I am in the midst of repeating my pattern and struggling

[joeramabeme]

When my marriage was coming to an end and many of the insights about my relationship behavior were becoming evident to me, it also became evident that some of my friendships had similar dynamics; one in particular that seemed to qualify was with my friend John.  John and I have been close friends for 30 years.  Most of the friendship has seemingly been healthy and there have been times of healthy discord that we've worked through even through times when this resulted in separation.

Throughout my 11 year marriage, John was a very supportive friend and we had many talks about my marital struggles (and his) and it even strengthened our bond.  However, when my wife moved out about 1.5 years ago and I told John how sad I was about this he became super agitated and got hyper and said; "she is gone and not coming back, get over it".  I hadn't even been divorced at that point.  Being who I am, I waffled between being pissed off at him and trying to measure his reaction objectively as I thought perhaps I had been going on far too much.  Honestly I was confused and hurt but decided to let it go but also incorporated his sensitivity's by removing conversational reference to my wife and not engaging in any discussions about my pending divorce.

The divorce happened a few months later and again, I said very little to John while remaining hurt, confused and angry.  About one month later, while at his house, his wife thoughtfully asked how I was handling the divorce.  Suddenly, John jumped off the couch and declared; "I never want to hear her name again, it's over".  I was shocked at the reaction but in so much internal pain of managing the divorce at that point, that all my processing about his reactions had to be delayed.  Since that point, I have kept an extremely low emotional profile around him and have been vigilant not to mention her name or even reference my divorce.  From conversations with mutual friends, I/we have concluded that his own rocky marital status is the touch point of his inability/unwillingness to be a friend.

It has been 14 months since this outburst occurred and I am just clearing up enough to start to try and make some sense out of this for myself.  During this time, John has made it clear and stated repeatedly that he does care for me and our friendship.  I have had Thanksgiving/Christmas and Superbowl with him and his family.  Yet, when he has called me to say "how are you"; I have had this internal reaction of F! you that I have needed to suppress and now I feel raw about all of this.

So, here is the pattern again.  John is not totally unhealthy, we have had a reasonably good friendship over many years and yet his behavior is disordered for sure.  And my behavior is identical to the maintenance and ending of my marriage; trying to; placate, play peacemaker, denying my feelings, submissive, angry, hurt, hopeful, waiting, abandoned, and defeated by all this.  Now that I am surveying the landscape of our friendship at this point in time, the friendship feels virtually unrecoverable for me because of the deep and prolonged pain that this has caused me.  Moreover, I saw John last weekend and I inadvertently caught him acting out against me behind my back.

So there it is; many of the dynamics that i experienced with my ex-wife.  I want to tell him to F'off and I don't want to lose a long term r/s with him and his family, yet my wants have no bearing on what the friendship needs. 

To top off my confusion, a few months ago, John called and asked me whether I felt he abandoned me during my divorce to which I replied yes.  And not another word was said about it.  I felt ashamed for being needy and he changed the topic, and so I went along with it hoping that this would be the point at which it changed, it did not.

I just read a long thread about Schema Therapy and healing; so now what?  What do we do with this awareness?  I have a sense of what is going on with John and I have a reasonable desire to be a caring friend and understand his problems; does that make me codependent?  Enabling?  Caretaking?  John is too broken to be a friend during divorce but I do not want to be hurt either and since understanding him does not help my hurt it looks as if the friendship is doomed.  None of this results in a desired outcome.  Is this what Radical Acceptance look like here?  And cynically, if yes, what does all this matter then?  Nothing changes nor does it feel good.

All I can be sure of is that I am unwilling to keep up this facade of our friendship and next time we speak I plan to tell him that I will no longer continue pretending with him and let the chips fall where they may. 

This is my pattern, I am repeating this pattern.  How does what we learn here help?

I feel like I am right back to Square One

[stayingsteady]

Hey Joeramabeme,

I know exactly what you're talking about.  It can be extremely eye opening once you begin to understand the key aspects in these types of relationships.  For me, I began seeing these same personality differences I had come to understand in myself and my wife in many of my closest friends and family members.

What I've come to understand is that this awareness can help me in managing my behaviors in these relationships as well.  I've probably identified four additional people I am close to who also share these characteristics.  With each of these people I get to choose whether or not I want to continue a relationship with them.  If I make the choice to continue any of these relationships I also get to choose at what level of intimacy and closeness I am willing to provide.  I also get to adjust my decision on the closeness (and the relationship itself) at any time I want.  If I choose to continue any relationship with any of these individuals I then have the opportunity to use these tools to prevent codependency from reoccurring (or, in some cases, continuing). 

I have actually chosen to continue each of these four relationships, each with a different level of closeness.  One of the most amazing things I have noticed is that, by managing my actions through what I have learned, a truer relationship (rather than a relationship reliant on codependency) has emerged.  Each relationship definitely feels much better!

