Pachyderm,

You asked me:

Do you know anything more about your friend's life that would help explain why she acted the way she did?

Actually, yes. Looking back, I think there was transference going on with my friend on I, on both sides. But I only see this in hindsight after much therapy and giving it a great deal of thought.

I think that when I was so deep in depression, and this woman came to my aid, that my attachment needs from childhood entered into the picture. The depression had brought back the memories and needs of the past, when I had suffered traumatic events and my mom did not respond to help or protect me. Perhaps I made this woman a mother figure and then looked to her to rescue me from what seemed like a current trauma (my marriage problems).

I also think my friend had transference going on. She'd had a daughter who had suffered depression and had been suicidal in the past. She'd had a husband who in the past had left the religion and they divorced. I know she was still very bitter toward her ex. I would guess that her fears about me committing suicide and my husband blaming her and suing her really were unresolved feelings from her past. Perhaps years before, when her daughter was suicidal, she feared she would commit suicide and her husband would take her to court and blame her. I can see now how my hospitalization could have triggered this reaction in her.

I can also see now why my friend may have reacted the way she did when I chose to stay with my husband. My husband quit the religion several years ago, and my friend viewed him as a bad spiritual influence on me. I think that when I revealed to her my spiritual questions/doubts, she felt that my husband was taking me out of the religion along with him. However, I think her reaction was based on her own prior experience with her husband and daughter. When her husband left the religion, the daughter left too. Perhaps she felt that her husband had become a bad spiritual influence on her daughter, and that her daughter was siding with/choosing her dad instead of her. So these feelings got transferred onto my husband and me. Because of this, she began viewing me as a bad spiritual influence on her and assumed I was leaving the faith, making me choose between the relationship with her or with my husband.

I've thought about this alot, and that's what I've come up with. I think there was transference going on with myself and my friend, based on our own unresolved issues from the past. I wish so badly that I had known then what I know now.