[Wants2Fly]

There are some interesting threads on this forum right now, and I have a friendship matter weighing heavily on my heart, as to whether I've ended a friendship in an appropriate way, and whether I need to take any further action.

During the 1980s, I had a friend whom I met in a codependency outpatient treatment program. She is seriously bipolar. Although she is attractive and educated, she is a little overweight and a lot needy. Her relationships with men do not go well, as a rule.

At first, we struggled with relationship issues together. Then I became involved in a committed relationship with a man. However, we were very poor. So poor that it was struggle to keep the bills paid.

My friend has a very successful career, as well, apparently, as some family money from here and there. She owned her own home, cars, could afford nice vacations, etc. While my beloved and I were scrambling to keep a roof over our heads.

She wanted to talk endlessly about her men troubles. But there was no sympathy whatsoever for what we were going through. "Can't pay your bills? Don't know where your next meal is coming from? Damn shame. Now, can we talk about something really important -- my romantic problems?"

Eventually, my beloved and I moved to another state, and I let the relationship fall into an exchange of Christmas and birthday cards.

When we moved back, I resumed the friendship to some extent. However, we were both busy. She now had a relationship in her life, and seemed happy and together.

However, then she decided that her bf, who has a very small business, didn't earn enough, wasn't going any place and she asked him to move out.

And the man troubles started again.

Some time thereafter, my own life fell apart, as I watched health, career, and my own relationship go down the tubes. By this time, she owned a 4-bedroom house and lived in it all alone.

She was now caretaking a 93-year-old aunt, and struggling with issues about using up all of her aunt's savings on health care -- bec. she sure needed some of that money to pay for her new, big house.

So I figured, okay, she is dealing with issues of life and death; I am only dealing with issues of keeping a roof over my head. So I will listen. And we were on the pity pot together about men issues.

She would hint that if I ever really needed a place, she would let me rent a bedroom temporarily.

Finally, that time came when I had to leave my house while finishing out the last 5 weeks of my employment contract. But she was too "emotionally fragile" to follow through on a place to live. 15 years after the first time I dropped her, she still had no compassion for what money troubles does to a person.

Her aunt had died. My friend had been warned that the aunt might die if she removed some forms of health care, but she did so anyway. With her aunt gone, she was now back in her bf problems. I said I really could not help her with that -- that I was dealing with homelessness.

I didn't return several phone calls. Eventually, I wrote her a letter that was as gentle as I could make it, saying that I had been feeling distant from her for quite some time, that I was sorry about that, etc. It was a very careful letter that made me responsible for my feelings.

She wrote a letter back that said that she wasn't going to let me "guilt" her into offering me a room by using a word such as homelessness. Oddly, at just this time, I channel surfed into a discussion by the National Coalition for Homelessness -- and I'd used the word entirely consistently with their definition. It does not mean only people who are living outdoors or in shelters, but people like me, doubling up with friends and relatives, moving from place to place, without a permanent address of one's own.

She told me that I didn't "have" to sell my house -- making herself the complete judge of my legal, financial, and emotional situation. She added that she knew that she probably shouldn't be making so many "you" statements -- and she has an M.A. in psychology -- so she jolly well ought to know that this is not "fair fighting."

And then on the outside of the envelope she scrawled that she didn't have time to write a neater letter.

I was so angry. In fact, I am angry just rehashing all this! How dare she tell me that I must monitor every word I use to be sure that I don't use one in a way that offends her (such as homelessness), whilst she can make any judgments she bloody feels like. Of course, she has done this to her ex-boyfriend, calling him something like 12 times in a row to leave frenzied messages on his answering machine when she was mad at him.

I waited 2 months to call her. I thought I could be calm and explain how I felt about her letter. But I wound up being angry and accusatory. And she said, "I don't have to listen to this."

So I called back and very calmly asked, "So where do you get off writing me a letter like that and then making yourself unaccountable for it?" There was a very, very long silence, as if she expected me to be angry again, and then she hung up.

I have come to think that the relationship only works in 2 situations: (1) If I am in a good place, or at least a better place than she is in, and I can be the giving friend or (2) we are in pity pot dysfunction together.

Sometimes I want to get in touch, try to have a more civilized conversation about the letter she wrote to me. She is not a bad person, and neither am I, and friends with whom one has a long history do not grow on trees. There is something to be said simply for having a long history with someone.

