Dear Maria:

As to why an intelligent, successful woman in her late 20s woman cares so much about what this woman (I will refer to her as W, for  simplicity sake) thinks- I will look  into it now.

First who is she: W is your age. You met her in high school and you refer to her as “one best friend from high school”. The two of you “used to do everything together and it was really nice”.

When you went to college, started your first job, and had your first boyfriend, “she started to resent” you and your 1st boyfriend. She complained to you that you are “his puppet”. She expressed her resentment, aka anger, at your boyfriend and you were “caught in the crossfire”. You agreed with W, that indeed, you were “giving in too much” to 1st boyfriend’s wishes, and that while having him as your boyfriend, you were “less inclined to socialize with her”.

She had her own boyfriend, or a man she hung out with. She went to parties every weekend, “use drugs and alcohol, have sex with random people etc.” Her boyfriend’s goal was to find a rich woman “to finance all his extravagances”, which he eventually did, and is now “a successful sugar  babe”.

Even though W and sugar babe separated, she “adopted this person’s lifestyle to herself”. You disapproved of that lifestyle and reasoned that “this way of life never sit well with who she is”, that she fell into it because she is “very impressionable”. You told her so but “she wouldn’t listen” and disagreed with you, telling you that “she was the one being free and I was in a cage”.

But “after a couple of years living like this”, that is, partying, drugs, alcohol and sex with random people, “she developed depression and anxiety”. She told you about her depression and you (having “graduated, got a nice job and rented my first apartment” at the time), “did my best to be there for her but I couldn’t stop feeling guilty”, thinking that if you socialized with her more while with 1st boyfriend, she wouldn’t have gotten involved with sugar babe who led to her lifestyle, that led to her depression.

You spent more time with her, then broke up with your 1st boyfriend and “grew closer again” to her. A few months later, she got involved with another boyfriend, a man who “convinced her to leave her job and take care of the house, while he paid her bills”. She moved in with him, “lost her self esteem, her independence and became very submissive” to him. You told her this arrangement was wrong for her, but “she wouldn’t listen”. Some time later, he kicked her out of his house.

When that happened, you “helped her to move out.. encouraged her to get a new job and focus on her college”. She has done so, but is “very much behind in her career and has a long way to go until her graduation”. At this time, you “turned into .. her therapist”. She calls you, texts you about “every little crisis she has… from a guy ghosting ..her to her boss not replying to her good morning greetings. She demands a lot of attention, she gets angry if I don’t answer her texts or if I fail to meet her for a while.. and she criticizes me a lot about the way I deal with people and friendships”. Recently, while your current long distance boyfriend visited you, “she allegedly had a panic attack and I had to rush to rescue her”. She didn’t have panic attacks before or after his visit.

One time you shared with her that you were upset that “very few people showed up to my bday party”. Her response: “she started lashing me out saying I had no right to be upset about it, since I don’t invest in these friendships”, and proceeded to accuse you for having arrived late to one of her previous birthdays (which happened to be on the week you got fired from a job and “didn’t really feel like celebrating anything”).

“Her words really made me think if I’m a shitty friend indeed. I’m questioning myself about how I’ve been dealing with people during my social life and if it’s right for me to be so detached. If I should invest more and put in more effort to maintain these people in my life instead of just going with the flow. This adds to the fact that I feel guilty for not being there for her when she needed and if I’m a terrible person for being tired of her”.

You wrote about W: “I don’t see her aggression towards her toxic ex, don’t notice her judgments on other friends and never saw her questioning the other sugar baby person if he was a good friend”.

I will stop here and give you my input: understanding who she is, who you are, what part of your experience with her is your re-activated childhood experience, and so forth, is very difficult. It takes separating a messy mass into  pieces and then, like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to put the pieces together in such a way as to get a clear picture. I will try that next, suggesting possible pieces of that figurative jigsaw puzzle:

1. When she complained to you that you were your first boyfriend’s puppet, you may have thought she wanted you to be independent and free. You didn’t consider, did you, that she wanted you to not be his puppet, but her puppet. She discovered a puppet and she wants that puppet for herself. She may have never had a puppet, she may have been other people’s puppet, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t excited at the idea of … having her own puppet.

As her puppet, she calls and texts you anytime she wants to, demanding your immediate attention, repeatedly putting you in your place as her puppet by criticizing you and accusing you of doing things wrong, feeding that puppet with more puppet guilt, maintaining the puppet’s weakness and motivation to let her master pull the strings.

There is nothing much that is more intoxicating for a weak, submissive woman (W) than to make at least one other person weak and submissive to her. (This is why so many weak and submissive mothers make their boys- and girls- weak and submissive to them).

