Fatal Friends: Give Them an Inch, They Take a Mile
Published November 21, 2021
* Names have been changed
“Have you heard from Autumn* lately?” I asked my sister, Reina*, as we ate dinner across from each other. Reina sealed her lips and squinted her eyes, nonverbally signaling that I might not like what I was about to hear. “You haven’t talked to dad?” My body went still as I began considering everything that could have gone wrong in the past week since I heard from her. I shook my head and sighed, what the hell happened?
To give this a little context, my friend Autumn had moved in with my dad in September, which I helped coordinate to get her out of what she called an abusive relationship with her boyfriend of three years. In mid-October, she ended up in the hospital with a blood infection and I hadn’t heard from her in a few days since texting to see how she was. Because she lives a couple blocks away and would occasionally hang out with Autumn, I thought my sister might have an idea.
I knew she was continuing to spend time with the boy who, as she said (but later denied), infected her bloodstream and almost killed her, thus landing her in the hospital (long story, not for me to tell in detail) — I didn’t realize she would try bringing him home to my dad’s late one night. Reina read the text my dad sent her detailing the encounter with Autumn’s young vagrant friend who got lippy with him when he denied their request to let the kid stay the night. What in her mind made her think he, of all people, would be okay with that? My blood began to boil and for a moment I unleashed my frustrations onto my sister.
Reina listened to me vent about my build-up of grievances with Autumn through the past few years — and rage about her poisonous patterns now seeping into our dad’s life. I took a deep breath and let the topic go, it wasn’t the time or place. We were out to enjoy dinner and a movie, not complain about Autumn’s latest mindless dilemma. But still, as I sat through the movie, my mind became flooded with a torrential downpour of memories and associated feelings from the last seventeen years of riding the rollercoaster of dysfunction with her.
On the drive home I called my dad to hear it from him. The whole thing rattled him because he didn’t know the random creep who Autumn brought over, and she had only known him for a few weeks. The boy also messaged him a few days later on Facebook; the fact he knew both his name and where he lived made my dad even more uncomfortable and paranoid.
I asked why he didn’t say something to me sooner, he’d been sitting on it for close to a week. He wanted her out of his house, but thought by rocking the boat it would cause friction between her and I and he didn’t want to ruin our friendship. “That shit was ruined a long time ago,” I snarled. “Even if it wasn’t, if you want her out of your house, I don’t care, it’s your house! She doesn’t deserve your kindness anymore. This is her pattern! All she does is play the victim, take advantage of people who give to her, expects them to keep on giving with no show of gratitude, and wonders why they move on and her life is a constant wreck.”
“I wish I knew all this before I let her move in! I don’t feel like I’m living with someone who is trying to get their life together, I feel like I’m living with a teenage girl again. I’m realizing she’s just an actor.” All he had been was gracious to her: he opened his doors to her in a time of need, shared more than enough of his beer, fixed one of the brakes on her car, then let her use his car for several weeks while hers was in the shop. She paid him rent in September, but he hadn’t seen anything for October or November and didn’t push it. And somehow she felt it was okay to bring, as he described, a homeless-looking drifter around like it was nothing.
We planned on kicking her out the following day, but before I could drive over there he said she left because she had to work all weekend. He’d barely seen her at all in the past week, so it would be hard to time things out during the week and we’d have to wait until the following Saturday.
The whole week I waited for a text back because I still hadn’t heard anything from her — silence. My dad kept asking if I’d heard anything and I told him I probably wouldn’t because she often ignores me until she wants something. That Friday, I decided to text her again to see if everything was okay, because while I believed everything my dad said, I knew there was another side to the story. I wondered if maybe we overreacted and were misunderstanding the whole thing. I realized later on that this was just me trying to backtrack to avoid a very uncomfortable situation that weekend.
What ensued the next morning was a series of texts from Autumn trying to gaslight me into thinking she did nothing wrong and neither my dad nor I had anything to be upset about. She immediately got defensive and accused me of attacking her when I only asked if she was okay, recounted what I was told by my dad, and said I was worried she was defaulting to old patterns rather than focusing on herself. And letting her know that she deserves better than the predicament she’d gotten into was somehow perceived as an insult. At the end she tried turning things around, “Why don’t you do better hm?”, acting, per usual, like I was in the wrong to confront her. I let out a laugh and shakily typed out my final words, respectfully putting her in her place, ending it with: And I am doing better. Better than all the past versions of myself, and that’s all I can do.
When my dad told her she had until the end of the month to move out, she refused to listen to his reasons; rather, she immediately turned the waterworks on and stormed out. I still haven’t heard a word back from her…likely because everything I told her was right. There’s nothing more to say. And the only thing I regret telling her is that she deserves better, because right now I don’t believe she does. She’s created just about every single mess she’s gotten into, but refuses to acknowledge that fact, and I’m done appeasing her and playing along.
It’s both a freeing and heartbreaking experience to learn that after close to two decades of friendship with someone they weren’t much of a friend to begin with. I’ve had my fair share of friends who were outright cruel and abusive towards me, or just lacked any sort of motivation and drive to make something out of their lives and scoffed at my attempts. Each of those past friends had been dumped one-by-one in the last several years, except for this one final person who I always considered my best friend.
What has been most upsetting about all this was how covert she was, the ways I consistently abandoned myself to her implicit needs, how many times I wanted to in-real-life unfriend her but kept letting her in, and how it all finally ended with my dad unknowingly being pulled in.
It’s important for me to share these recent realizations as a reference for myself later on, but also to help others determine if they’re in a similar situation with a so-called friend, when and how to get out, and how to be a healthy friend yourself. Sometimes we hyper-focus on the damage done by our family of origin or lovers, it can be easy to skip over the inner wounds caused by the awful “friends” we’ve had. I know I did.
When the abuse isn’t glaringly obvious, staring you right in the eyes, it’s much easier for people to snake their way into your life and dress themselves up as a good friend. I’ve also realized my part in all of this, from allowing past traumas to replay over and over, to having my own silly codependent motives. The most important thing now is that I’m aware and free of this poison — I don’t have to continue the cycle of fatal friends anymore. Thankfully, neither do you.
I’ve been overwhelmed for the past couple weeks. Processing so many years of being in that joy-sucking relationship has been difficult. I’ve also had to confront the reasons I allowed it to go on so long, and once again allow myself to fully experience the years of pain from dealing with someone who was continuously selfish and subtly manipulative — a narcissistic friend. I’ve handled and escaped my fair share of narcissistic lovers, but coming to terms with a person who was my best friend being a covert narcissist has been an entirely different game. I used to believe she was just codependent like me, but that was merely a projection of myself onto her.
I recognize that the term narcissist gets thrown around a lot these days, and I don’t make my unqualified diagnosis of a person being one unless I fully believe it. I say unqualified because I’m not a psychologist and can’t actually diagnose anyone, but by tying a person’s behaviors to something with a name and being able to extensively research it and relate to similar stories, I’m able to figure out what the hell happened to me. So what the hell did happen? How did I remain blind and wrapped up in her insane narrative for seventeen years? How did she miss the boot when the majority of my childhood friends got it?
Continue with PART TWO to dive into more stories of this fatal friendship, discover what makes a narcissistic friend, and evaluate the traits of their often-codependent comrades...
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