Unfriending can be Liberating

[crystalclear]

As it is the New Year thought I'd put a post about doing something new, or rather clearing out something bad.

A while back I posted this: http://www.specktra.net/forum/f211/long-story-need-advice-143957/#post1702591
(sorry, I can't seem to get the link to work)

For along while I have, been unsure what to do regarding this "friend". About 2 months ago she posted on her livejournal that she'd been drugged and raped. Then, 2 days later she was chatting online with her 'rapist'. I suggested she go and get checked out and inform the police. Which she declined to do. Turns out 2 years ago she didn't want to go to a friends birthday so she told one of her friends she had been raped and got another friend to tell some of his friends in the police the guy was a danger to women and she really went to town about it but didn't report. A year later she sees the guy in town and all her friends were ready to kill him, she sidles up to him and starts flirting! And she told her friends that they had got the wrong end of the stick she had just been afraid of him. And she has be claiming to various people that guys have pressured her etc. At this point I realised that she really wasn't the sort of person I wanted anything to do with. Women end up totally destroyed by rape everyday and thanks to women like her, no-one believes them. Because of people like her innocent men have their lives ruined, often their wives and kids are put through hell as well.

So I spoke to my Uncle (he worked as a psychiatric nurse for more than a decade) who suggested that she probably wasn't depressed and if she was claiming to be manic (and hadn't been diagnosed) she wasn't, (a manic depressive wouldn't be aware of it apparently). It was more likely she has a personality disorder, which makes her very dangerous and to avoid her like the plague.

Yesterday, she started a post on facebook mocking that bra colour thing everyone is doing. One of our friends was a bit irked at her attitude and responded and basically she got her boyfriend and a load of their friends to have a go at her by the end of it they were saying a lot of things I find offensive about people with cancer lovely things like "CANCER LOL" (that is a direct quote sadly) and that our friend was a 'faggot' and were being generally disgusting about her and cancer patients but hey it is okay she can say this as her mums boyfriends dad died of cancer this morning (seriously-if she'd known for 2 weeks she'd milk it for 2 weeks). I left a comment saying that anything to try and raise awareness was a good thing surely?. Wrong. My inbox is now overflowing with hate mail. The cancer comments hit a raw nerve as my mother is dying of that horrible disease and I do not appreciate these jumped up little bullies throwing their weight around and treating others this way. Having an opinion is one thing, hurting people for fun is another entirely.

So, I unfriended her. My mouse has hovered over that button frequently and tonight I reached my limit and I clicked on it. It felt great. I sent her an email telling her basically, why I was so disgusted at her (restricted to what has occurred in the past 24 hours and they way she treats the people who have tried to be there for her but she didn't deem 'cool' enough, to invite out and meet for coffee unless she wants something) and how if her friends were going to act like a gang of playground bullies, I was not going to be part of her world and that if she wanted to post it to lj fine, that is up to her but I am not a bully, I went through hell at school because of bullies (as did she), I wasn't about to become one.

This was one of the first times I have said to hell with the consequences and stood up for something I believe in and have been absolutely true to myself and it feels fantastic. I wish I had said this 5 or 6 years ago (not sure how I will feel when I'm emptying out my email account and getting evil texts later on).

Has anyone been through anything similar? How did you feel afterwards if you did?

 

[thelimabean]

Good for you! I had a toxic friend as well (Although she wasn't quite to the extent that this person seems to be!) It may hurt a little because you remember all the good times you've had. Mostly, for me, it's a weight off my back to not have to think about what that person may/may not do.But in the long run, you're so much better off! I'm glad you're basically distancing yourself from this person.

 

[gildedangel]

Good for you! It takes a lot of courage to cut someone out of you life, even if it is good for you. I have had my share of toxic friends, but nothing compared to this person. You are completely justified in your response and feelings about what happened, I would be super pissed if I had a friend that said something like that. I hope that you never see or hear from her again so that you can easily move on and away from such selfish negativity.

 

[Makeup Emporium]

Good for you...life is too short to spend it wasted on those who are not true friends or those who do not have your best interests at heart. I'd rather have a few true friends than a ton of aquaintances that you can't count on! You're better off even if you don't feel that way yet...hang in there!

 

[Simply Elegant]

Good for you. I think you made the right choice. I've had some friends like her and I feel way better without them.

 

[Meisje]

I agree --- folks who make you miserable need to get the boot.

I'm sorry about your Mom. I also read some snobby backlash about that meme and was disgusted. I have the same opinion as you --- every bit helps. Plus, that meme reminded women to check their breasts, which is actually helping the prevention and early treatment movement. I told the folks being snide about it to get off their high horses and that berating people for awareness efforts that they decided weren't "good enough" was ridiculous. If they think a meme is not helpful, trying to create divisions between people who all want to help the same cause is far less helpful.

 

[crystalclear]

Thanks for your support everyone and for everyone who has got rid of a toxic friend, well done and I don't think it is a decision anyone regrets in the end since that is one less drain on your happiness and positivity.

I'm still glad I did it and my parents were glad as well, they had hoped that after school I wouldn't need to have anything to do with her and I got a lot of support from my other friends who include some mutual friends just as tired, disgusted and fed up as me. I don't think she realises that behaving like this will lose her a lot of friends, but as it stands she only really has time for people who think they're a cut above everyone else and that it is a licence to treat everyone else like dirt.

Her little tirade was motivated by snobbery and her equally ridiculous friends have decided that their is no linkage between breasts and bras

. And the meme did no harm, pity the same can't be said for their antics which have caused a lot of people a lot of pain. If they did not agree with it rather than upsetting people they could have set up a breast cancer awareness page on facebook but they decided to post nasty comments about people instead, so strong are their convictions.

