Close friendship turning totally toxic

[Smallblessings2]

NC for this as it is very outing.

I have a very good friend of 15yrs and up until the last nine months or so it was a supportive, enjoyable and comfortable friendship.

Last year she turned 40 and had a small party, despite being close she did not invite me. I questioned this at the time and she said it was a hobby group that had organised it for her.
She went on a trip of a life time afterwards with her dh and dc and I bought her a lovely gift and suggested we celebrate later in the year, all fine.

I later found out the party was much bigger than she expected/told me - all family invited too and other friends well beyond the hobby group but many friends were not invited. I was a bit sad not to share it with her, but accepted it is what it is.

Since then we have been meeting up, I have had a busy few months with work so not as often as usual. and she has been really different towards me since her 40th and I have no idea why.

It feels like she always trying to be one better now, she casually put me down a few times, criticised my dh and even corrected how I pronounced a word! Still hasn’t thanked me for her birthday present (it was an expensive and thoughtful gift) so that surprised me and I feel confused by her behaviour.

Each time I have seen her lately I have come away feeling really bad about myself and oddly ‘lonely’ which is not something I usually feel when I see good friends. I mentioned last night that things feel different between us at the moment, and tried to discuss it with her but she waved it away and dismissed it out of hand.

We ran into a mutual casual friend last night unexpectedly in the same place and it was oddly awkward for no good reason. Like a tonne of stuff that felt unsaid. My friend made a point of saying she hasn’t seen that much of me to the other friend which was so odd and weird to mention that. There was a low level tension.

What is going on here?
Can anyone shine a light on this kind of behaviour?

I am feeling increasingly uncomfortable with her, she won’t discuss it and I don’t want to overreact by dropping a long term, once lovely friendship, but I am finding that spending time with her is having a negative impact on me. It makes me feel worse not better, and her remarks make me feel unsure of myself and my life. I am usually an easy going laid back person and have no idea what I should do in this situation.

WWYD?

Cut her off OP x
I had the same with a long term friend, made a great effort for her 50th but came away feeling awful about myself, life is too short to not have people in your team who properly value you. Xx

Okay I give up! This is VERY outing 😬

The word was Kenya.
As far as I know ( I am sure I will be corrected ant second 😄) There are two ways to pronounce it, she made it clear her preferred way did not match mine.

It was an odd power move that left me speechless, so I simply repeated it the way I said it, and her lip curled a bit, and I wanted to laugh out loud because it was ridiculous! I then called it a night. I am not being pulled up like a five year old at this point. I have better things to be doing quite frankly 💪🏻

Hi OP
Just wanted to say I've been there I haven't seen someone who I thought of as a friend for life for 2.5 years and it hurts!
Was aware that my friend had lots of other friendships but I believed ours was a very deep one as we talked about absolutely everything and knew the minutiae of each other's lives.
Friend got a different job, we moved away and the friendship essentially died, not from lack of effort from my side.
I just came to the sad realisation that I cared about the friendship a lot more and that it meant more to me than it did to her.

It was starting to upset me that she'd suggest dates for meeting up that I'd agree with and never contact me about them.

Eventually I had to cut my losses and nearly 3 years on I'm getting over it but it has taken me all this time to grieve for what I thought was such a special friendship.
So you will get over it but it will hurt for a long while probably if you are like me.
I now wish my old friend all the best but I wouldn't want to be her friend again because I can now see how easily she could drop me and I wouldn't want to go through it again.
Xxx

I've noticed this thing happening with my old best friend from school, who similarly had a 40th birthday party and told me I couldn't bring along my baby. She said it was adults only but the only friend bringing a child was breastfeeding. (I wasn't).

Plus, I agree that even long term friends have a habit of turning. My friend had seen me go through a lot of bad health problems over the past 8 years, but after my 3rd baby was born in 2020, I became too much for her and she sent me a message in a Christmas card saying that she "didn't have time for my problems" and that I needed to find a different solution that might help me get better. 😳😱😫🙄

I was only doing the best I could breastfeeding, going through horrendous postnatal depression, and had very low iron ferritin levels, which had exacerbated my movement disorder too. She was so unsympathetic that I decided to stop the regular phone calls and to this day, we don't speak so much any more.

