Am I being mean about the "supersweet" friend?

If she wants to be a martyr let her; "oh I'll just have tap water", you reply "ok".

She says "oh I won't come then", you reply "ok, see you later".

Stop letting her yank your chain!

I feel sorry for her.

The salad thing is super annoying, I agree. And also quite a weird thing to do, especially in front of people she doesn’t know. It doesn’t sound like something that comes from a place of anxiety. It sounds more performative.

I can’t bear performatively “nice” and “sweet” people who don’t have any opinions or personality of their own and expect to constantly trail along in other people’s wakes. It’s actually often highly passive aggressive: it’s a way to force people to tolerate you because they never give you anything to identify with, either positive or negative. I often find with these people that when you peel back tge onion layers of “niceness” they are usually manipulative and feel “entitled” to friendship because they are “nice”.

A lot of women unfortunately do this because they have been brought up to believe that being “nice” means never getting in anyone’s way or having any of your own thoughts.

I know a lot of people can’t really help it but it makes me want to shake them. If you never have a genuine thought of your own you don’t really earn your place in a society. Woman up FFS.

You need to nip in the bud the notion of coming next year as if that happens she will be expecting to join you every year

My MIL is like this. Always offering to help or do things that quite clearly are unhelpful or wrong in some ways, never helping in ways that would actually help. Especially when asked, then she finds a way to not do it. So weird. I agree it's passive aggressive. 'I'm so helpful but you never let me help!' My DH does it a little too, but can recognise it at least.

I can see a mix of someone who isn’t used to putting themselves first, and a lot of performative people pleasing to seem like the ‘nice,
placid one’.

I was raised as someone who was made to believe their wants came last, and it has got a lot worse since having children. I plan everything around everyone else to the nth degree, the moment anyone asks what I want, my mind goes utterly blank. It’s easier to say you’re happy to do whatever anyone else wants, because what you yourself want to do is never at the forefront of your mind.

The ice cream thing is irritating, once should be enough to say ‘he doesn’t enjoy that’. I have children with SEN and it gets exhausting having to explain that they have limited tastes (not ice cream in their case unfortunately 🤣). And the wanting to give a toddler her dinner is just odd, that would irritate anyone in terms of performative ‘niceness’.

I can see why you’re irritated. I’d probably have snapped a remark by the dinner incident.

Reminds me of Martin's mum in Cabin Pressure

MARTIN: Good. Milk, one sugar still?
WENDY: Oh, just however it comes.
MARTIN: It comes however y... Fine.
(Pouring of water.)
WENDY: Oh, give me the chipped mug.
MARTIN: Well, I-I-I could do that, or we could both have mugs without chips!
WENDY: But I don’t mind the chipped mug.
MARTIN: I-I know you don’t mind it, but ... Fine. There you are. Already-being-made tea, however it comes, in a chipped mug. Just the way you like it.
WENDY: Dear, you-you’re very good to... Oh, Martin. You’re having coffee!
MARTIN: I know.
WENDY: I’d have had coffee.
MARTIN: Mum, two things: you don’t like coffee; and you’re not allowed to have coffee!
WENDY: It would have been fine.
MARTIN (loudly): Yes, absolutely fine, except you wouldn’t have enjoyed it and it might have given you a heart attack!
WENDY: I’m sorry.
MARTIN (apologetically): No, no, Mum. I-I-I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m sorry.
WENDY: No, it was my fault. I’m sorry. I-I just don’t want to be any trouble, that’s all.
MARTIN (plaintively): I know. That’s the beautiful irony.

Sorry wrong quote

Know what you mean but haven't heard this in a long time.

She reminds me of a divorcee we have in our social group who goes out of her way to please everyone. She makes conversation with each person when she arrives, does all the tea and coffee making and washing up and tells us all how shy she is. It is embarrassing how she puts herself out to fit in. Just not your fit. Neither of you is right or wrong. Just keep a wide berth of her.

Sounds like your personalities just don't mesh well together.

I'm not sure what you want from this thread really - are you wanting everyone to validate that she sounds really annoying and say it's OK for you to not be friends with her? It's a really unpleasant thread.

If you don't want to be friends anymore then just cool off and don't invite her again. You're not 13.

She does sound meek and overly self effacing, but you sound full of suppressed anger - I think it's a bad combination. She has probably spent time with someone who got angry with her if she didn't submit 100% to what they wanted, and she learned to appease them by effacing her own wishes. The more she senses your anger, the more she will try to appease you, but going the wrong way about it.

Just meet up for a few hours once a year and you'll get on fine!

She doesn’t sound sweet, she sounds bloody exhausting.
I read it as constant attention seeking under all the self deprecation and ‘don’t mind me’-ness.

It's not a big deal, she is who she is, just don't invite her on holiday again.

And another thing…. Can you tell she’s annoyed me?

Taking a plate of food to a child is bloody insulting to the parents/ adults taking care of them. As is pointing out she would pay for the ice cream as if you wouldn’t.

You don’t need to have children of your own to know these things are rude and suggest you know better and the parent is slacking

I don't understand why you would invite her in the first place.

I think her inferring that you don't want to pay for the ice cream is your interpretation though. I doubt that was the intention but its how it came across to you.
I know people like this, and they were actually a genuinely nice person - but quite shy underneath a gegarious personna and a little socially awkward. e.g. constant praise for really tiny things all the time "wow, its so clever how you though to get juice." I found out they had been reading a book about love languages and this was a type of "love language" they were trying to use.

In your friends case, she is probably a bit out of herself due to the divorce, it can knock your ability to socialise with others, position yourself, sideways so I would cut her some slack. (She could have been flirting outrageously with random men, going on and on about her ex, crying everytime she sees another couple etc. Its fine to find people annoying - but I don't think its fair to attribute malice to her actions.

I'd just tell her each time that she's being silly

I don't agree at all with the people saying she seems sweet and kind to try buy a child an icecream or give another child her food, she sounds like she has a mental illness.

No, it isn’t kind, but she’s not thinking about you or your child or the hungry toddler at all.

She’s thinking (probably from a place of anxiety, low self-esteem, and people-pleasing, which doesn’t make it any less irritating), ‘How should I behave to appear generous, flexible, self-sacrificing and to make everyone like me?’

If she weren’t concentrating solely on this, and was paying more attention to other people, she’d have picked up on the chocolate/icecream thing, realised that giving a salad to a toddler who wanted chips and would get them in a minute was ridiculous, and that volunteering to stay home from an expedition planned specifically for her was deeply irritating.

But people-pleasing often has the effect of pushing others away, because it’s very clear the ‘recipient’ isn’t getting an authentic version of the other person at all, just one calculated to please. And often getting it wrong, as in this case.

god people like that are irritating as fuck - incredibly hard work & frankly manipulative.