I'm not sure if this information can help you, but I wanted to share it just in case.

- Staying Steady

[Panda39]

I agree with Stayingsteady I also had a close friendship that I began to struggle with.  My friend was very close, helped get me through my divorce, but she has some qualities that I don't like but didn't really notice because I was focused on myself back during my divorce.  She is very charming, fun, funny... .etc all great things, but she can use those things in manipulative way to get things that she wants.  I saw it but for a long time it wasn't really directed at me, or I would do what she wanted because I didn't mind doing it.  However, there came a time where I felt that she was taking advantage of me through our friendship and I began to resent doing things for her, and her "you scratch my back" (but I don't really scratch yours) philosophy.

We are still friends but I pulled back the intimacy and I have boundaries around what and how much I will do for her, because frankly it isn't very reciprocal. I can still be her friend but it is more limited in scope, more superficial.

I think what you are seeing in terms of your friendship is probably is due in part to some of the things you have learned here,  you have a new perspective you might not have had before you might be able to see some dysfunction that was not as clear to you before.  I think it is a good thing that you are trying to evaluate whether this friendship is good for you or not, or what that friendship should look like now after his outbursts.  You have a lot of options, you could cut all ties, you could let the friendship fizzle out, you could re-define the friendship, or you could go on as you have.

Think about what you want from the relationship and act accordingly.

Panda39

[joeramabeme]

I decided to take a chance and call my friend to tell him that I was uncomfortable with our friendship.  It was a really uncomfortable phone call and it did not go well.

I started by explaining why I was uncomfortable; because of the outburst and a few occasions when he dismissed invitations to get together and another time that he treated one invitation with total disregard.

Right from the start of the call he was very defensive saying that he was 'sorry I felt that way' and that 'I must have a problem' because he doesn't have a problem with any of this and none of his feelings had changed etc.  

He also claims not to remember the outburst and so said he would think about it.  An hour after we hung up, he called back having talked to his wife saying that neither of them remember the outburst (that happened right in front of both of them) and that the dismissed invitations were a function of logistics.

Shortly afterwards, the wife sent me a caustic text message saying how their sons friend died in combat and that John was worried sick and that I did not even ask him about it instead of spreading around my BS insecurities all over him instead of being a true friend and asking him about his concern for his Son.  

I don't think it was unreasonable for him to have simply said that these were not my intentions and lets get together and then tell me how (or even if) he was spending his hours and days worried about his son so much that he couldn't have a call about his friendship.

Am I missing some thing here?  Seriously, here I am again.  Am I missing something or being over reactive, too sensitive etc.?  

Seems to me that his is just anger coming out of nowhere.  If I listened to my intuition I would say that he still doesn't want to hear anything about the divorce and feels justified for shutting me off and is now pissed that I have directly raised the issue with him.

EDIT: After hitting Save, I thought of one other thing; John and I have had one, and only one, conversation about getting divorced in the last 22 months; he asked me if I thought he wasn't supportive to which I said yes.  I guess this is my big clue; your best friend doesn't want to acknowledge your getting divorced and then gets pissed off when you state you feel your friendship is on rocky ground. 

[heartandwhole]

Hi JRB,

This is really tough stuff.    I can understand your frustration and hurt in this situation. I had a falling out with a friend after my breakup, too. We didn't talk for months, even though we worked daily with each other. It happened when I expressed that I felt irritated by something she did, and didn't want to listen to her excuses right at that moment (she had done the same thing several times before). Unfortunately at the time, she was really stressed out because her fiancé, who lived in another country, had had a serious car accident (thankfully he was recovering in the hospital). We have since patched things up.

Do you think the timing was off for this kind of conversation, and maybe another time might work better? There was no way you could know that your friend was so worried about his son at the moment. In my experience, when people are stressed, it's harder to deal with stuff like this; harder to be undefended and to listen... .I've seen it with several of my friends. Maybe letting things lie for a bit and honoring how you feel in the moment will help. In my situation, after trying to smooth things over with my friend right after the incident, she sent me a scathing email and said she didn't want to be around me for a while. I didn't respond and left her alone. After a few months she approached me and we started to talk again.

On the other hand, it may just be that your friend cannot offer the kind of support and friendship that you need, and that may be something you can work on accepting and then see how things go from there.

heartandwhole

[Sunfl0wer]

Gonna speak for myself and not in generalizations cause idk, I'm no expert.  So relate if you do, or not if you don't, of course.

Anyway... .
After my breakup, I think that year or so after was one of lots of things, lots of grieving, and also a ton of growth.  With reprocessing the events and dynamics of the relationship from a distance, I began to change not just the way I saw the relationship, but it helped me to clarify my values in all relationships.