I think you need to distance yourself from your friend, and try to be happy with other people who will treat you kindly. 😊

What is going on here?
Can anyone shine a light on this kind of behaviour?

I can possibly because I do stuff like this. I would say though if she won't discuss it, you aren't going to find out. It maybe something big or trivial.

I can give you an account from the other side. I have a tendency to black and white thinking - I'm very loyal and expect that from my friends. So I'm either all in or don't want to know. This can cause me to cut people off if I flip from black to white. I'm not proud of this btw, I think it's a personal flaw but it's how I am. I can't control it.its sort of like getting the ick in a friendship context. I'm just telling you so that you can see sometimes this sort of thing happens because of the person rather than you.

The last time I had this was a person I regarded as a very good friend but was a bit older than me had a party in their home to celebrate a significant event. I'd sent a card and taken her out to lunch. I wasn't invited to the party and I later found out that a couple of local pseudo celeb neighbours of hers who she didn't really know that well had been invited. I was really hurt and my black/white switch flipped from this is a good friend to I just don't want to know any more. If you are going to invite randoms to your party and not me then obviously we aren't good friends.

Just like getting the ick in a relationship, the practical effect of my behaviour was just to cut her off because I felt a bit repulsed about seeing her. She was confused I could tell because she kept asking me to do things and I kept saying I was busy. and one time she said, I feel like you are keeping me at a distance which was true but I wasn't going to get into why because there was no point, saying it out loud sounded really trivial and childish (you didn't invite me to your party). the truth of it was there was no solving it because I now was repelled by the friendship whether it was irrational or not so there was no point in discussing it.

May not be your situation but offering it as a perspective.

If you aren't getting along with her at the moment then just stop arranging to meet up. No need to "cut her off" forever. Just cool it off and catch up again in 6 months. It sounds like you regard her as a closer friend than she regards you. It's hurtful and sad but not necessarily anyone's fault.

The Kenya thing is very telling. She pronounces it “Keen-ya” I bet?

I think it’s a class thing and she’s decided at some stage you’re non-U and has some new people she wants to impress who are. So she doesn’t invite you to social occasions etc. as you don’t fit the image she’s trying to convey.

These people are rubbish OP and should be put firmly in the bin.

Good friends do not do the things you have described her as doing. She is not your 'good friend'.

If it's Keenya/Kenya then Keenya is out of date and regarded as offensive because it is reflective of British colonisation.

The pronounciation is Kenya from president Kenyatta post-independence.

https://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question68308.html

Well there is the colonial and now considered racist/dated way and the modern way

How was she saying it?

Now this is interesting, because the pronunciation of Kenya is a very interesting insight into a person.

The previous widespread UK pn of ‘keen-ya’ dates from colonial times and is generally understood now to be outdated and more than a little problematic. The preferred pn is ‘ken-ya.’ If she wanted the former then you have an additional reason to start distancing yourself from her.

I have heard both Kenya and Keen-ya, anyone who corrects that must be a twat.

OP, it sounds as though this thread has been really helpful for you, and I don’t have much to offer other than solidarity. When I was in a vaguely similar position, I asked my friend and was told she was just very busy — but I could see her posts on FB etc, meeting up with other friends… So I just wanted to say I completely understand the desire to know what’s caused the ‘rift’ — knowing might not automatically solve it but in my case I felt it would be easier if I understood what had happened, and even if I couldn’t fix it, it would help me make my peace with it. However, I’ve had to accept I will probably never know ‘the cause’ (and it may not be one specific thing, of course) — and I fear that’s the case for you too. But it sounds as though you’ve come to some really positive decisions/realisations through this thread, so well done, you. And good luck!

Anyone who treats friendships like boyfriends that need to stop and start with clear endings are missing out. All these "cut her off" or "end the friendship" remarks from everyone are so overly dramatic.