I don't know how much the meme has done for cancer awareness but it certainly has done me a massive favour and as I believe the eradication of cancer, compassion to the ill, dying or those who've lost loved ones and the fact that bullying campaign are just vile, to have contact with people who are against those beliefs, i had to stand up for those beliefs and stand up for myself.

I actually slept better last night and when I woke, unlike them, I was able to look at myself in the mirror without feeling ashamed (although I am applying a moral standard they do not have). It was the right decision and on balance she is not only a bad friend, she is a bad person and probably a dangerous one too. I'm glad she is no longer a problem for me to deal with.

 

[LMD84]

well i think you did the right thing and you should be so proud of yourself. quite frankly her behaviour sounds disgracefull

so in my eyes it seems like it was a long time coming!!

i have pretty much -unfriended- somebody in real life which has taken years. she has slowly become less and less of a friend to me- taking drugs, cheating on her husband, making shitty comments towards the way i look but masking them in the 'i'm only saying because i care way'. i still say hello to her if i see her in teh street but that's about it. a shame because at one point 6 years ago she was my closest friend!

 

[MACATTAK]

You're right unfriending is very liberating, especially when you know they are no good for you. I change my phone number every so often, and believe me, not everyone receives the new number. I always feel extremely liberated when I am able to move on.

 

[Shanti]

Your toxic now-non-friend sounds despicable and attention whorish. What I can't see is why anyone would make a huge deal out of that meme anyway. Good for you for getting her out of your life. She sounds so immature.

I haven't had a situation like yours, but I've let go of a toxic friend somewhat recently. I've actually tried shaking her off over a year ago but she didn't get the hint. After I started being there for her again (despite all the times she's turned friends against me, gossip about me, stood me up, stealing money etc) she went right back to using me and being all self-righteous. I defriended her on FB and removed her from my contacts but she kept trying to re-add me after I clicked "ignore". I just found out today that there's a BLOCK option lol thank god.

 

[blazeno.8]

Oh yeah. I've gone through something like that... not with facebook, but it was played out over Livejournal and AIM (technologically). When I told her that I was ready to move on in my life, she constantly told me that I was being "unfair" to her. Not like anything she did was unfair to anybody else.
Now that she's out of my life, I don't regret it at all. She tried to talk to me about a year later and I told her that I was in the middle of something at the time (which I was) and once again it went all back to me trying to hurt/avoid her.
My only thought: Good riddance.

 

[Shanti]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blazeno.8 When I told her that I was ready to move on in my life, she constantly told me that I was being "unfair" to her. Not like anything she did was unfair to anybody else. Now that she's out of my life, I don't regret it at all. She tried to talk to me about a year later and I told her that I was in the middle of something at the time (which I was) and once again it went all back to me trying to hurt/avoid her. My only thought: Good riddance.

This.
Some people are just too spoiled.

 

[blazeno.8]

^Werd. Her whole thing was something along the lines of not liking the attention that she gets because of the way she looks, but at the same time, liking attention and trying to use that attention to get what she wants. I can understand not wanting to be approached because someone sees you as a piece of ass, but at the same time, I don't think she realized that her behavior played into people's long term perception of her as just that.

Anyways, she posted this whole thing on LJ about how she was so clever about using people and so forth and so on. I copy and pasted it into a word document and later ended up sending it to her ex boyfriend who she didn't want me to associate with (I was friends with him before they started dating). Of course I couldn't associate with him, but she was free to do so. He really enjoyed it because she was the one going on about the virtues of truth and all that good crap, and it was basically her just admitting that she though she was pulling the wool over people's eyes.

 

[Jessica0984]

Sadly it seems that all of my friends were toxic. I have pretty much unfriended everyone that was once my friend. It took alot for me to see that they were just using me in one way or another and one of them actually took it to the extent of wanting to be me, and was jealous of everything I had and we were best friends since high school.

 

[mahonereh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jessica0984 Sadly it seems that all of my friends were toxic. I have pretty much unfriended everyone that was once my friend. It took alot for me to see that they were just using me in one way or another and one of them actually took it to the extent of wanting to be me, and was jealous of everything I had and we were best friends since high school.

Wow, that's pretty crazy!

Back when I was in middle school I had a "friend" like that. At one point the whole school HATED her, and I was the only person to stand by her side. She wasn't really a backstabber or anything like that, but the choices she was making in her life at the time just wasn't what I wanted to be associated with.

It's a shame because she was a good person, but she would have ended up harming me in the long run.

 

[girloflowers]

This is kind of odd, I have a similar sort of friend.

last year she went overseas to teach in a boarding school for girls. she was meant to saty for i think a year? but she ended up coming back alot sooner.
Now we as a group of girls (there are eight of us that are still really tight including her) were always really close and there for each other and all that jazz right? All through high school she was a compulsive liar and she'd try to start shit between us (told my closest friend that i was hurt by soemthing she'd done which she didn't even do and thus i couldn't have been hurt, among other things).
We were ok with that cos we could just brush it off, it wasn't really a big thing.(there was some other stuff that was more serious but i cbf to go into it)
BUT when she came back from overseas we only saw her once before she totally completely and utterly ignored us for about six months. Didn't answer calls or texts or emails or facebook messages- a couple of us went so far as to go to her house, and her mum was like no she's not here... even thouhg you can see through her bedroom window from the front of the house.
anyway! the one time we did see her was a friends eighteenth bday party, and she had like all smudged(not in a sexy smokey way) eyeliner uner her eyes and shit and kept making veiled references to having been "attacked" or molested etc...
now given her past record for lieing all the time, none of us know if we should believe that she was molested/raped and that is why she returned, or if she is once again making bullshit up, and we should be pissed at her for lieing about that kind of thing, which is a despicable thing to lie about.

AARRRGH it drives you nuts doesn't it?

 

[Goat Goat Etc.]

Amen.