I didnt want to post this earlier in the week because I was in the office. I am in one of these "friendships" at the moment. At least, I would be if I hadnt wriggled loose and set firm boundaries.
This woman wants to be friends, she is in her mid 30s and unmarried and evidently lonely. I like her as a colleague and respect her knowledge. But, in our friendship, she always wants to have the advantage, to the extent where she will abandon something rather than show that I have more knowledge or experience than she does.
She has given me loads of things, but it is very hard to get her to accept any gift in return. This puts me at a permanent disadvantage in the relationship.
Whenever we do anything together, she always takes the lead by force. Instead of arranging stuff together, she goes on the assumption that she is the leader. She cannot say "Let's meet at x." She will say something like "I will pick you up at x." when both of us are on foot.
She has also identified many areas in my life that could be improved, and has given me advice on how to improve them, which is basically doing the same as she does. In the children's friendship that frieda has described, I would say that the equivalent would be Frieda's dd playing a game where she pretends to be her friend.
This friend of mine has also commented on what she sees as my character flaws - she has told me that I am weak, not tough enough, and that I let people walk over me. (Well, I don't win every time, but that is largely due to dx dumping so many of his battles on me at the moment, and having to deal with everything in French or German.)
One of the areas where she has tried to establish superiority is in knowledge of German (we both work in Germany). She started by translating things for me, until I had to be firm and tell her that I understood them perfectly well. However, I am almost sure that the reason she has not signed up for the free German classes that are a benefit offered by our company, is because she would not be placed in the advanced class, but instead in the intermediates like me, and would thus show that her German is not better than mine. She has gone to great lengths to try and persuade me that it is.
Now, she is not a problem to me because I have had experience of this sort of thing before, and am old enough to get out of it. But I think that Frieda's daughter's friend sounds like a junior version. I do feel sorry for this child, but, at the same time, I think Frieda is right to be concerned about the relationship. Her dd could be made to feel that she is inferior, and undermined in many ways. What Frieda has described is not just billy-no-mates, but someone who has no friends because she doesn't know how to treat them.(I was billy-no-mates at primary school myself)
I think I would definitely try to make sure that they end up in different classes. That way, they can still be friends, but at a distance from each other. If the friendship becomes a burden to Frieda's dd, she will have some space to back off.