Needing to end a 20 year friendship and I'm terrified

[pianoplant]

I've had this friend since college. We met when we were 18 and partied A LOT together. I had a huge binge drinking problem (sober from booze since 2016!) and was "that person" at every single gathering. Toxic female friendships are a glaring pattern in my life starting with my mother, but I won't go there in this post. I don't believe this friend to be a narcissist, but she has a lot of strong tendencies leaning that way. I'm a classic people-pleaser and freeze/fawner type, and she has exploited that to her full advantage.

Almost 20 years ago, she cyberbullied me with a pretty awful post on social media. She posted something about me that is flat out false, and she never mentioned me by name, but we all knew who she was talking about. She rallied the troops behind her, everyone believing something about me that was never true, and I never said a word about it (something I am deeply, deeply ashamed about). I numbed myself to the situation (I have a history of severe bullying as a kid) with booze and carried on with life. We have not spoken about it to this day.

About 14 years ago I went through a divorce from my abusive ex. From the moment my ex and I began dating, she was jealous. She's even admitted that she's a jealous person. In the beginning, my ex love bombed me, and I was so in love the red flags didn't even register. She and my ex developed an inappropriate friendship. I genuinely believe nothing ever happened between them physically (I actually trust my intuition on this one), but they ALWAYS danced around that boundary that was waaaay too uncomfortable for me. Their friendship was 100% inappropriate. But my ex would accuse me of being jealous, yay gaslighting! He'd throw things at me like "Oh so now I can't have female friends?" "You do know she's married right?" Chuckling, talking down to me like I was a complete idiot. If I attempted to bring up their friendship with her she'd accuse me of being a bad friend, how dare I.

When my ex and I got divorced, she played both sides of the fence, She claimed to love me as a friend and acknowledged how awful of a husband he was, but she didn't end her friendship with him. She said "You can't tell me who I can and cannot be friends with." The thing is, I never tried to. I just needed my ex out of my life, and if she was going to keep him in her life, he was still in my life in some way. And my ex knew this too. He * loved it. He loved the control. During our divorce, those two resparked their friendship and she was more of a listening ear to him than me.

Basically, I NEED to end this friendship. I'm terrified. She will screen shot and share any message I send her. If I explain its because of the two main issues that I wrote above, she will be "disappointed" in me that I didn't tell her these things at the time. She will immediately talk * about me to all our mutual friends (but tbh, the mutual friends we have were also not good friends to me either, so whatever). But she's so triggering for me. I feel like I'm so easily manipulated into believing that everything is my fault, and she KNOWS it. She uses it against me. I just need her out of my life. I know this sounds juvenile, but I'm scared of her. She can be both your best ally, and your worst enemy. But I need my dignity back.

Has anyone else ended long-term friendships over indiscretions from over a decade ago? Please any advice. Maybe this is no big deal for other people, but I need support. Thanks for reading.

[Armee]

Hey. 

It does not sound juvenile at all to me that you are worried about what will happen if or when you end the relationship.

You also wonder if anyone else has ended a friendship over a decades old transgression. But her transgression is not singular and it is not limited to things that happened a long time ago. It's an ongoing pattern. I personally wouldn't worry much about giving her a reason that she will then use against you. Just let it grow apart. Don't respond to messages. Maybe start slow like just small short resposnes when she engages you (gray rock) and then transition to not responding to most things to not at all. Have excuses if she wants to get together. There's no need to give her ammunition to use against you. You get to protect yourself. I know ghosting isn't the best but this person does not act like a friend and has shown how she will respond.

[Kizzie]

I agree with Armee, you really don't need to explain anything to her (and as they say a lot over at our sister site Out of the FOG, "don't load the drama gun"). In other words don't give her anything at all to aim at, just be neutral and boring. It's called "Gray rock" and is a great strategy where basically you slip further away quietly and without triggering what sounds like narcissistic behaviours. I say that because a friend is not someone you should be afraid of. No worries about her BTW, they always find others to feed off.