Because of this growth, some relationships I was in became incompatible.  Thinking of one such, was a friend I spoke to several times a week and touched bases with about most things going on.  Similar thing happened... .he really did not want to discuss my break up too much, so I didn't.  It wasn't so easy to do because it was the biggest thing on my mind, but ok, I just decided to keep his friendship for what we could share about.  Yet as time went on, and I quit ruminating over my ex, I began examining dynamics with others.  I began to see that this relationship with this friend pretty much only survived because I was allowing the dynamic to be way off balance to what my values are and what I needed in a friendship.  I realized it was always him "playing a victim" role, gripping on about finances (he got himself into) and gripping on about work stuff, (with me biting my tongue and not pointing out that I disagreed with his assessment and actually felt he could have taken more actions than he gave himself credit for being responsible for, I did point it out sometimes, but kinda had to smooth it over as I did.). I also noticed for the first time, that in about every 30 min conversation, only about 5-10 mins was ever about me, and he really didn't pay much attention, more like out of curtesy allowed me to have a turn. Idk why I didn't notice this before. I pretty much began to realize that this relationship survived because I was suppressing my natural desires within a friendship in order to get "friendship."

So I decided to behave like I did the end of my r/s with ex.  :)ecided to honor my values a bit more clearly.  I did not bring up things from the past, felt that was done.  I decided to see what would naturally happen if I behaved like I wanted in a friendship, would he respond by adjusting to my needs? Or would he be in shock I want an extra 5 mins or so, talking about something important to me?  So I experimented.  Experimented fully knowing that he may not be able to handle this and may never talk to me again. (Which, felt a little silly imo to not talk to me over me saying I want more me time in this relationship)

Turned out he was in shock, so offended.  I tried politely redirecting the conversation after 10 mins of him going on about himself as usual.  "Hey, we been talking about xyz a bit, yet I rung you cause I had something that I wanted to chat on." He allowed me a turn... .but then quickly related it and turned it all back on himself.  "Hey, this is really frustrating me.  If you don't mind, I would like to discuss a bit more on xyz, how I feel about it, could really use a friend."  The conversation ended up feeling like a tug of war between us.  He kept pulling to redirect away from my issue.  I ended up telling him I did not like the way this conversation was going, that I called for support, and really wasn't able to redirect my focus too much elsewhere, cause needing support atm, but understood if he didn't want to discuss it, so I better go and deal with my feelings/self care.  Well, me bringing closure to the conversation in such an honest way vs making an excuse that I had to go... .was way more confrontational than he could handle.  He began kinda flipping out, got all insecure, wanted me to "fix it" for him... .like tell him no biggie or such.  Imo, what I was dealing with WAS a biggie, and him not being a friend did change things cause it let me know where his limits were.  And him not easily letting me off the phone and pressuring me to "fix things" was not ok... .especially cause I was feeling ill from an illness, telling him I needed space, so once again putting his soothing needs above my self care ones.  So... .it ended up that we kinda parted the call both aggravated.

I tried doing small reach outs, how ya doing kinda stuff after that.  After all, I harbored no resentments.  I could overcome some interpersonal discomfort. I could deal with us being allowed to be frustrated with one another then get over ourselves.

Well, he seems to have not been able to hold much of a conversation with me after this.

That is a bit of a ramble, but thought something could be helpful.
Kinda helped me to see that sometimes, I guess I was holding back being all of Me for the sake of "protecting" a relationship.  I did it with ex, I also see I have done it elsewhere.  Not so sure I get the best most genuine relationships that way.  

[joeramabeme]

Thanks Heart & Whole and Sunflower,

I will need a little bit of time to digest your comments and appreciate your replies.

I want to share some significant insights from this that I think could be very valuable for others here

This call took place last night, so this fresh writing.

1) After hanging up the phone I felt terrible.  My internal thoughts said; I should have kept my mouth shut, why can't you just go with the flow and I am going to lose another friendship - what is wrong with me.  Suddenly a childhood gem popped out: When people are angry with me my knee jerk reaction is that I did something wrong.  This is the same way it was with my angry parents; I always felt like I was wrong or doing something wrong because they were mad at me for my seemingly rational comments or behaviors.  In our world of pwBPD lingo tis equates to; I must be to blame for the bad feelings that I am having even though I am not doing anything more than being a good person.

2) I awoke this morning to a jolt of deep fear; falling and sinking in bed.  Back when I used to drink, alcohol released my inhibitions and I could state all my bottled up inner feelings.  My behavior was typically out of proportion and the "next morning", I would awake to a deep sinking feeling of regret and remorse realizing that I had gone way too far.  That was exactly the feeling I had this morning.  It scared the hell out of me.  Although I haven't had a "next morning" event in 30+ years, it was just as if I had one today without alcohol.