2. You interpreted her years long stint (still going on?) as a party girl: drug- enhances sex with random men as a lifestyle that “never sit well with who she is”. What if it did and does sit well with who she is. What if the vast majority of women in this lifestyle are not happy-go-lucky, and do get depressed, just like her?

What if she stayed in this lifestyle after the man in her life was out of her life, for a long time after, not because she was “very impressionable”, but because she enjoyed it, as simple as that, similar to drug addicts who enjoy their habit at times and continue in spite of the pain and depression in between their highs.

(And what if you wish you too attended parties like that).

3. “I’ve been going to therapy for about two years… I don’t feel like I’m the bad guy in general, but I do feel like she would never understand how I feel and would classify me as such”-

-by the pronoun she, you meant W. I am thinking the pronoun may mean your mother/ parents, projected into W. I am thinking your role as the good sibling, the good daughter, motivated to compensate your parents for having a bad son (your brother) did not match who you really are. I don’t mean that you are a bad guy. What I mean is that you had to pretend you are too good. And you knew that you are not as (unrealistically and unnaturally) good as you presented yourself to your parents.

I think that it is this early knowing, that you are not as good as you presented yourself as a child, that is fueling your decades long, by this point, doubting of your own nature, fearing that you are the bad guy.

“When I was a teen my brother started to bring troubles and I felt it was my obligation to bring my parents joy, so I tried to meet all their expectations and compensate for my brother’s flaws”- a teenager doesn’t know moderation. To compensate for your brother’s flaws, or badness, you had to be overly good.

Your parents failed to see that this overly good role was going to hurt you in life, keeping you in a cage of sorts, a cage  of being-too-good .. for your own good.

Somehow, W embodies, for you, an authority figure, like a mother/ a parent. You project your earlier life major doubt about your goodness into her, wanting her to take away all her suggestions that you are a bad person and make you feel that you are a good person. It is as if your quest to be good is in her hands. And I suppose it has been in her hands for a long time. You can’t let her go, because if you do, you will be suspended in badness, or in great doubt in this regard.

Why is the matter in her hands, given she is evidently the least qualified to decide on your goodness vs badness? The only reason I find is here: “she makes me feel responsible for her well being. It’s not like she makes me believe that I need her to survive, she makes me believe that SHE needs me to survive”. I figure that your mother/ parents made you believe that they need you to survive your brother. In reality, you needed them to survive, as all children need their parents, not the other way around.

I figure you have projected your mother/ parents into W and you are stuck with her, waiting for her, as a parent figure, to take away your suspicion that you are bad and replace it with confidence that you are indeed, good.

In summary: resolve the question of you being good vs bad, and you cut off the strings holding you to this woman. It will free you from unrealistic expectations from yourself, to be overly good and allow you some of the comfort and freedom to be .. not overly good.

(The tragic accident you witnessed, as tragic as it was, I don’t see it at this point as relevant to the origin of your basic conflict of good vs bad, which I suggested here).

anita

Dear Maria:

In your recent post you wrote: “we both used to hang out with (sugar babe)… I did went to parties with them”. In your original post you wrote: “she then started to hang out with (sugar babe).. They would go out to parties”-

-why do you think is the reason you stated originally: “she started to hang out with (sugar babe)”, and not: we started hanging out with sugar babe?

(I am asking not for the purpose of making you feel uncomfortable, but for the purpose of exploring further. If you want to explore further, do answer me, otherwise, you are welcome to not answer).

anita

Dear Maria:

In your original post you wrote: “She then started to hang out with someone that wasn’t a very good influence”. In your most recent post you wrote: “I introduced them to each other when we were fresh out of school”, them being W and sugar babe-

– when you introduce information with a negative connotation, you take yourself out of it: she started to hang out with a bad guy, not you-and-her, only her, presenting it as if you didn’t introduce him to  her, as if you weren’t there.

In your original post you wrote about W and sugar babe: “They would go to parties.. use drugs and alcohol”. In your recent post you wrote about you and W: “we wouldn’t indulge in these things at the time. We were kinda naïve and young”-

– again, when there is a negative connotation, you take yourself out of it: it was them who attended those parties, not you. Then, a correction: you were there too.

In your original post, she got into drugs, alcohol and random sex right away, with him, going to those parties. Later on, a correction: you were there, but you and W were naïve, didn’t do drugs, alcohol and random sex.

Well, Maria- I can’t count on your account of the story. You are quite motivated to make yourself look good, take yourself out of bad-looking situations. I am thinking this is part of your good-sibling/ good-daughter/ good-girl role. This role has a significant element of retelling a story (your original post is the retelling) so to make yourself look good, and hand the badness to the others (W and sugar babe).

anita