People pleasing: I need someone to talk some sense into me

[2blond34]

I had a thread a few weeks ago about a 'friend' who asked for a favour, i couldn't do exactly what she wanted and suggested an alternative, and friend went silent on me. When I posted the thread, I was trying to resist the urge to get in touch with friend and say i could now do the thing she wanted, because I was feeling really uncomfortable with her being unhappy with me. Not sure if this will link to original thread. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/3872628-How-to-maintain-boundaries-when-you-are-a-people-pleaser

Anyway, a couple of weeks went past and I hadn't heard from 'friend' so i sent her a casual message to see how she was doing. I got a curt reply about her being busy, which is unusual for her as she is usually very vocal about all her problems, and seemed to me to be a bit passive aggressive. So like an idiot, instead of just stepping away and leaving her be, I tried to be nice and suggested we have a catch up virtual chat. However, instead of this being a straightforward, 'what about Wed?' ' yes, that's good / no how about Thurs' interaction, turned into her giving vague responses, which again is unusual for her. In the end i left it to her to get back to me.

Now I feel awful again. I keep having 'if only I'd done what she asked originally, we would still be friends and we could have had a nice chat one evening' thoughts. I know from the advice on the previous thread that I just need to sit with these thoughts but I am so uncomfortable with 'friend' probably being annoyed with me. Can someone with healthier personal boundaries tell me how they would deal with this?

That's exactly how she wants you to feel, how dare you not do exactly what she wants when she wants it! Next time you will.
This is a very common tactic with users and abusers.
In reality you have done nothing wrong and she has done you a massive favour by showing you how little you mean to her and how horrible she is.
Do yourself a favour and delete her she is not a friend

Having no friends is better than feeling like this 💜

When you start putting boundaries after being a walk-over, you will lose people - the ones who are users. She's one of the people you need to lose.

You set a perfectly reasonable boundary and she didn't like it. She is annoyed and she's giving you the cold shoulder treatment - but that's OK, because she's not really much of a friend and never has been. This is her true colours showing. A decent friend would have shown a bit of sympathy because you weren't feeling too great, as I recall.

You put friend in inverted commas in your OP. I think you know she isn't your friend. We all had friends like this at school, who had the power to put you on the outcast step if you did not fall in with her plans or who did not agree with her. As we grow up we see this for what they are and we avoid these people like the plague.

Time to delete her. Stop being her pawn.

Turn it around: if you had asked her for the same thing, and she'd come back and said she wasn't up to it right then but she'd help out by email, would you have got in a huff and cut her out? Or would you have shown a bit of concern about her and thanked her for the offer of help by email?

It feels awful. But you need to sit tight through these feelings because ultimately it will feel so much better to do what you want and not what other people want all the time. Treat it like any other uncomfortable feeling you have to get through, like period pains.

You need to step back from this friend a true friend would not make you feel this way, I’m sure if you step back at some point down the line in time that friend will realise how much you do for them this may be hard but try to stay positive you clearly go completely out your way for others and deserve to be treated better, it isn’t nice feeling like people are upset with you but keep telling yourself you have done nothing wrong at all

I hope you start to feel better soon x