So, I started my first post asking; what have I got from all the work I have put into my life of "self-improvement".  Well, I realize that I did not do anything wrong; telling someone how you feel should not result in being verbally torn apart.  I will not let my friends wife's nasty messages define how I feel about myself or what I carefully thought about saying.  I had every right to say what I thought, meant to help my friendship by doing so and I had no idea that my friend was struggling and he certainly did not say a word.

My other good friend helped me today saying; there was never going to be a good time to say this.  I was able to extend that idea further by realizing that I had already been holding onto these feelings for a long time and that my friendship had already declined to a point that made it untenable for me to continue as it was.

Jokingly, my friend also said that I have grown to a point where I can chose who I will take abuse from.  While we both laughed about this comment, there is a world of truth to it as I get to chose, whereas previously, I would have simply crumbled and felt god-awful on the inside and run through another cycle; the height of emotionally feeling bad about being neglected down to the low of feeling I was unworthy to bring my simple feelings of discomfort to a friend and then the ensuing confusion that resulted from standing up for myself and jeopardizing a friendship that I would then have to disavow my own feelings in order to save. Is this BPD?  Or what it is like to be BPD?

This is all pretty hard for me because this situation is an arrow shot straight into the softest part of my deepest insecurities.  Yet, I am here today with more of myself intact than ever before and comfortable stating that I did no wrong and am no less worthy of being treated fairly by someone I have known for 30 years.

[Grey Kitty]

It is hard to look at a long term relationship (friendship or otherwise) and realize that it was unbalanced in your disfavor, or you were taken advantage of, and accepted it.

I've had a bunch of friendships kinda fade away in the last few years or decade.

One particularly tough one I felt betrayed, and saw that the friend had betrayed other friends I cared about. That was really tough because I went through this painful process of re-writing a decade of memories under the 'new information' that she was manipulative, and good at it, and had always made sure that our r/s was one where she got a bit more than she gave.

Others were ones where I came to realize that if I didn't chase, if I didn't put energy into it, the 'friend' just faded away.

Some were damaged people, and I realized that the basis of our friendship was that I helped/saved them, perhaps in a 'good' way like a therapist, or perhaps in a 'bad' way like an enabler... .and while they weren't treating me badly, they really didn't have anything to offer me, and it wasn't an equal relationship in any way.

Many are long-distance, and some just seem to be fading toward the background, although I suspect that when I'm together with them, they will pick up where they left off.

... .and a few seem to be healthier and stronger than the rest.

Over the last few years, I've been trying to put my energy into the 'best' friendships I've got, whether they are new or old. I think this is an ongoing process, and my overall pool of friends will continue to improve!

My other good friend helped me today saying; there was never going to be a good time to say this.  I was able to extend that idea further by realizing that I had already been holding onto these feelings for a long time and that my friendship had already declined to a point that made it untenable for me to continue as it was.

Jokingly, my friend also said that I have grown to a point where I can chose who I will take abuse from.

I don't know what you will end up doing with your 30-year unbalanced friendship. There may not be much left there.

Are you making more room for your "other good friend" in your life consistently? Is this friend indeed earning that?

In closing, here's an essay on friends that I loved:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/10-types-odd-friendships-youre-probably-part.html

[joeramabeme]

Thank you for that link GK, what a great article on friendships!

I love the quadrants!  I guess my friendship borders Q3 & Q4; not quite healthy and not quite enjoyable.  We used to be in Q1 (Healthy and enjoyable) but it slowly slipped into Q4 as he became unhealthy (or is it that I got healthier or a combination).

Either way, isn't it great to have words that describe your feelings about what is going on. 

I guess the real problem for me, and perhaps the same problems I had with my ex, was that when an individuals behavior slips into the unhealthy state, there is little that you can do. As my ex T used to tell me about my marriage; I have 3 options; accept it, leave it or work on it.  All options until the other person decides they no longer want to work on it. 

Overall, I am still willing to work on it but with the caveat that I have a clearer understanding now that he is emotionally immature (for lack of a better word). 

There are many interesting topics that fall out of this event for me.  The one I am currently thinking through is to what degree are we willing to invest in these ever-changing relationships.  Interestingly, I have no animosity towards him, but am perplexed that his emotions (and his wifes) overtook him so greatly for something that seemed so innocuous and in fact was a hand out to try and fix what was wrong. 

Below all this is a gut sense I have that he holds negative opinions of me and that his behaviors merely reflect those.  I will have to accept whatever comes about and realize I can only be honest with how I feel.  I kind of think the same happened with my ex, she just built up so many negative feelings towards me and the behaviors reflected the same.

Thank you all and I would be curious if anyone else relates to the cycle of self-rejecting when standing up for themselves.