If by honest and direct, your friends just mean plain old rude, yeah, that sounds pretty discouraging.

I don't really have any great advice for this situation, but I can commiserate. When my friends do things like that, I often find that I would rather just end the relationship. I feel like talking to them about it won't make any difference because they are the way they are, you know? To me, it's like my options are either forgive and forget or stop seeing so much of them. Eventually I get to a point where I've 'forgiven' so much that the other person is just using me as a toxic waste dump and so I end the relationship. It's a lot better now that I've recognized my tendency to do this!

Your plan makes sense to me. I wouldn't want to stay with the friend who launched into the tirade and it sounds like it happened a while ago, so it's sort of late to bring it up. It's also good to be aware of how supportive you are vs how much support you receive. Things are never 50/50, but there really should be a balance over the years.