forum My Friend Is Being Weird (not the good weird) and I Need Help

Started February 24, 2021 by @King_Cyrus

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Alright guys, so I've got an odd predicament.

I've been told I'm good at being sensitive to others and incredibly compassionate. I've also been told I'm a jerk. I don't know which is true.

What I do know is that my friend is being an absolute spaz-case and has been for the past two months. She has anxiety, and since I can relate, I try to be patient with her, but she's definitely stressing me out and I'm not sure what to do.

Way too much has happened in the last two months for me to actually explain it all to you, but to give you a general gist: she won't stop asking me questions like:
"what if we weren't friends anymore?"
"what would you do if I stopped being your friend?"
"do you think we should stop being best friends for awhile?"

If she had never asked me questions like this before— or if she only asked a few questions like this— it would be fine. But the problem is that she has been doing this for a really long time. Initially it stressed me out and made me worry, because we are close and I don't want to lose her— but now, after having to answer the same darn questions over and over and over, I'm losing my mind. She also treated me really poorly lately due to becoming jealous when I got in a relationship, and during this time I sincerely thought we might've reached the end of our friendship. Thankfully we didn't, but even now that she's acting more "normal," she still won't stop stressing me out by acting… strange. I've tried talking to her about it and being honest but dear gosh I'm losing my mind and I don't know what to do to get her to chill out.

Before you say I need to reassure her, I have been reassuring her like crazy and it means nothing. I can't keep reiterating myself. I'm getting irritated. Please send help and Dr. Pepper.

Hello, ok so this is purely assumptions based on the info you gave, but here are some things I think could be the problem.

1. She might be scared of being left behind and losing the close connection you two once had all together. My reasoning being because you said she got really jealous around the time you started dating.

2. She did something and the guilt might be getting to her. Hence, why she’s asking you all those strange questions to begin with.

3. There’s an outside source that may be causing her to “act out”. (Another friend, family member, boyfriend, etc..)

4. She just might not want to be friends anymore.

If it’s not too invasive can I ask what happened in that two month period when this first began, and what she said to you when you tried confronting her about the whole situation? (I’m not trying to pry just get a better understanding, and if it’s too personal I completely understand!)

No, it's not prying! Thank you for your input so far. I am terrible at explaining things but will try my best.

Honestly, I think it's the first one, but no matter how hard I try to reassure her or what I do to show her that she doesn't need to worry, she still continues to act this way. Then she makes it hard by taking things way too personally and getting mad at me over things that were not intentional. E.g., I had been sleeping in really late for a couple weeks after screwing up my sleep schedule, and she knew that I wasn't getting up at a normal time. One day I woke up and checked my messages, and she had gotten mad and accused me of ignoring her. I have never ignored her before and she knew I was asleep; I pointed this out and she didn't have much of a rebuttal.

The two month period has just been so crazy that I don't even know where to start or how to explain it. Things were starting to get weird before that, but they really intensified right at the turn of the year, and even moreso when I got into a relationship. (She is in a relationship with someone though so I don't understand why me being in a relationship had to be such a weird big deal? She and I have absolutely 0 romantic attraction for each other. We love each other platonically and she's kind of like a sister to me.) Some of the things that I really noticed during the two months and slightly before were:

• Taking things excessively personally
• Twisting my words
• Constantly accusing me of being distant
• Being very pushy with her opinions and treating me like mine were stupid/wrong, even if she didn't actually say it
• Treated me like I was "changing" when really she was just pushing me away with her weirdness
• She seemed really judgemental
• Constantly talking about doing weird things (moving to another country, becoming a surrogate mother, running away to start a new life…)
• Intentionally picking subjects that I told her were stressing me out/giving me anxiety attacks and continuing to ask an inordinate amount of questions about said subjects

She admitted that a lot of the stuff she was doing was just to get an emotional response out of me, and that really irks me because it makes me feel manipulated.

She is my close friend and has been for two years; I don't intend to leave her behind. She should know this by now; I have been incredibly loyal, and even when she was giving me anxiety attacks everyday through the month of January, I was still there for her. I don't know what I need to do to prove this to her, because nothing ever seems to be enough.

I guess in summary: lately she's been acting like she doesn't even know me or have any faith in me. Like everything I've been and done for the past two years means nothing. She's been treating me different and it's weird.

Honestly I don't even remember what she said when I asked her about it because she has said so many things it makes my brain want to implode. She tried to tell me my words weren't aligning with my actions but then backtracked when I pointed out that my words were aligning with my actions and always had; she just keeps assuming the worst about me when I don't tell her every little detail because she suddenly has 0 faith in my as her friend for some reason. I have tried to ask her why but she doesn't really make sense. It's like if I can't give her a thorough detailed explanation of why I do everything that I do, she assumes that I'm doing something wrong/selfish/personal against her when it's literally the opposite.