I was so scared of my NM I could not function and in the end I knew it had to be her or me and I chose me. As hard as it seems I highly recommend you choose you. There are lots of members here you can share how you're feeling as you let go of her. We get it and can support you because so many of us have been through it.

Good luck!

 

[NarcKiddo]

The others have beaten me to it. In your position I would not formally end the friendship, especially if there was danger of blowback or nastiness involving other acquaintances. If you don't have specific ties, which you would if you had joint assets or had a business together, then I don't see the need for a formal "clean break" if you can't achieve that easily. Of course you may just want to draw a line under things, for your own sake, in which case you may be prepared to take any fallout now for the sake of certainty ongoing. But it may be more comfortable if you are able to become boring as anything and let her think she is the one deciding to get out of the friendship.

There are loads of polite ways not to engage and plenty of pretty excuses you can use if the grey rock way out appeals.

[storyworld]

I am so very sorry for your pain and fear. I don't have any words of wisdom to offer, and see others have already shared insightful thoughts. I just wanted to say I can understand how all this must feel, not just because of the abuse you suffered from your friend, but also how this friendship sounds to have triggered wounds from your childhood as well.

[pianoplant]

I appreciate the replies everyone, thank you.

[Kizzie]

Oh yes, I forgot a useful acronym I use with Ns.  It's JADE and stands for: don't Justify, get Angry, Defend yourself or Explain yourself. Stay neutral and don't get sucked into any of their deliberately provocative behaviour. It really does work although it took a bit of practice for me to get good at.

[Chart]

Hello everybody, I just received an email from one of my closest friends just last night which I interpreted as hostile, agressive, judgemental, hypocritical and infantile. It really triggered me and now I don't want to reread it for fear of deepening the triggering. I was actually feeling pretty good for a few days, at least until my ex contacted me last week wanting to "talk" and now this friend has lashed out at me... There are more details but I've found this thread and it helps me to "think" through the idea of ending relationships... I broke up with my girlfriend last September. It was a trauma crisis. I totally lost my head and logic and all my suffering from childhood rose to the surface like a tsunami. I'm still awash and far out at sea. No idea what will happen with my ex. I cry over her all the time. So two close relationships are now leaving my life. Not sure how I'm going to handle it all. I feel totally empty... and scared... but all that's not new. Thank you for listening. The advice in this thread has been helpful and I'm going to meditate on it. I hope pianoplant that things are working out for the best. I think what you're doing is very courageous. It's hard to let go of toxic relationships when consumed by doubt and fear and there's nothing to replace it with... or at lest the only thing to replace it with is ourselves. I send you love and support. It's so hard to be tough. I'm just not constructed that way.

[Papa Coco]

Chart,

(I keep trying and trying and trying to write shorter letters, but once again, I feel like I really want to share my experience with you so you can truly grasp how much empathy I have for people who are living through things I've also lived through. Please forgive the length of this letter. I just want to tell a story that shows how deeply I know the fear and pain that you must be going through right now).

That's some very deep wounding that you are going through. I know the fear you are feeling, and I empathize deeply with you right now.

When relationships end, whether lovers, or friends, or even workmates leave our lives, pain is there for most people, but for those of us with attachment disorders that come along with CPTSD, the pain is exponentially off the charts.

That JADE acronym that Kizzie talks about sounds right. My therapist has coached me through situations like this a few times over the years.  He teaches me to love myself through the pain and do my best to not give in and go back into the bad relationships just because I don't want to feel the pain of how they ended.

Pain is going to happen when a relationship ends. For us with CPTSD that pain is tangled up in fear. That fear comes from having felt abandoned or disrespected many times during our earliest years of life.

I'm glad you reached out here on the forum. By our posts and words and through our empathy, we can show our support to one another. That support is important as you deal with feeling the pain of a broken relationship. If you have to feel this pain and not give into it, you can reach out to friendlier friends, so you don't feel so alone during this grieving process.

