"Leaving" a friend with BPD

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

So I know that this forum is regarding relationships, but after leaving my BPD ex I took a look around and found that i had a lot of friends with some very strong traits.  I decided to wait and see and not do anything dramatic since they weren't bothering me too much and in fact I found them quite entertaining.  More recently however, I can no longer stand to be around a specific friend of mine who seems to have the most pronounced BPD traits.  It's a recent phenomenon, where I decided I was so incredibly tired of hearing about the messed up affair she is having, the messed up relationship she claims is on, one day and off another day, and the messed up ex relationship she cries to me about all the time.  Not to mention she needs to have all male attention directed towards her and how completely unreliable she is in all fields.  All that to say I've distanced myself and she has noticed... .and is now sending me messages about how she wants to see me, and catch up with me and etc. etc.  I feel increasing repulsion towards her.  I was planning on going to spend time with a group of new friends in the next few days, and she just decided she would join.  I was looking forward to hanging out with new and different people, outside from my BPDesque friends and now I'm really annoyed that she's coming.  She decided to come because she saw I was going... .

Does anyone have advice on how to distance myself from her without causing her to react dramatically (she will clearly ask me and I can see more melodrama coming out of it).  I don't mind her being around, I just don't want her in my "space" anymore... .and she tends to really insert herself in there (ie: if she sees that I am striking up a friendship or conversation she will likely come and interrupt and sabotage)... .anyone have advice on how to not let this stuff get on my nerves and create distance without creating drama?... .I want relations to simply be as neutral as possible with this person.

[caughtnreleased]

So I know that this forum is regarding relationships, but after leaving my BPD ex I took a look around and found that i had a lot of friends with some very strong traits.  I decided to wait and see and not do anything dramatic since they weren't bothering me too much and in fact I found them quite entertaining.  More recently however, I can no longer stand to be around a specific friend of mine who seems to have the most pronounced BPD traits.  It's a recent phenomenon, where I decided I was so incredibly tired of hearing about the messed up affair she is having, the messed up relationship she claims is on, one day and off another day, and the messed up ex relationship she cries to me about all the time.  Not to mention she needs to have all male attention directed towards her and how completely unreliable she is in all fields.  All that to say I've distanced myself and she has noticed... .and is now sending me messages about how she wants to see me, and catch up with me and etc. etc.  I feel increasing repulsion towards her.  I was planning on going to spend time with a group of new friends in the next few days, and she just decided she would join.  I was looking forward to hanging out with new and different people, outside from my BPDesque friends and now I'm really annoyed that she's coming.  She decided to come because she saw I was going... .

Does anyone have advice on how to distance myself from her without causing her to react dramatically (she will clearly ask me and I can see more melodrama coming out of it).  I don't mind her being around, I just don't want her in my "space" anymore... .and she tends to really insert herself in there (ie: if she sees that I am striking up a friendship or conversation she will likely come and interrupt and sabotage)... .anyone have advice on how to not let this stuff get on my nerves and create distance without creating drama?... .I want relations to simply be as neutral as possible with this person.

[blissful_camper]

After the b/u two years ago, I took an inventory of my friendships parting ways with friends whose core values didn't match mine.  I wanted to be with people who were grounded, thoughtful, optimistic, and emotionally mature. 

Your friend has a willing audience and ear (you).  A peaceful way to distance yourself is to not be available to listen to your friend's drama.  When you take away the audience (you) she will hopefully seek an audience elsewhere. 

To minimize the chances of her reacting dramatically, validate her and set a time-limit on the conversation.  Excuse yourself (you have responsibilities requiring your attention).  In a public social setting, keep the conversations positive and light.  You may discover that she leaves on her own accord, seeking drama and attention elsewhere. 

I recently parted ways with a colleague-friend who shows strong BPD/NPD traits.  Parting ways with her has not been peaceful.  She has been smearing/bullying me for the last three months among mutual friends and colleagues and is attempting to negatively impact my business-livelihood.   I'm weathering the storm quietly and gracefully until she runs out of steam. 

Sometimes there's not an easy answer... .

[caughtnreleased]

Thanks for your response. That is very good advice.  Now, as I start to think about it, I don't think "Leaving" this friend will really be an option since we have friends in common, do things in common, etc and I don't want to just leave a piece of my life because of some incredibly annoying person.  So I am going to have to somehow manage this.  here are two incredibly annoying things that this person does:

When we are in a group with other people she will do the following:

1. pull out all the desperate moves to distract ANY man who expresses interest in me or who gives me any attention whatsoever.  This generally involves completely over the top vomit inducing intense flirtation, which I'm seeing often causes the men to be a bit bewildered because it's just so out there and a bit desperate... .she starts to pull a Marilyn Monroe type of extremely seductive behaviour.  Of course when I'm striking up a conversation with someone and my "friend" comes along and pulls this crap, its obviously rather disruptive. Does anyone have advice on how I can manage this? Sometimes these are people whom I have just met, or people that I know little about. 

