Are You Stuck in an Unhealthy Friendship

Have you ever found yourself in a friendship with no scope for you to have anger and frustration over your friend's actions? You are always the one trying to make your friend happy, but they never reciprocate your actions?

Think for a moment and reflect on all your friendships. I can practically guarantee that you have or would have had such a friendship in your life. I am happy for you if you are not in such a friendship anymore. I genuinely am. I can feel your pain and agony.

This is my story to shed some light on the topic and share my experience with you. I hope if you are currently in such a friendship, my story will help you recognize it and inspire you to alleviate the toxic person in your life.

Such friends are like termites. The only way to gain your sanity back and have a sense of calm is to exterminate such people from your life.

What happened to me?

I was friends with a girl, to protect her identity I will call her Jane. Jane and I met during our bachelor studies. We were in the same program, so the friendship formed relatively smoothly. We were both in a new place away from our hometowns.

It gave me a sense of relief that I am friends with someone who is on a similar journey to me, but I was either blind or incapacitated to see the future about how this friendship will come to bite back.

Initially, things were expected as they are in a blossoming friendship, but I saw her true colors as time progressed.

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It is in my personality to see my loved ones be happy, at least when they are around me. So I tried doing the same with Jane. I consoled her whenever she was going through something. I would tell her jokes; I would cook for her and go out on walks with her whenever she wanted. I would try everything in my power to make her happy.

Once she failed a subject, she was distraught. When I came to know about this, I went to her place with chocolates. I talked to her for hours on end. Finally, I explained that it is not the end of life; she can retake the exam and get a good grade later. When I left, there was a feeble smile instead of tears on her face at the end of the day.

But, after a while, when my girlfriend broke up with me, I was in a mess. My relationship of three years ended. I had no idea how to handle it. When I called her and asked her to come over to console me, she said, "I am sorry. I can't right now. I am going to play Basketball. I will try coming afterward." I was speechless on hearing this. This was the first inkling that I should have noticed, but I didn't, and the suffering continued. FYI, she came to visit me the next evening and that too for less than an hour.

I made her happy. I was there for her even though she didn't ask me to be. She didn't even think about my happiness, and she wasn't there for me even when I asked her explicitly.

It took me a while to realize that whenever new people enter her life, I became unimportant and was put in the back seat. At a university event, we both were present, and we got the chance to meet a few new people. She met someone exciting to her (that is what I gathered from her behavior). Since that day, that person was the priority numero uno in her life. Any plans I made were considered secondary. He became the foremost important thing for her.

It is completely fine to make plans with other people, but she didn't have to lie to me about it. Whenever I made any plans, she would say no, and when I asked her why she would lie about it. I would have understood if she had mentioned that she has plans with someone else. It hurt more when the truth surfaced, and I realized that she puts old friends onto a waitlist whenever she meets new people interesting.

When I confronted her about it, I was somehow made to feel guilty. To this day, I don't know how she managed to do that. She was angry and frustrated with me over this. It should have been the opposite where I should have been mad and baffled with her. I ended up apologizing to her for this.

This was not the only such instance. I could fill pages and pages with such incidents, but this here proves my point.

My plans were 2nd priority; others' plans were the number one priority. Of course, any of us made mistakes, but I was the one who always ended up apologizing.

If I did something she didn't like, she got mad, and I had to say sorry to mend things, but if she did something I didn't like, I wasn't allowed to feel anger & frustration. So I always had to let things go.

One last incident that drew the line for me, if I remember correctly, happened for about three months before I called it quits. After a while, when the above incidents have happened, and we were into the 2nd year of our studies, our frequency of conversations decreased, and I didn't give much thought to it.

Over the course of three months, I recognized whenever she called or texted me, it was to ask for help with either something related to the university or her part-time job. During these three months, the conversations never included getting to know about how I was doing. Instead, they always started with a "Hi, and I need help with XYZ."

I talked to another friend of mine about this, and he made me realize what the hell was going on. It suddenly broke the pretense I was living in, making me not give a shit about Jane anymore.

She never asked me about my life. She never bothered to talk about anything else but work. She always contacted me for help but not to converse as a friend. This invariably left me unsettled.

It took me a lot of courage to share this story of mine because inherently, I try not to bad-mouth people, but this time enough was enough. The best way to let out these negative emotions for me was to write about them.

I also wonder about myself that why was I so blind to what was happening to me? But I have not let it repeat with anyone else. It has been more than two years now that I ended my friendship with her. We are mere acquaintances. I am at peace now.

Thank you for reading. Have you ever been in a similar situation?