Here's why I empathize with you so much right now: I've been where you are and I know how much it hurts:

In 2010 my FOO was crumbling. I'm from a big Catholic family who all loved and hated each other. Family gatherings could be the most fun days, or the most horrific, depending on who might show up in a self-righteous mood that day. It was chaos. Unpredictable. My little sister and I wouldn't even make our spouses attend family gatherings. We figured we were born into the mess but they had a choice and didn't have to endure the undercurrent of hate covered over by laughter and conversation.  One of my sisters, 11 years older than me, was a chaotic monster who used sociopathic lies and half-truths and rumors and gossip to always keep the family in chaos. My brother, 8 years older than me, was her main puppet. Her sidekick.

When our little sister couldn't take the cruelty of the love/hate chaos anymore, she ended her own life. My mother became so riddled with guilt, she willed herself to die only months later. Dad was riddled with dementia, so the evil sister and her sidekick swooped in to make sure they could get him to change his will so they got everything and the rest of us got nothing. I nearly went insane, because, as awful as my dad could be, I loved him. And I wanted to help take care of him. But these two monsters in my family kept making up lies and pushing me away. They'd set traps. If I gave him anything, they'd make him watch as they threw it away. They'd alter emails I'd write, print them, and lead him to believe I was threatening them. But they were fabricating these emails and he was believing them.

A rule everyone needs to live by is that ANYTHING a narcissist ever says is a confession. When a narcissist accuses you of anything, they are confessing their own crimes but casting that crime onto you instead of themselves. My sister was constantly accusing me of trying to help Dad so I could get to his money. (Meanwhile, she was robbing him blind while "taking care of him."). My brother, who could easily be called an "idiot" without anyone challenging the label, believed every lie she told and did everything he could to "protect his poor, unloved sissy poo". He wrote something he called The Letter of Truth. He warned the family that he was writing this and it was going to be the big whistleblower letter that was going to set the whole family straight. Like he was some kind of a hero coming out of the mist. I KNEW that letter was going to be filled with lies, one after the other, and that it was going out to the entire family and family friends. I was terrified. I've been destroyed by lies so many times that I can't even watch movies today if the plot includes liars hurting innocent people with gossip. I get so agitated I have to turn off the movie or get up and leave the room.

My family believed those lies so often that waiting for that letter was like waiting for a hurricane. When the letter finally entered my inbox, I was so depleted I was gray. My face was gray. My mouth was dry. My heart was pounding. My stomach hurt. I did not open the letter. I deleted it. I was not using Gmail back then, and all my emails were going into my hard drive, so I dug around in the deleted folders, and I kept deleting it until my computer warned that if I hit delete one more time, that email would be unrecoverable. When it asked if I really wanted to proceed,  I hit the "yes" and as the unread email went into the abyss, I felt the weight of the world lift off me.

I'll always be morbidly curious what that idiot wrote about me and about how unfair the world was to him and his puppet master. But, even now, 14 years later, I don't think I could bring myself to read it if  someone were to resend it to me.

I had no choice but to go No Contact with that entire family shortly after that. I was insane with fear and disappointment and abandonment. I couldn't believe my own family would cast me out with so much cruelty for just a few hundred thousand dollars. But they did. And I couldn't find a way to accept it, so I left.

I can say that my life has improved in many ways since I left them to their meanness. And BTW, these two were able to take Dad's money and leave him penniless. I never saw a penny of it, but I'm sure the family has been told that I got it all. Who cares? I've moved on.

But moving on came with a lot of pain. I got through it. I didn't let the pain drag me back into those ugly relationships. I had the support of a good trauma therapist.

I hope that we, on this forum, can be that kind of support to you right now. I know how painful it is to receive those letters and to have to break up with girlfriends, or family, or friends, because of their selfish inabilities to love anyone but themselves.

You'll be in my thoughts all day today. Please keep in touch with us on the forum. We may not be able to hug or sip coffee together, but by our words, we are connected through a common traumatic journey.

