Friends that actually make you feel bad about yourself

[ditavonteesed]

My bf for more than 15 years goes through phases where she will basically tell anyone we are out with stories of what a knob I am or how stupid I am or how drunk I was. Basically anything I have ever done that she doesn't like will get told to any friends of mine. The rest of the time she is a lovely friend who I love dearly. She does have a lot of stuff going on in her own life so I understand things are hard for her.
I realised I stopped going out at all about 2 years ago and it's not that I don;t want to go out it's that I don;t want to go out with that friend, I am on guard the whole time and waiting for the stories to start. Plus I daren't have any fun as I know it will be used as the next story of how ridiculous I am.
She quite clearly really doesn't like me but then will try and make out that we are inseparable to any strangers.

Makes me feel like she is embarrassed by me and wants everyone to join in laughing at how useless I am and what a treasure she is to put up with me. I do realise this is not intentional and she would be upset if she knew I felt this way.

I don;t see her much or hear from her much unless she things there is something wrong with me (I sometimes struggle a bit with busy life asd dd etc) and then she phones me with this sympathy voice that is so fake and plasticy like she is wanting me to be struggling so she can fix me.

She has a lot more money than me and is always incredibly generous, paying for lots of things and buying the dd's lovely presents etc.

Anyway after a night out a few weeks ago I have been through every emotion going, I woke up the next morning really angry, now I am back to sad and anxious and not able to work out what I have done. The whole night she was making digs at me, finishing with whispering 'your drunk but we love you' in my ear, I wasn't particularly and other friends have confirmed that I was fine, also it was my birthday.

To alleviate my anxiety I have tried to word this thread so that if bf was to read it I haven't said anything I wouldn't say to her if I had more confidence or was able to deal with confrontation.

I would tell her. So what if she is upset? You are upset now. She may well take a long hard look at herself and then realise she has been being a bitch and be sorry.

Pocketsaviour has it spot on.

She's a nasty bully, using you to bolster her clearly fragile ego, at the expense of your peace of mind and happiness.

I wouldn't try and explain/talk it out etc, just withdraw from her. She won't change, she'll probably just turn even nastier as you've taken away her punchbag.

I consider myself a good friend to people, but now, as I get older, I don't stick with people if they make me feel bad about myself. It's hard to do at first, but so much easier in the long run.

Send her a text. Say you have ended the friendship, block and ignore. You get your power back. Don't tell her why. In my recent experience f this type of friend they don't deserve explanations and your friend will blame you anyway.

I wouldn't even bother to send her a text.

Just act disinterested. If she mentions a night out then tell her you need to consult your diary and get back to her. Leave her dangling. It will confuse her in the same way that her behaviour confuses you.

I think the quicker you disengage the better. Agree with comment upthread that there are lots of low level bullies around. I am generally a nice person person but have had to deal with varying levels of shit behaviour at work. After many years of making people try to understand I now realise I am wasting my time and move on. Life is much easier.

It will be her loss.

I couldn't ghost someone. I'd feel it was cruel in these types of circumstances. Unless there has been illegal goings on. If she harasses you, you have proffered you ended the friendship . Also write please do not contact me again.

Proof* I feared my friend would come to my door of I ghosted her.

I had a friend like this about a decade ago. Used me as a prop and a sounding board. I knew for a long time that it was because her self worths quite fragile. Id let her get away with dome serious shit when we were younger cos i coild see her life was hard. Some bad stuff happwned to hwr. But she always needed to be top dog and often deliberately overstepped boundaries just to show she could and used me to create stories. I tried engaging her on it but never succeeded . Then i inadvertently got through her stuff and she cried and cried about the fact that me and an ex from long ago both knew she'd split us up because she was jealous but had decided to put it behind us. It was so wierd she was on and on about how much we must hate her and I was a bit stunned. I had been a v long time ago and we were teenagers. Everyone does shitty stuff when they're 15. We were 30 then. And yes I was angry and upset at the time but by the time we were 30 it was irrelevant. Anyway i was shocked at all the tears and self -recrimination.

Anyway after that she went jn to overdrive with me. I guess to cover up this thing that she now knew I knew. She got more snd more vicious finally the penny dropped for me. So I left the friendship behind. Much better this way.

I don't believe that anybody would feel better about themselves by intentionally making someone else feel bad unless they were a psychopath

This is how i like to view the world but i used to know someone (with low self-esteem) who made herself feel better by belittling others. She once told me that lying to people is ok as long as you get pleasure from it, and that she liked one particular work colleague because she was easy to wind up. She wasn't a psychopath, it was just her way of protecting herself. The best way to deal with people like this is to remove yourself from their environment.

Sorry I went on for ages. What I dhould have said is. If wasn't until I got tidy of this friend that I realised how damaging it had been to be treated badly. Even tho I had a pretty good idea why she treated me badly and thatit wasn't my fault. The treatment did damage. Now I try to assess much more how someone behaves to me rather than work for hard to understand them