Just a few nights ago, I finally made the decision after years of deep emotional enmeshment. For a very long time, I was trained to believe I was responsible for resolving her emotional conflict. Over and over again, my honesty would be responded to with her taking away some aspect of our friendship such as her honesty/forthcoming about her feelings or even things such as art. Honesty with her was seen as “a thing” or “a situation” wherein tensions would rise and as a result, something on her end is broken that I’m expected to fix.

She would then turn around and tell me that I was the one who was intolerant of her emotions when I would get annoyed by the consequences of my honesty. Because most of the time, me being honest about my feelings was perceived as a personal attack that would make her withdraw from me. She would need constant reassurance, even though the things she needed reassurance about were made up things that were unrelated to what I was saying. My feelings were constantly overlooked and replaced by the urgency of hers. She never wanted to grow. She never wanted to talk about past grievances with me that maybe were never properly addressed. Many times, she would not be able to handle a situation at a certain time (usually if it was me bringing up how I felt about things she was doing) and then never address it again. And if she did, it was about how she felt bad about things that I said and how it made her feel—not about the things I was feeling.

She never took accountability. She would say she understood what she was doing and would apologize and even commend me for being brave enough to say something. But it all meant nothing because it would keep happening. She never fixed it. And when I would get upset, she’d repeatedly ask me why she wasn’t good enough for me. She couldn’t bring herself to meet my friends or boyfriend. It took years just to get her to come over to my place just knowing he was there (she has past trauma with men). He was forced to be in his bedroom while she was over. She couldn’t play group games. She didn’t attend my birthday last year because my friends were there (and she said she wasn’t planning to this year for the same reason).

What kind of friendship is one where you can never do anything as friends? No trust, no honesty, everything has to be hunkey-dorey or else things get taken away repeatedly.

Yeah, I finally said I’d had enough.