2. Otherwise, she'll patronize me, again in front of people I am just meeting, or say things about me that are completely outrageous, and then I have to defend myself... .it's sabotage tactics. Completely.

She notices even the slightest attention I might get from other people and will even remark on it.  We were at a party and dancing recently and she suddenly turns to me and says "there are four men who are checking you out right now" and then she'll start to touch me in a really sensual way. Help.  How do I keep her away? And how do I meet new people without her coming in and dropping bombs all over the place?  Anything and everything I do that is in the context of being with other people I see her observing me and becoming envious... .and then she comes in and sabotages.

[balletomane]

One thing I have noticed in myself is that I struggle to set boundaries and this seems to be a problem for many of us here. I think we make this more difficult for ourselves than it needs to be. We tie ourselves into knots over it. In the case where your friend was touching you, there is no secret magic formula, just, "Please stop touching me, I don't like it." If she gets argumentative, say, "If I don't like being touched it doesn't matter what you think about it, you don't touch someone who isn't happy with it," and move away. As for disrupting your conversations with men, surely you don't take her along on every date you go on? Is she present at every group social event? You have a right to organise nights out and so on with just the friends you like, you are not obliged to include her. You say that she has decided to tag along with you and some new friends, because she saw that you were going - how did she see? Are you organising everything very publicly on Facebook so she assumes that it's a free-for-all? Next time you could arrange things by text or phone so you're just with the people you want to see. It's OK to do this and in a good friendship no one minds - on Sunday I'm going out for dinner with two friends, and while some other friends know about it they aren't sulking and demanding to be included too. I think we manage to persuade ourselves that dealing with this level of intrusiveness is more complicated than it is just because we have a problem with saying no and claiming space for ourselves.

From the age of nineteen to twenty-two I had a friend a few years younger than me (she was fifteen when I met her, eighteen when the friendship ended) who had grown up in a very chaotic home with a controlling and emotionally abusive mother who was a textbook case of BPD. Before she met me she had never been allowed to have proper friends. Her mum used to sit in the room whenever friends from school came over and after they had gone she would lecture her daughter on what terrible people they obviously were and how "no one loves you except your family". I became a mentor for this girl because she was showing emotional and behavioural disturbances in class (ha, I wonder why) and the child and adolescent mental health service thought an older peer might be able to help her. Sadly that friendship did not work out. The poor girl clung to me like a limpet and as she got older she started demanding more and more of my time as though she had a right to it. When I was planning a weekend with friends whom she had never met, when she was eighteen, she was begging me to let her stay over too. "Please let me be with you when your friends come. I won't even say a word to them. I'll just sit in the corner." I knew she would, too - she would curl up in a ball in silence until she had everyone standing round her asking what the matter was and fussing over her, because that's the sort of thing she used to do. I said no, these were my friends and I was going to spend time with them by myself. She got very upset and started saying, "How can you love me when you have all these other friends and I've only got you?" When I moved in with a friend she got upset that I hadn't invited her to share the flat too. "How come she's allowed to live with you and I'm not?" The denouement of the friendship came when she followed me to my workplace without my knowledge and sat on the premises waiting for my shift to end. When other staff found her there, she refused to say a word to them and they called the police. I was mortified. She had no conception of how bad it was for her to do that - this was a special school for vulnerable students, I was a trainee there, and her behaviour could have caused trouble for me with the management. So I cut off the friendship. But for a long time I just assumed that I should be patient with her, that I had to make allowances, that I couldn't say no, and so her behaviour got more and more outrageous because I didn't set enough limits. You have a right to set limits on what you will accept.

