I have a friend and we’ve been friends for a very long time. She’s funny, we have a lot of history, and she’s generally been a good friend but I am being increasingly alienated from her by the interrogations and questions I get from her about anything and everything.
I have gone through a number of really difficult periods in my life over the last few years. Instead of just being there for me and listening, she has to know, understand, interrogate and question every single last detail about everything.
A family member was very ill and we were having a horrific time and she questioned me so much about all the detail, it was as if she didn’t believe what I was telling her. She would say things like, ‘but you said this so that can’t be true because of x, y or z’. She questions things to the point of driving me mad or making me question my reality at times and makes me feel useless or a liar. At another point, someone else in my life was extremely ill and I thought they might die and the questions were thinly veiled concern about me but really in the end, all about how things would affect her and her family (long story) but ultimately not really about me. It almost pushed me over the edge and my mental health really suffered and I almost broke down. Another time, my child was sick and she wanted every detail about what was wrong, what the doc said, where the pain was exactly, was it this, was it that, what tests did they do, what else were they going to do etc. I don’t even think at times she really cares that much as she doesn’t really show that much empathy and moves onto the next topic often in a frivolous way.
The questions for detail are endless. To be honest, if she didn’t ask, I’d probably volunteer some of the information but I never get the chance as she will ask 100, often very invasive, none of her business questions for minute detail before I get the chance and that just gets my back up and really winds me up, so I’m at the point I don’t want to tell her anything or meet up much.
I also work with her (no option to change jobs) and it’s the same with work. She over analyses everything. It makes me never want to discuss any work related issues with her either or ask her to do anything as there are so many questions and it takes so long, I’d be quicker doing the thing myself.
She’ll also text me out of hours e.g. 8.30am on a Sunday morning, asking me about work related issues or requests for annual leave because they’re urgent for her, and because she’s not organised to ask me during working hours, even though I’ve asked her numerous times (kindly) to not ask me about work stuff on the weekend or out of hours. I’ve tried being brief and straight with her about that, she apologises then does it again. My phone is on silent now from 9pm to 11am daily due to this but generally feel I have to respond at some point but it puts me in a bad mood all day!
I’m demented, what do I do?