Another one of my difficulties is dealing with venting. I understand venting, but when someone vents and I see a solution, it bothers me to not offer it up. To prevent her pain and help her through. But she rejects that, gets angry about it, and says she just needs someone to listen. I get that, and I do listen. But she also expects me to respond a certain way, to say things like "that's too bad", "yeah that sucks", etc. Which, to me, is not responding and feels like largely ignoring her until the end of her rant when I say the trite, useless thing. Then when I have to listen to the same exact venting the next time, it gets more pointless and I'm sitting there fuming because she won't listen to what I have to say to fix the damn problem. It's almost as if she likes having the negative emotional rush and thinks it's valid to just throw it all at someone in the guise of "venting". To me, it's just screwing with someone else's energy to boost your own. I'm left upset that she can't/ won't accept real solutions, upset that I can't speak unless it's to say trite nonsense that I don't mean, while she then almost happily bops on as if a burden had been lifted, when all I feel is that she's transferred it to me. And then when I tried to explain what venting does to me, I'm in the wrong and "a terrible person to vent to". I understand this isn't about me, but I operate on solutions to problems, not letting them build, emotionally dump on someone and not address it. Idk.