Intense friendship then 'dumped'

[KateNicole]

A few years ago, I got involved with a woman who was very warm and charming but very fickle. She was very complimentary (not just 'that's a nice top' but really thoughtful, intimate observations 'you have such an amazing gift for x/y/z' etc). Sending little checking in texts constantly. Or if you were getting a flight at 12.30, she'd text at 12.25 saying 'have a good flight'. It was like being under a warm spotlight and feeling really cared for. It also felt different to my other friendships.

I'm not saying she wasn't genuine. I think in the moment she was, and our friendship meant something. She quickly got bored though and moved on. Gradually it dawned on me that she had the ability to be like that with anyone and that there was nothing special about me !!! (who knew!!)

I've always prided myself on being able to read people but I got totally sucked in and really thought I'd found some kind of female, BFF soulmate.

A few years on and I still have days where I feel a bit flat. Which is ridiculous as there was nothing wrong with my life before and certainly nothing lacking. It was like she breezed in, threw glitter all over me then breezed off again. Not gonna lie...I felt used and I felt like a bit of an idiot.

Has anyone else ever experienced anything similar?

I have. Made me feel so good and then moved on after a year. She's now doing the same to another lady that I know after about the same length of time. It hurt at the time but she's the one with the issue. I've made genuine friends since while she remains a social butterfly.

Not from a friend, no. Is there a name for a platonic version of love bombing?

@Sn0tnose

Not from a friend, no. Is there a name for a platonic version of love bombing?

Just about to say its love bombing often done by narcissists initially. How did it end?

Did you respond in kind?

People like that don't understand friendship.

I was friends with a woman. It was really, really intense, like a message every ten minutes from 7:30 in the morning to 11:00 at night.

Unless her real friends turned up in which case radio silence for days.

I ended up severing contact because it was just too much and she'd get offended when I didn't answer.

She had problems with her mental health and needed something no amount of friendship could solve.

She home-educated her daughter and they slept together in the same bed. She's was 13 at the time. I feel sorry for that child, she's going to really struggle as an adult.

Still I am a bit sad. I'm really lonely and I welcomed the contact.

Gosh "being under a warm spotlight" is a really good way of describing this.
I think I may have been on both sides of this scenario.
Firstly I have had a very similar thing but the difference was it was with a male friend. The warm spotlight is exactly the same feeling. Thoughtful birthday gifts etc. Then he basically ghosted me. This was five or six years ago. With hindsight I think he thought there was chemistry OR (more likely) he wanted to create chemistry so he had an adoring fan. Things changed, I spoke to a few people, saw his behaviour in a different light and realised actually he's a narcissistic idiot who's not matured properly. I feel a bit embarrassed for falling for it, BUT it took me a LONG TIME to get over it. I'm talking years. I think if I were to see him again (luckily he moved away) I would go out of my way to avoid him. There's a weird sense of unfinished business or closure but I don't want his fake spotlight back.
On the other hand, I have been a very very good friend to a few people. Checking in, thoughtful gifts, helping with their work/children etc. About a year ago I realised that during the lock downs it was only ever me initiating anything at all. So I left it. One of these friends then stopped me in the supermarket one day where we had bumped into each other, almost shouting at me for abandoning her. It was weird. I explained that I felt I had to pull back because there was absolutely no reciprocity and she didn't get it, didn't learn that I needed more (anything?!) from her myself and I didn't want to spend my whole life being her cheerleader. I see her very very occasionally from a distance and count myself lucky if she doesn't blank me.
I want that close friendship, the warmth and the thought but its actually very painful when it's not on an equal footing.

In the kindest way possible, if you're still feeling this way years later, have you considered therapy?

I've certainly been 'courted' like this on more than one occasion by new friends, but in two cases it settled down into a good, longterm friendship -- in the case of one friend, she'd just moved a lot internationally in her life and was very used to hitting a new place, looking around, seeing who she liked and making it plain she wanted to be their friend. The other friend is on the autistic spectrum and had just stopped making friends for about twenty years before we met, so he wasn't used to gauging normal friendship intensity.

I do think, OP, that you need to decide the terms on which you are willing to conduct a friendship -- I mean, even if someone is coming on very strong, you still need to decide whether you're up for that or not, just as you would if you were dating the person.

And yes, it is worth thinking about why this is still actively bothering you years later, especially if you're quite clear that there was nothing wrong with your life before you met her?

Reminds me of a narcissistic friend I had in my teens , and also of something Jennifer garner said after her divorce from Ben Affleck “ When his sun shines on you, you feel it. ' But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it's cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”
Makes me wonder if he has narc tendencies

I had it with a work friend. She made such an effort and I really felt we had a deep connection
We moved into different teams but stayed in touch. The next time we met she had a new best friend and I hardly got a hello

Yes. I have (had??) a friend like this. For a while I was very hurt when she moved on. We’re not “not” friends, else as just moved on, about 3 or 4 people now. She’s also very bubbly, a bit manic and always dramatic. Was great fun to be around.

I have some really lovely friends and maintenance friendships over the long term but what I will say is that friendship is reciprocal and if I don’t think the person is that interested I do move on. Eg, if it always is me to make the effort then there comes to a point where I do stop and wait to see if they contact me. This has definitely resulted in friendships drifting.

I once worked with someone just like this, it was like being a doll taken off the shelf, played with and then put back when she’d done.