Friendships can be way more fluid than that. We all have off days or times when we're hormonal or make the wrong decisions. Just take a step back for now and concentrate on people who make you happy. Just because your friendship has turned sour for now, doesn't mean you won't get it back at a later date. I wouldn't throw a friendship under a bus for the reasons you describe.

It isn't class.
It is pre and post colonial

Lots of very U people say Kenya as they understand that Kenya has racist colonial undertones

(PS if you were the person saying keen-ya then she did have a point and you might want to look into why the other pn is preferred. Obviously this wouldn’t cancel out all the other shittery).

You have tried to ask nicely what happened and she isn't engaging with that.

The only option left is to step back. Not dramatically, but next time she asks you to do something, text back: sorry, I'm busy. Even if you're not.

You're great, I'll be your mate!

Have you heard of transactional analysis? It argues that at any given time we are occupying one of three 'ego states' in our interactions with others. These are: parent, adult, child.

If we apply that lens to this dynamic it sounds like this friendship started in parent/ child mode with her in a position of power (parent) and you the more junior friend (child). These are complimentary transactions (though often not optimal or healthy) and can be sustained for years.

Over time you have grown into yourself and although you don't attempt to have power over her (parent), you appear to be firmly (and delightfully!) in adult mode. This is where personally I would want all my friendships to be, adult to adult.

But she is stuck in parent mode, hence excluding you, talking down to you and you're now stuck in a 'crossed' rather than complimentary transaction. These can't be sustained, at least not comfortably. If she won't talk this out with you in adult mode I don't see where else you can go, but I admire you for trying.

GRR

That Keenya has rascist colonial undertones

My friend was the one correcting my KEN~YA which was the way we were taught at school for obvious reasons to her KEEN-YA.

Her schooling was by far more superior to mine, so it felt like a pulling tank thing. She looked seriously put out when I refused to change my version. I just looked at her at that moment and wondered why I was sitting with someone like this. A moment of clarity of the picky judgemental superior side of her that is mostly hidden away.

You can give your child a new godmother. I know people who had several sets of godparents as the other ones drifted away over time.

Ah ha! The Keenya/Kenya thing tells you all you need to know! She is a raging snob!! Keenya is the way it used to be pronounced by the smart colonial set and people who still insist on pronouncing it that way are trying to tell people that they are old money/frightfully posh. But its outmoded and, to quite a lot of people, actually offensive. Plus it is insufferably rude to correct someone’s pronunciation.

This friend does not like the change in dynamic in your friendship and is trying to prove that she is somehow ‘better’ than you. Time do ditch, I think.

It depends. If someone says Keen-ya, it's reasonable to correct it because, as people have pointed out, it has colonial and racist undertones. However, if OP said Ken-ya and she corrected it to Keen-ya, then she's both a racist and a twat.

She has very obviously said something to this MCF as well as others about you that she has not said to you, either because she knows it's not as she has told it or she is too gutless to tell you. I honestly suspect it's the first.

As you have grown she has likely started to feel less idolised. As you said yourself, she has tried to keep you in "your place". You being able to call upon her at the drop of a hat, trusting in her to divulge at your low times, keeps her feeling needed and important.

She has no right to feel anything but happy for you when you tell her about your successes and she knows that. She knows others will think she's being ridiculous if she moans about how you being in a good place makes her uncomfortable so she has picked something to b*tch about and have others justify her.

When you bumped into MCF, it was odd... now amplify that to get some idea of how it would've been with a whole group of her friends at her birthday party. So you weren't invited.

She is happy to see you because she knows you're still a great friend and have value in being there for her but you still need to put in place or SHE is the one who comes away feeling bad and she can't risk that.

My advice is to let it fizzle. Appreciate your history and memories but make new ones with others who want to celebrate you and help you continue to grow. Do it in your own time. It's a large part of your life to let go of but if you value yourself, do let go.

Absolutely correct, however there is still a large subset of the UC who take pride in doing things the old school way. And if the OP’s friend is a bit nasty anyway she’ll be using it as a differentiator or point scoring. She doesn’t sound like a friend to keep IMO.