Hi, Carolyn: My best friend and I met in middle school and, in different states now, have maintained a close relationship for over 30 years, texting almost daily, vacationing together and visiting up to three times a year. We have been much closer in the past six years. This is a very important and valuable relationship.
My friend has always been the more dominant energy, and recently in therapy, I have become aware this mimics the dynamic with my mother. I was raised to believe I was wrong, did not know better, someone else’s needs are more important, etc. It feels like I have allowed my friend to operate the same way with me since we were kids.
We have this dynamic where I go to her for support and she tells me how to fix it. The past few years I have started pushing back. When I say I am not looking for advice or help — that my issue is not lack of understanding how to solve the problem, but a need for emotional support or just to be heard — she attacks me for not wanting help. She then blames me for picking a fight I was not even aware we were having. I have tried calmly talking to her about this later when we are not arguing.
Her fixes often do not address my issue. When I tell her about a hard day at work, she suggests I find a new job. When I mentioned the high cost of groceries, she picked a big fight about better prices at a specific store I avoid for political reasons. When my landlord raised my rent, she told me to move. It’s very dismissive, delivered as directive, and all it does is put me on the defensive to have to explain why her resolution won’t work, which just stresses me out more.
I have tried to explain that unsolicited advice is often self-serving. She claims she is the friend who “tells it like it is” and I want a “pat on the head.” She is standing her ground when I tell her this is not helpful.
I take years to change and have been dealing with depression my whole life, so I understand I am taxing her. The past 10 years with my aging mother, and all the baggage with that, have been very difficult. My friend’s life is comparatively uncomplicated, and now I feel like I’m a burden, and I’m struggling to create boundaries with this dynamic.
I have tried not going to her for support that I know won’t come, but then one of these fights will just come out of nowhere (for perspective — about one a year). I am feeling tapped out. Do I just walk away from this 30-plus-year friendship?
— Changing
Changing: I do see why the walk-away option is tempting. In my whole wild-and-precious-life plan, there isn’t even one big friend fight over groceries.
But you have experienced difficult, dramatic emotional growth in recent years (yay!), so it makes sense that it would knock such a foundational relationship off-balance. You’re changing but your friend is not.
And why should she change, really? You don’t like this side of her now that you see it through different eyes. To her, however, this tectonic shift is merely Friday. Her crime against you is to be who she has always been.
I am somewhat playing devil’s advocate here; of course you (we all) want some willingness to listen. And your being explicit about your needs is an important, even generous step — especially for friends long accustomed to providing something else.
But asking for something does not create an obligation in others to provide it, not even best friends. And in this case it does seem to touch more on who she is than what she does. That she can’t or won’t pivot from issuing directives to head-pats is not the same as her choosing to cause you intentional harm — any more than it ever was. It’s being set in her ways.
Albeit maybe … with a side of feeling like she’s supported you plenty? Especially through your recent mom-baggage crisis — even given her “comparatively uncomplicated” life. (Careful there.) Not to lay it all on you, but maybe you’re both a bit taxed. Long friendships have those moments.
It is your prerogative to decide you’re through with ways that upset you. Full stop.
If you want more time to reorient your new self to an old friend, though, and feel you owe your history that, then that’s valid, too.