The next time she does something that you listed, ask her exactly what she means. Don't allow her to brush you off or give you a vague answer, but be kind (I don't doubt that you will be able to do that :)). Make it clear that you will stick by her. Make her tell you what's going on, and offer help if she needs it. Hopefully, she will take it well :)

i don't want to make super big assumptions, but with everything you're saying, she honestly is manipulating you. that last bullet point about picking subjects she knows upset you is a really big indicator of that, as well as her admitting to it.

you don't have to have romantic feelings for someone to be jealous of them focusing more time on other people. be it friends or parents or anything, you can still feel like they're spending less time on you and more time on other people. honestly, it's expected especially at the beginning of a new relationship, that you'll find your relationship with friends changing a bit to accommodate another person playing a big role in your life. however, the vibes im getting here are that your friend was used to a certain balance, which looks a bit like a power imbalance to me, that involved her taking up a lot of your time. which is fine! friends man, i get it, though it looks a little wonky with all of these added things. and when you started dating someone, it sounds like that made her feel slighted.

jealousy is a perfectly fine and natural emotion, but your friend is taking it to unhealthy levels. it also sounds like there might be a lot more going on with her, and she's projecting/taking it out on you, which is totally unfair to you.

Ok so my suspicions were kind of confirmed, the reason she’s acting like this is because it’s based on her insecurities, and right now she’s looking for anything in you guy’s current relationship to confirm them. It already didn’t help that you started dating someone else, gave your attention to them, and started “changing”. (Which again might be one of her insecurities, as she doesn’t want to be left behind, lose the connection you two have, etc..) But as a result you basically broke her trust, as this girl seems like she has a lot of trust issues.

She also seems like the dependent type who needs constant reaffirmation about her relationships.

You also stated that before the two month period started that she was already acting strange. I wonder if this has any correlation with her being in the relationship you mentioned, or if this was way before that. (That could be the outside source/third variable that’s causing her anxieties to fluctuate and make her lash out, but that could be a number of things. For example her having issues at home, school, work, or etc.)

There’s also another suspicion I had which you also confirmed, and that was if she herself had feelings for you. I was gonna add that originally as a 5th option, but wasn’t entirely sure about the whole thing so I didn’t. It could still play a role however. I know you said you guys are pretty platonic but that doesn’t mean some feelings aren’t involved, at least on her side. Girls are pretty good at hinting to the person of interest that they like them. The hints themselves can be pretty small/subtle, but profound in their eyes! (And can completely go over the crush’s head/be missed entirely if they’re not the type to pay attention to stuff like that.)

Ultimately however this sounds like a turning point in you two’s relationship, and the question is “Will she be an asset that will help you grow, or be one to stunt your growth completely and tear you down?” I know that’s a hard question to ask and you probably don’t even want to consider it, but I had to do the same thing with my best friend not too long ago. We were best friends for 8 years, and there was absolutely nothing that I wouldn’t do for her because I loved her so much! She also had a mountain of problems she was dealing with. So to lessen the stress and pain, I started carrying her burdens for her. (While also redirecting/showing her various places that could get her out of the situations she was in.) But as time went on… she didn’t change. And her problems got bigger, and bigger, and bigger to the point where I just couldn’t do it anymore.. It broke my heart so that I cut everybody off. I didn’t talk to anyone for what seemed like months. But when I finally started to feel better and talk to all my friends again a few days after that she came back and wanted me to do it all over again, to which I politely declined and silently left. I’m not telling you to do the same thing however as you’ve already made up your mind, but just to consider.

Okay well first of all I'd like to just say a huge thank you to all of you for taking the time to read about my wacko personal issues and offer your advice. Like, legit. You have no idea how much it means to me.

I feel like everything each of you said has really helped me a lot.

She means the world to me, so I'm going to continue to do everything I can for her as long as I can— but I can also tell she has some unhealthy tendencies and I have to be careful not to let her accidentally destroy me in the process lol. I feel like she'll chill out a little now that I'm not in a relationship, but I have a uneasy feeling that anytime I try to do anything with my life that doesn't involve her, I'm going to encounter more problems like this. I don't mind her being clingy or hanging out often; I just don't like feeling guilt-tripped every time I don't do what she ideally wanted me to do, because that feels borderline controlling. But she's a good person and I don't think most of it is necessarily intentional… which makes me feel worse for being irked. Oi, what a mess.

But thank you all!!!! You have all been super helpful and I can't appreciate you enough my friends

@King_Cyrus Anytime!（＾ν＾）I hope everything works out for the both of you! ♡