Haunted by my ex-best friend after she tried to ruin my life.

[LOrchid]

It's been about 4 months since I discovered that my "best friend" had been following a private blog I created to deal with my anxiety/depression. I started writing it last year under a pseudonym to express my feelings and doubts. I wrote about my life, my insecurities, my relationships and my struggles with my body-image. It was all very personal stuff that I since regret detailing, but I was under the naive assumption that it was completely anonymous.

Then 4 months ago, she let something slip that she couldn't have known about unless she read my blog. After pressing her, she came clean and began laughing and revealed she had not only been reading my blog but she'd been sending screenshots to all of her friends and they'd been laughing about it together. I was mortified. She then started getting angry at me for things I'd written about her (I never named her but she connected the dots). Basically we had a lot of arguments over the last year and I felt like she was constantly manipulating me (turns out I was right). But she just laughed at what I'd written and said that I was unhinged and that I was oversensitive.

She then took things one step further and confronted my boyfriend with very personal things I'd written involving him, including my doubts about marriage, my worries about settling, and my sex life troubles. She wanted to destroy me and justified it by saying I was a fake and user all along and that my boyfriend deserved better. She had never been happy about our relationship since the beginning and she was so smug about being "right all along".

It's been about 4 months since then. Obviously I have cut her out of my life, but it still haunts me daily. Me and my boyfriend have talked a lot and he's been very understanding and supportive, which has made me realise that I do love him and want to work on a future together.

But the last words my ex-friend said to me was that s will always know I'm a fake and they feel sorry for my partner because I'm clearly using him. She also threatened to send him more screenshots so I'm always on edge now.

I'm trying hard to put it all behind me and work on surrounding myself with happy people and making memories with my boyfriend, but I'm always thinking no matter what I do "I'm just a fake, she knows the truth, I should just put my boyfriend out of his misery". How do I stop these thoughts?

Oh wow what a thoroughly nasty thing to do! People who abuse other people's privacy are usually narcissists. They don't believe other people have a right to privacy.

The best way to handle it is to totally cut all contact. Block, delete. If you don't feed a narcissist they do go away eventually.

Once she's out of the picture you can start to rebuild. But it'll take time, it's a huge huge betrayal- give yourself a break xxxx

Also read as much as you can about narcissists... the more you understand why she did what she did and how fucked up she is the mire you'll come to realise this has no bearing on you as a person. It's all her insecurities making her the way she is

Thanks for the kind words. Sadly, she doesn't believe she violated my privacy because she says that I put it all out there for her to see. I think she could have discovered it accidentally but its the fact she continued to read it on a daily basis for months while still speaking to me like normal without saying anything, that bothers me.

I've always thought she was a bit of a narcissist and hoped she'd realise how hurtful she can be sometimes. But now she can go the rest of her days feeling smug about the fact she was "right" and I'm the bad one. It just feels unfair x

I think you need to just let her go.

She sounds like the type of person who will just move on to someone else now and that it’s unlikely she will even give you a second thought now that she’s out of your life.

TBH online blogs etc are difficult. I’m not saying that what she did was ok, it isn’t, but in truth if you’re going to put something on a public platform about someone then you should be aware there’s a chance that they will read it, and identify themselves from what you’ve written. And it sounds as if you’ve made yourself fairly identifiable.

Perhaps you should consider keeping a personal journal rather than a public blog.

The internet is a public platform, and there isn’t always anonymity behind a username.

She shouldn’t have read it but I could understand the temptation if she had come across it accidentally. Sending screen shots however is a really low blow. She will never see her own behaviour because she feels like you disrespect her and that means she is justified in any actions after that.
I hope you are cutting off the ‘friends’ she sent the screen shots to as well. They are a bunch dicks the lot of them.

She is a nasty evil person. It's hard for you to get over this and I understand that - but realise that you are the better person and it's her that is the problem.

I can also understand you feeling this is unfair because she is being smug about it and believes she is 'right'. Can ou try to think that 'she goes low - I go high'? That is what I read from your post.

She's the loser not you x

btw the rest of your friends mocking you (according to her) are just ass bad and they are probably worried about someone who could do such a thing and might be nice to her face but in the background could NEVER trust her.

Take care.

Sadly, she doesn't believe she violated my privacy

@LOrchid it honestly doesn't matter what she believes, if you feel violated that she has. Block her number and on social media and move on you don't need poison like this in your life.

You've wrote many posts about this ex friend. Just let it go. Block her and don't have anything to do with her. If you see her out in public, raise your head and act like your not bothered.

Yes, I do understand now that I was silly for putting all of that stuff out there. I got quite attached to the idea of having other people read about my life and offering me advice. It gave me a lot of reassurance, but now I am trying to resist the urge to speak to strangers (aside from this post) and speak with family instead. In fact, I'm only writing this now because I'm in lockdown and these thoughts are troubling me.

I do get her temptations to read it, but it's more the fact she used it as a way to hurt me. A real friend would have approached me right away and said 'hey, I saw your blog and you've written some things that hurt me, can we speak?' instead of go straight to my boyfriend with 'evidence' to try and break us up. I think it threw her off when he actually got mad at her instead of me.

I have also blocked the friends she sent the screenshots too and feel just as hurt by them as I do her.

Don't give her another thought. She was never your friend, and you're better off without people like that in your life.

Learn from it, see it as something which pushed you to face your problems rather than blog them. Work on your relationship and health. Maybe document things in a private diary rather than on a public platform (for which you have to be pretty thick skinned.)

Whilst, assuming this is true, she doesn't sound like much of a friend, you do know that there is no such thing as privacy if you post stuff to the internet. If you wanted a private diary, then that is what you should have had. The minute you put it out there, it became "not remotely private" and it was your choice to do that. And if you wrote about other people, and they happened to come across what you had written (although I am struggling to see how that is possible on an anonymous and private site) then even if everything you say about them is true, you can hardly expect them to be very pleased about it.

In future, if you want privacy, perhaps not posting your thoughts on the internet might be a good idea?

Why didn't you just deny it was your blog? It's not too late, it she mentions it again just flat out pretend you don't know what she's on about? How on earth did she come across it anyway? The internet is a huge place with millions of blogs out there, how unfortunate she's linked one to you.

Clearly it was not a friendship because you have both acted like children - you for posting stuff that was clearly easily identifiable bitching about your 'friend' and her being an utter arse screenshotting and sending the pics on to people. Be glad she is no longer in your life and try stabilise things with your boyfriend and stop posting identifying things online. NOTHING online is a secret.

OP, you have posted on this site that you have doubts about your relationship, that you have nothing in common with your partner and wish you could just leave him and travel to other places.

And now you’re saying that you’ve realised you love him after all and want to make the relationship work. All in a matter of a couple of weeks?

And you’re pregnant as well? How pregnant are you?

Hi op

Really sorry this has happened to you

Ide like to point out that whilst you think that everyone she sent it too must have been laughing about it.

There is a every chance that a majority of right thinking people think she is off her head and a total shit. People like her are few and far between luckily, and also tend to think that others around her agree with her every utterance.

Real life tends to work differently, I imagine a few of her cohorts are aghast at her doing this. Also you can rest assured that your honest words about her actions and character towards you have hit a nerve.

The truth hurts op as she has found out, don't give her another thought, but maybe use this as a catalyst to get some much needed therapy once this lock down has ended. 💐