[Chart]

Papa Coco, your story fills me with horrible sadness but even more sad I know what you are telling is completely true. And I can say with confidence that you are an incredible person to have endured that trial and emerged through it all with your sanity and dignity intact. You inspire me. Truly. So many things have risen to the surface of my consciousness these past six months. I am dumbfounded. I constantly doubt what I am seeing, perceiving and experiencing regarding the behavior of others. I try to let go but I am haunted. It's like a chapter is closing, and the characters won't come back... and those characters were once my beloved friends. And through it all the question turns over and over in my mind: perhaps it is all me, My fault! I am the one in denial, the racist, the narcissist, the egocentric... As an extreme codependant, I cast myself in their colors. What they are I take on as myself. I did this with my mother. Now I realize I've no idea who I am. This is why so many of us cptsd sufferers prefer to stay alone, no? I just want to crawl into a hole and disappear. There is no one I can trust, least of all myself. Sorry, I'm waxing negative. This morning I sought out another close friend for aid... and he brought me even further down (he's a racist and cannot for his life see it). But that's not what I want to say... I have a question: Why when I am confronted by my close intimate relations toxicity do I immediately doubt my judgement AND immediately begin wondering the following: "If THEY cannot see the truth of their own behavior, perhaps I can't see the truth of my own behavior either!" Somehow, deep down, I must be worse than them... (And I'm constantly counseling others (even on this forum) to "trust themselves".) Why can't I apply to myself what I encourage others to do for themselves? Frick it's hard. Perhaps I am exhausted... Pete Walker talks about the mental fatigue of healing, just how much corp energy it takes to overcome the incessant pounding of our dysregulated lower-brain functioning. Indeed... Ok, I'll stop now. Soon sleep. But a last little note to try to end positive: this afternoon I tested and inflated my parasail 🪂 for the first time. I've been dreaming of parasailing for over thirty years, but never actually believed I would ever do it. Two weeks ago, I stumbled upon a guy selling his for way below the true value. He was happy to let it go to someone who would appreciate and take full advantage. That was me. This afternoon I began the process of familiarizing myself with getting the big sail up into the air. No flying, just practice with the sail in the wind and control it on the ground. I had a light wind and despite the sail constantly crashing to the right and left I felt so very happy to be on my way somewhere new, and free, and finding my way into a dream I never thought would happen. Wow indeed. There is light through the cracks of my trauma. Thank you papa coco. Thank you all on this forum. We will find new ways to both escape AND come home. Gros bisous à vous tous... and sleep tight 😴

[Papa Coco]

Chart,

Oh my gosh. I know how it feels to not trust oneself. I have been accused of so many things I didn't do, that from childhood on, I thought maybe I was doing terrible things and then forgetting I'd done them. But THAT is exactly what Gaslighting is designed to do to a victim. Gaslighting is a method of altering truths so often, every single day for years on end, so that the victim no longer even believes themselves when telling the truth. I always say that if you accused me of being the person at the grassy knoll when Kennedy was assassinated, even though I was only 3 years old at the time, I'd believe you that I must have done it. I was so routinely accused of being the reason for my sister, brother, mother and dad's mistakes that I just grew up thinking I couldn't believe my own thoughts or memories. I'm not completely healed from that even to this day.

My thoughts about your questions about whether you can trust yourself. You asked: Are you the racist? The Narcissist? The Egocentric? I usually follow the rule of the paranoid. Anyone who thinks they might be paranoid is automatically NOT paranoid. A person who is truly paranoid honestly believes they are being stalked.

True racists will never ask themselves if they are racists. Same with narcissists, egomaniacs, etc.

I also believe that the unchallenged life is doomed to repeat itself, and that challenging one's own beliefs and behaviors is the pathway to becoming the best kind of person.

By the fact that you question yourself, you're demonstrating that you are none of the above.