So that's it -- what should I do? Let the situation rest. It is over. Try for some kind of better end? I don't know.

[allautumn]

For a person who seems to have no empathy and take advantage of you, you sure seem attatched to this woman.
For a caring person like your self, it's hard to draw a "goodbye" line, especially since you are back in the same area again. You want to give her the benefit of the doubt, even while she is abusive. She hasn't done anything to show that she genuinely cares about you, hasn't been reciprocating. She focuses on her own pain and turns you away when you could clearly use a hand up, and she's got room to spare. She sounds selfish, and uses her schooling and psychology jargon to put you down. It's hard to let go of someone that has been in your life for so long, even when they are no good for you. I think you are doing the right thing for your self by staying away from her. Look out for number one right now.
There's just no way to make some people see how their treatment of you has affected things until they start to get the cold shoulder when they come back for more. Even then, they are feeling remorse for what they have lost, not what they have done wrong. Some people do not have the ability to feel for others. If you go back and try to make nice, she'll have an in with you again. The cycle is stopped when you stop letting her in and she realizes she can no longer get what she wants from you. Good for you for standing up for your self. You don't have to feel guilty for doing what is best for you.

[lenjan]

I had a longtime friend I met in college. I was standing outside the lecture hall, talking to a friend, waiting for the professor to come open the door so we could take our communication law final. Donna, who apparently knew the person I was talking to, but had no clue who I was, ran up in between us while we were talking, turned to me and said, "Tell me everything you know, NOW." Rodd laughed and I thought that took guts and one thing led to another and we got to be friends.

After college, I had my little interlude in Texas -- the only good thing that year produced was my son. I was living on a friend's couch, was making $3.35 an hour at McDonald's, and couldn't take it anymore, so I called one of my old roommates who lived in St. Louis (where my parents had moved while I was in TX) and asked if I could stay with her for a while. She said sure.

My mom sent me my savings bonds to cash in and I bought a $140 train ticket to St. Louis, and there I was. My dad came to pick me up at the station. I hadn't spoken to my parents for about a year and had left home in a very bad place.

I got to Beth's, which lasted about 6 weeks before they (she was married) got sick of me sleeping on their couch. So off to my parents' it was. They made me so f'ing miserable -- I paid them more rent than I paid for my first apartment, they wanted in a say in who I had over and when I could come home, etc -- that I swore to myself I would sleep in a cardboard box on a sidewalk grate before I would EVER ask my parents for help again. I got a job, figured out to the exact day when I would be able to move out, and that is the exact day I moved.

Donna came over the night I got to my parents'. They were going out, so we ordered pizza and watched videos and chatted. We met in college in 1987. I moved home in December 1988. Between then and the time I left for grad school in Milwaukee in 1999, we were inseparable. We saw each other through bad relationships, each lost a parent to cancer, were shopping buddies, I helped her buy her first computer and teach her how to use it. In other words, we had a history.

A couple of years ago, I sent her an email she objected to. She said that just because she'd done something I didn't like a couple of times, I shouldn't bring it up again every time the same situation came up. I called her a hypocrite, which she was, because she would always come back to a situation that happened in 1987 and not let me free of it, or admit that I was a different person in 2002 than I was in 1987.

That was the end of it. Haven't heard from her since. Have thought about getting back in touch, but I sit and ask myself, "Do I really want to bother?" Because truthfully, she was really hard to be friends with. She's a very angry person, and very narrow-minded, and you have to walk on eggshellls around her all the time because you never know what will set her off.

So I think about: Friend for nearly 2 decades .... vs. .... do I really need this? I want to get in touch with her just to say, "You know, I kind of miss you. Have you changed any?" ;-) She was always wonderful with my grief over my son and I would like to share with her the joy of finding him this year. I think about that a lot. But I keep thinking about how much harder it was to be her friend than to just let it go.

I got a Christmas card today from someone I've known since 5th grade. I also got one from my 8th grade social studies teacher, and from my next-door neighbor from ages 3 to 18. I'm in touch with no one from high school and 1 person from college, one person from an old job, and my dearest, truest friends I have found in the 7 years I've lived in Milwaukee. Old friends can be lovely -- but newer ones can be just as good, and they have the added benefit of the maturing you did in the years before you met them, so that you have a better chance of having healthy relationships.

WHEW. Sorry for rambling. Hope it made some sense.

Candy