issue between us but I told the guy cause of the emotional stress I was under, so expecting him to keep it from B was not to be expected anyway. I breached the confidence that B and I had, so do I really have the right to criticize the guy for breaching the confidence between him and I?

Now that I know the full story – that she pressured him to confess – I can see that he didn’t intentionally breech the confidence, but that she was good in extorting the information from him. And he couldn’t lie. So forget what I said: he isn’t to be blamed for admitting.

he still thinks it’s wrong for me to have told him. And now I feel guilty cause it feels like I disrespected B by telling him.

Well, that’s what he thinks now, after she has “brainwashed” him. It wasn’t your fault to share that info with him, because he was your best friend and confidante, and as you said, you were under lot of emotional stress and needed to share it with someone (I told the guy cause of the emotional stress I was under).

She expected you to just accept it and behave as if nothing happened, whereas it was a huge deal and not just something to move on from easily. Specially since she was trying to put the blame on everybody else (you, your parents, her aunt), but not actually taking responsibility for it herself.

You were indeed under a lot of pressure – even being blamed for it. So please, don’t blame yourself for sharing it with your friend. It was too much to keep it for yourself.

Yeah but that conversation only happened once and I prefer to keep it that way for now.

he messaged me today to “check up on me” for the first time in months. And I have a very sneaky suspicion that B might be using him to get to me, but that is just an assumption so I won’t think about it too deeply.

Okay, you’ve got a point in not wanting to talk about it with him, since yes, he might be transmitting your messages to her. You better be careful, because if he is now agreeing with her, he has indeed become her flying monkey and should not be trusted.

What is even more stupid is that I told the guy about another girl who intrigued me cause she is ALWAYS SMILING when she talks. So I just found it weird that she is able to smile so often despite how stressful med is and I shared that with him, but how come he didn’t assume I was romantically interested in her?

Because you didn’t dedicate a song to her?

And I pointed that out to B as well and now she is getting everything mixed up cause there is another girl who shares the same name as the girl who always smile and this girl happened to be an Indian while the smiling girl is Caribbean but B now assumes that I never loved her because she thinks that it was the Indian girl who intrigued me when it was actually the other girl who always smiled. This is some bs. Anyway, I managed to clarify all the confusion but I don’t think B believes me but we don’t talk anymore anyway so it doesn’t matter. B’s overthinking really is annoying.

Haha, I don’t think you clarified all the confusion with her, because she thrives on accusing you. And as you can see, she is always finding new opportunities to accuse you.

BTW you are using the present tense: “now she is getting everything mixed up“, “B now assumes that I never loved her“. But you also say “we don’t talk anymore anyway”, so I do hope you haven’t been communicating in the past few days, and that you have managed to present yourself as cold and reserved to her?

Yes I am working on that, but I have also realized that in order to make friends, I am the one who is forced to adapt to them. In fact I am the most malleable person I know, able to shift the way I think and process to accommodate others, but they are unable to do it for me. So are you saying that I should stop trying to make friends and just stick to myself and my healing? Cause even if I heal, I would end up chipping a part of me whenever I try to make a friend.

Hmm, if you heal, you wouldn’t need to chip parts of yourself to make friends. You would make friends that appreciate you and accept you as you are.

I am aware of my feelings and I am aware of my issues, which I am working on.

How are you working on your issues, if I may ask? What are you doing for your healing?

But the main concern is that nobody else cares about how I feel. Nobody else cares about whether I am lonely, whether I feel disrespected or hurt or etc.

Well, I do care how you feel. I care about your healing as well. I know it’s not like having a friend irl, but just so you know – someone cares about your well-being.

That just seems unfair to me cause I am trying my best to understand others. Always trying to make sure that nobody is left behind. Often checking on others to make sure they are ok.

Yeah, you said you are an empath. Although you could have more empathy for your guy friend and less for your abuser. But you are showing more empathy for him in your latest post, and I am glad about that.

But what about me? I am healing, but it just becomes ridiculous when I end up chipping myself every time I try to help others.

You really want to know what would help you? I think it would help you if you could get angry at your abuser, Paradoxy. Abusers, actually. You know who they are. B is not the only one.

Because so far you had the tendency to appease your abusers and make excuses for them. You have been making excuses for B for months. Even believing that you are the bad guy, that you are to be blamed for her bad behavior. Until you’ve realized that she is the bad guy and that she doesn’t really care about your feelings (I hope you’ve realized that!).

So I think you would need less excuses and more realization that you don’t want to be abused any more. That you don’t deserve to be treated like that. That you shouldn’t need to negate yourself to be in a relationship with someone who supposedly loves you.

You’d need to realize that you deserve more. When I say get angry at your abusers, I don’t mean to show it to them, to attack them, either verbally or God forbid physically. No. I mean to feel the justified anger (because it is justified!) at how they were treating you. And then e.g. hit a punching bag.

Remember you wanted to hit a punching bag because you were angry at your friend? Well, the idea is to feel a similar kind of anger at your abusers. And then hit the punching bag (not them!).

Maybe this sounds too much, but directing your anger (in a safe, non-harmful way) where it is due is I think one of the best things you can do for your healing.

And what is more annoying is that I have to keep trying to maintain a friendship with her because I don’t want my father to find out that this girl also rejected my friendship. Am I really that bad?

No, you’re not that bad. This girl sounds spoiled because she was complaining about various things, but no matter what you said to help her, she refused everything. And is now only talking to you out of politeness and not because she wants to.

Well, it’s not your fault. But you automatically think it’s your fault. And you also fear your father’s reaction, as if it were your fault that a spoiled girl doesn’t want to talk to you.

May I remind you that you’ve got the right to not maintain friendship with someone you don’t like (or who doesn’t like you), even if your father objects. You’d need to start allowing yourself that much autonomy, because him trying to control whom you are talking to is a little bit too much, don’t you think?