When I read the book The Sociopath Next Door by Dr. Martha Stout, I saw many of my own behaviors listed as the behaviors of a narcissist. Not because I am a narcissist, but because I was taught by narcissists how to behave in life. So I learned that love was conditional. I learned from my Catholic family that it's normal to talk about others behind their backs. I learned how to manipulate people with a few tricks. I was not doing it because of wiring, it was because of training. When I saw how narcissists manipulate I immediately removed those behaviors from my toolbox. Now that I know where the line is between overtly convincing someone of something versus covertly tricking them into doing what I say, I can't even stand the thought that I ever behaved that way...ever.

I liken it to the fact that I'm not much of an athlete. So I've never been a basketball player. However, I've been known to shoot hoops by myself every now and then just to relax.  So, if I'm holding a basketball and throwing it through the hoop, am I a basketball player?  No. So if I learned to use sympathy to get what I want, am I a narcissist? No. A narcissist does that, but just because I did it (until I learned how wrong it was), that didn't mean I was a narcissist. Just because I shot a few hoops that doesn't make me an NBA player.

I used what I learned about narcissism to examine myself and improve myself. The examined life can move on. The unexamined life continues to offend.

It's a sign of higher intelligence that we ask ourselves if we are bad people. Self-examination seldom happens for nasty people. Self-examination is what makes us grow emotionally and spiritually.

I quote one of Maya Angelou's amazing phrases a lot. I've probably even used it while writing with you. "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." Maya Angelou. True narcissists don't even understand that saying. My nasty sister used to have an email footer that said, "I take the skeletons out of my closet and dance with them."  Only a flipping monster would say something like that. She was always so proud of the nasty things she'd done other people. She only married once in her lifetime--to a man she stole from his first wife. During her younger years she used to have affairs with married men, then she'd somehow give our mother's phone numbers to the wives, who would call my mother and beg her to get her daughter to leave the husband alone. Mom had severe anxiety issues, and my sister seemed to think that was fun to do to her. Even as a teen, in a big Catholic neighborhood where families of 5 to 12 children needed babysitters, when she was 13 she'd babysit the neighbors' kids. One day, Mom was cleaning my sister's closet and found a big stash of stolen jewelry and trinkets. Mom had to go to these neighbors, apologize all over herself and return the goods. My sister liked that. Those were some of the many skeletons she enjoyed dancing with. There was a time when I was shopping with her. The married man that she stole and married was very wealthy. She walked around with a check book that had over $30,000 in it in 1981. We were picking out screws to fix something in her house. She was putting them in her pocket. I said, "We're suppose to pay for those." She laughed and asked, "Why? Nobody saw me take them." That's a narcissist. To this day, that monster probably still thinks that is funny. She took my inheritance. She bought a house with it. I don't have the ability to fight her, so I just let her have it. That's a narcissist.

One more note, That is so cool about your parasail. I had tried Kiteboarding. I bought all the equipment and spent several Saturdays learning how to kiteboard. I've since given all the equipment away because my knees are so bad I can't do anything like that anymore. But I am happy to see you are enjoying the wind and the sails now. Sailing, kiteboarding, etc., is so peaceful. What I enjoy about wind power is that it is propulsion without any sound or exhaust. It's peace on the water. Sailing is exhilarating for me. I rigged one of my kayaks to be a miniature sailboat, and I used to love to get out in the worst weather and splash about in the waves at about 6 knots just by pulling on the lines and moving the rudder. So much fun. No noise. No motor, just movement.

I hope you have a blast with that parasail!

[Chart]

Sorry pianoplant, I feel like I've highjacked your thread! Just so you know your topic/this thread has helped me immensely. I've just read through it again. Hadn't noticed papacoco's response either (I'm sure there's a gremlin in my 'Alerts' script Thank you so much papacoco! Can't say it enough. Kizzie, this forum REALLY helps... Really. Re-reading threads is like I'm transported back to (often) a triggering event or situation, but the forum members' responses "bind" up the event in relational language with support and advice that is sooo genuine and helpful. So I can remember the event that was traumatic but am "grounded" by the energy coming from the group here, who really understand... THAT makes such a difference.
I can't say it enough... thank you all.