Yes I had a friend like this, we would see each other everyday through a common hobby, hang out together, she was a positive influence on me as I am a bit of a worrier but she made me feel more positive, then things went sour, she started pushing me away and moved onto someone else. We had a big falling out a few years ago and I haven’t seen her since. I still miss her though even though things ended toxically.

I had a friend like this and had never experienced anything like it before even though I had, and still have, close friendships. I felt loved and valued and she made me feel really special. It was wonderful. As a rejected child with history I think in some weird way she was like some kind of mother figure even though she was only a few years younger.

Before I knew it, I’d come to rely on and need her and that’s never a good look. The worst were the radio silences. It’s not good when you know they are quite happy whether you’re in their life or not.

We had great and fun adventures together but it became a toxic friendship in the end and we cut contact. It was deeply painful, a physical pain.

Am I glad I met her? No. There are some people who do have that gift of establishing a deep, intense friendship while remaining coolly detached. A mutual friend also felt her magic.

So there are others of us who have been where you are, and maybe it’s only possible to understand if you’ve had that experience.

She was a few years older, not younger!

I had a friend like this too. It took me a while to cotton on. Hurt at the time but I'm over it now.

@Abracadabra12345

I had a friend like this and had never experienced anything like it before even though I had, and still have, close friendships. I felt loved and valued and she made me feel really special. It was wonderful. As a rejected child with history I think in some weird way she was like some kind of mother figure even though she was only a few years younger.

Before I knew it, I’d come to rely on and need her and that’s never a good look. The worst were the radio silences. It’s not good when you know they are quite happy whether you’re in their life or not.

We had great and fun adventures together but it became a toxic friendship in the end and we cut contact. It was deeply painful, a physical pain.

Am I glad I met her? No. There are some people who do have that gift of establishing a deep, intense friendship while remaining coolly detached. A mutual friend also felt her magic.

So there are others of us who have been where you are, and maybe it’s only possible to understand if you’ve had that experience.

Have you ever looked into codependency? It sounds like it may fit in your case. You mention her as a mother figure, that's not what friends are for.

I don’t know….I feel I’ve been the friend in a scenario like this.
I’m generous and thoughtful, I really love buying little gifts for others and nurturing my relationships. I have deep strong friendships that I trust with my life. It’s conditional though in that I need a really deep level of trust. If a friend ‘betrays’ me in terms of trust I can’t proceed with the friendship in any way, whatsoever. It’s just dead. Finished. I can’t even fake it and enjoy a coffee and ‘get over it’. It’s hard for me to articulate it to them because I know it’s going no where. It’s not so much conflict avoidant as absolute, so it doesn’t matter how much explaining is done if I feel the trust is gone.
It stems from a situation where I was leaving an abusive relationship and had ‘friends’ and who potentially put me at huge risk through their (to them) harmless idle gossip behind my back. In fact their chatter was dangerous. Now I’m super cautious.

Yeah
It lasted a few years though but then I got devalued and dropped hard
I then reflected on the sheer number of former best friends she had had who she no longer spoke to and wondered how I had missed the pattern at the time.
Her friendship could feel incredible. She was the life and soul. However she was also possessive, controlling and cruel. Never noticed that at the time either.

I think this is actually nothing to do with her. It's to do with the fact that when your self esteem drops and you feel crap about yourself, you latch on to an experience where someone who made you feel good turned on you and made you feel shit.

It's perfect fodder for perpetuating low self esteem, and low self esteem loves to perpetuate itself.

You need to sort out your self esteem. If you feel shit hot everyday, fully in charge of your life, king of the world, you won't care about how she treated you years ago, will you?

Just to give a view from the other side.

I could be your friend. I'm not, but I am in that very position where I've just had to detach after an intense friendship(online).

At the start it was new, interesting and entertaining. Especially during lockdown. After a while I was struggling with how much they wanted to chat. How they'd be upset if I couldn't chat as much as they wanted to. I still tried. Conversations became repetitive and so my engagement was dwindling through that, too.
The darker months have set in, and it's the time of year I tend to hibernate and isolate myself so I've told them I need space.

They would joke many times about how they were codependent and needed my conversations. They'd pop up sometimes just saying "I'm bored. Entertain me" and how "I forget you have a life outside of me sometimes"
I could handle that in a normal frame of mind, but as my mood starts dipping, it was adding unnecessary pressure that I could do without. So I detached.
From their pov, they probably view it how people do in the comments here.

Yes, happened to me - I started to notice that she was super best friends with loads of people - for a bit - so I began to back off, she went scorched earth on me and tried to destroy my other friendships - narcissist much?

I had a friend from school who is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder who behaves a lot like described in your OP. A fascinating person with engaging, interesting chat, who nevertheless cuts people out of her life at apparently random intervals. In the thirty years we were friends she did to me several times - came on intense with daily contact, then cut me out of her life after a perceived slight. She cut me off again about six months ago and I have decided I can't really be bothered to reconnect with her if she gets back in touch, as it takes energy from me when she subsequently decides to cut me off again and I find it upsetting.

In my experience, people like this are often anxious or needy and need someone to focus all their attention on....till someone else (usually a new relationship) comes along. A friendship shouldn't be that intense. You may have liked the attention, but it sounded a bit creepy to me. Also, you sound like you have quite low self esteem and as though you need validation from others. Perhaps try to work on that so you feel more comfortable in yourself?