Need perspectives on a friendship issue. This needs to be long to set the context properly - bear with me. 
I’m currently trying to decide whether to hold on to two friendships of about 12 years’ standing, or cut the ties for the sake of my MH, because I always come away from seeing them feeling crap about myself. This should probably be an easy one to call, but I suffer from a lot of self-doubt due to having been invalidated and gaslighted throughout my upbringing, which has tanked my self-esteem over the years - I’m 51 now - and unfortunately means that if people tell me I’m in the wrong I have a real struggle on my hands not to automatically accept it even if deep down I don’t agree.
Friend A: seems to genuinely care about me, but has a funny way of showing it. Is IMHO quite a moody person and prone to getting a ‘face’ on her. I try to discount it because I think it’s just how her face is a lot of the time, but she makes no effort to change her demeanour around others, which I find rude on occasions (e.g. sitting around with a face like a slapped arse at parties I’ve thrown, rather than either throwing herself into it or going home). Gets arsey if I try to discuss any problems I may be having (I try to limit this but, my life is difficult at the moment - caring for elderly parents who live with me and DH, my father has a life-limiting illness plus I have my own physical as well as MH issues, but I ‘ration’ how much I vent to friends about it so as not to be that friend who sucks all the energy and cheer out of a room - I’m not perfect, but I genuinely believe I’m nicer to my friends, and to others in general, than a lot of people are.) But friend A has a tendency to try to offer up ready-made solutions in a very ‘stern talking-to’ kind of way, then if I call her on being sharp with me I’m always the bad guy for ‘reading into it the wrong way’, gets in a huff, tells me I ‘obviously don’t know her after all these years’ if I don’t realise that her abrasive and aggressive manner of speaking is her way of showing how much she supposedly cares about her friends and ‘hates seeing them hurt’. Bit my head off and swore at me on our last get-together (for my actual BIRTHDAY) after a scenario arose like the one I’ve just described.
Bitches about friend B (see below) a lot, but goes frosty on me if I myself ever need to vent about B, who is a challenging person to have as a friend. Has bitched about me to B behind my back too on several occasions that I know of, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened just as often as she bitches about B to me. Bitchy and judgemental about other people too, and slags off any POV she doesn’t happen to agree with. It just feels such a school-playground and childish way for a woman in her fifties to be behaving.
Doesn’t seem to ‘get’ who I am as a person. Doesn’t get my sense of humour (not her or my fault, but it enters into my reckonings, as shared humour is a make-or-break kind of thing for me). Has a habit of saying ’that’s not you’ whenever I do or say something unexpected, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she doesn’t really know me at all, because I don’t allow her to, because her above mentioned snapping and sharpness make it difficult for me to trust her to open up. (I battle a lot of issues with anxiety and depression these days and am really not interested in ‘tough love’ from friends unless they actually have something new to say to me, otherwise I’d just as soon they try to be kind. I haven’t actually even told these two ‘friends’ about my MH issues, as they already twist everything around to be my fault, and this would just intensify that behaviour to the power of 1000,000 - everything I said and did would be twisted around to being linked to my MH in some way.)
Friend B (in her late 40s): well-meaning but has really poor social awareness/social skills in my experience - utterly tactless, considers herself about 1000 times more attractive and sophisticated than me (and, I suspect, than Friend A - funny thing that I’m the only one out of the three of them who is married) but can’t hold down a relationship for more than two or three dates, and has few friends, due to her social ineptitude. Obsessed with restaurants, as is friend A, it’s impossible to get together with them socially without one of them insisting on ‘a bite to eat’. I’ve mentioned I don’t much enjoy eating out and suggested we do other things from time to time, and they assume this is because I a) can’t afford it and/or b) am only interested in drinking. Neither of these things is actually true. Fact is, I struggle a lot with eating in front of other people because my asthma gives me atypical breathing patterns which can lead to my ‘inhaling’ food rathe than swallowing it, with the result that I eat very slowly, and am invariably the last person to finish eating, at which point everyone’s attention turns on me, which is really fabulous for my anxiety as you can imagine. (On a related note: friend B thinks that because I’m from the north of England I don’t know how to hold a fork and couldn’t possibly have known what a restaurant was until I met her - she used to ‘advise’ me on what to order every single time we ate out).
When friend B is challenged on something she’s said or done she’s never in the wrong… ‘What? I was only saying…’ ‘I was just being honest…’ etc.
Know for a FACT that she’s referred to myself and friend A behind our backs as her ‘square friends’ which is the world’s biggest laugh as she’s not exactly scintillating company herself. Pretty sure she sees me as her fat unsophisticated friend who she likes to feel superior to. Topics of conversation include her finances (in embarrassingly frank detail), the meals she’s cooked recently, her car, dates she’s been on and why they’ve gone wrong and why this is always the other person’s fault, things friends have done to piss her off and why this is never her fault either. Tends to hog the conversation to talk about herself, giving others little chance to participate. Spends a lot of time reading out texts people have sent her, off her phone, verbatim with zero condensation or abridgement.
Like friend A, friend B doesn’t seem to ‘get’ me at all. When called out on anything she’s said/done, tries to turn it back on me, apparently I’m ‘ultra sensitive at the moment’ or ‘lashing out’ if I ever dare to actually mind anything anyone says or does… then I get the sympathy/pity treatment… anything to avoid admitting to any wrongdoing on her own part!!
I’m someone who always tries to be agreeable around all my friends as far as possible and not bang on too much about my problems, but I’m starting to think I’ve gone too far with that as so many of my RL ‘friends’ always seem to treat me like this, it’s been that way most of my life, and it’s only now with my DH’s help that I’m starting to spot the pattern and rail against it somewhat. Unfortunately because of my depression and my upbringing, I tolerate crappy behaviour from friends for too long, I’m easily gaslighted, and by the time I actually get around to calling people out on stuff, it’s too late, they’ve got me fixed in their minds as some sort of meek and mild doormat and they turn nasty if I ever dare to step out of that role. More to the point, I always feel like some sort of bumbling idiot around these particular friends. They have this habit of looking blankly at me when I say things, like they think I’m completely on a different planet, in fact I’m convinced friend B thinks I’m not all there.
I’d just like to point out that this isn’t paranoia: everything I’ve said here has been based directly on things that have been said and done on multiple occasions over many years, enough for me to see a clear pattern. I’m very honest with myself about my mental health, and whether it makes me paranoid etc. It can make me challenging company, but I do what I can to minimise this, and I am 100% certain I’m not being paranoid about this, and I’m definitely not imagining the things I am describing.
I’ve kept this out of AIBU (and have NC, even though I very strongly doubt either of them is on MN) because the whole thing is sensitive and I don’t feel up to being pummelled with AIBU-ness, so to speak - but am I being unreasonable to say the friendships I’ve described above have toxic elements and would be better severed for the sake of my mental health? Looking at everything I’ve written above, it feels like a no-brainer, and I’ve already started distancing myself from them and focusing more on friends who are actually nice to me, but I need an objective view as I’ve had a lifetime of being invalidated and gaslighted and this makes it hard to trust my own judgement sometimes. If you’re still with me, thanks for reading this ‘essay’ and thoughts would be very much welcomed!