[caughtnreleased]

Hi Thanks. You're right. I do have control over quite a bit of this, however there are other items where I'm struggling.  Although her touching me is actually the least bothersome of things that she does... .but perhaps I should take more issue with it... .It's more all the other stuff she does that I find damaging to my attempts to make new friends and create a new social circle for myself.  She tagged along to an event that I was really looking forward to going to on my own because other people invited her at the last minute.  There's nothing I can do about that. She didn't know the people who invited her all that well, so when she saw I was going, well she was all in, and she subsequently DID disturb a lot of my contact with people there (although I think she also completely ridiculed herself with her marilyn monroe attitude)... .More recently I have been meeting men through exactly these type of social situations... .so through friends of friends, and she inserts herself like crazy.  She is romantically involved with someone who I am trying to work on a project with, and she push and pulls him whenever he and I have to meet or work together. As a result it's likely that my project will not really go anywhere... .I know I probably need to choose other people to work with, but nevertheless I need to start somewhere and I start with the people I know, and somehow she's really inserting herself into that.  People know her rather superficially, so might invite her to things i am invited to.  I am starting to take an increasing distance from the group of friends we do have in common, because I also find that they are unhealthy in addition to playing into all her pathetic little manipulative tactics.  So, unless I completely withdraw from my current life and friends, she will be around pulling her little stunts whenever she is, and I somehow I have to learn to figure out how live with it.  Although I admit my fuse is getting shorter and shorter... .

[js friend]

When we are in a group with other people she will do the following:

1. pull out all the desperate moves to distract ANY man who expresses interest in me or who gives me any attention whatsoever.  This generally involves completely over the top vomit inducing intense flirtation, which I'm seeing often causes the men to be a bit bewildered because it's just so out there and a bit desperate... .she starts to pull a Marilyn Monroe type of extremely seductive behaviour.  Of course when I'm striking up a conversation with someone and my "friend" comes along and pulls this crap, its obviously rather disruptive.

... .She notices even the slightest attention I might get from other people and will even remark on it.  We were at a party and dancing recently and she suddenly turns to me and says "there are four men who are checking you out right now" and then she'll start to touch me in a really sensual way. Help.  How do I keep her away? And how do I meet new people without her coming in and dropping bombs all over the place?  Anything and everything I do that is in the context of being with other people I see her observing me and becoming envious... .and then she comes in and sabotages.

Hi caughtnreleased,

Many years ago I had a friend who would also do many of these things... .Once we were out at a BBQ and I was wearing a halter neck dress which she undid without me knowing. Lcukily I realised in time before it fell. I  was really embarrassed but she thought it was hilarious.

This girl really thought she was wildly attractive and believed that All men were interested in her.And  so vain that she would touchup her makeup in car mirrors and shop windows. She even admitted that slept in it! She had countless casual affairs even though she knew these men had partners and sometimes children but didnt care. If I said anything it being wrong her response was "youre just jealous because he likes me and not you"All she cared about was her b/f was that her b/f mustnt find out.

Anyway eventually she stopped talking to me because I started hanging out with someone I had more in common with, then I found out that she starts spreading vicious lies about me.Even some mutual friends stop speaking to me so  I confronted her. To begin with she denied it but then admitted to it but played  the victim.To sum it up... .  She was hurt and jealous because this other person had taken me away from her!

It took me years to work out why she would behave like that. Not until I read about Bpd/Npd did it all seem to fit.I would say she is classic Npd if ever there was. Years later she wanted to reconnect with me, but I really dont miss her and know that this was never a healthy r/s and I have no desire to ever be friends with her again.

These people are like children. They have no boundaries and use others as a crutch. Your friend touching you while you are dancing is all about attention. Either she is thinking they wont be interested in you if they think you are a couple or she may be doing it so the men think "wow... .so whose the

friend?"

What you need are strong boundaries with this girl if you continue to be friends with her. Dont accept anything that makes you feel uncomfortable for the sake of a friendship. When she comes over to try to insert herself in your conversation politley ask her if she can  give you a few minutes alone, and if you are in agroup of people show less interest in what she is saying. Another idea is maybe you could organise a few events instead of being the invitee. You will probably be more busy as an organiser and have more people to get round so this girl will not be able to take up too much of your time.

I found the only way to a healthier life was to cut this girl off completely but thats me. Now Iam more selective who I have in my life and my exfriend and  her drama are not welcome anymore.

[caughtnreleased]

Thank you for your advice Js friend.  I think I will try and slowly drift away in a non dramatic fact.  Your comment however just made me think about what she is trying to accomplish when she is touching me.  It certainly is a way to push men away... .because who inserts themselves between two people who are touching eachother? But she may also try to make people think that we are a couple. At one party where she was doing this, a woman I had not at all noticed and came up to me and started chatting me up.  So maybe my friend's intention is to maybe sow doubt in the minds of men that I am in fact not interested in men! Weird! very very weird. This girl is crazy and I'm pretty sure I want to create a lot of distance, without any drama.  Agh. Thanks for the insight!  It never occurred to me she might want to pretend that we are a couple! wow!