"People pleasing? Girl, nobody is pleased!"
a not so brief meditation on losing a shitty friend in my early 30s
Back in 2023, a friend I had had for 7-8 years decided to ghost me and our other bestie. It wasn't a complete surprise -- she'd been increasingly shifty, unavailable, rude, and manipulative to the both of us for months. In many ways, the writing was on the wall, but even still I made so many excuses and concessions for her. She was lonely, the pandemic had hit her very hard as someone who lived alone and had little to no community, seemingly, outside of our friendship trio.
These excuses and reasoning were borne out of sincere care and love for her as a friend. I had seen red flags with her over the years that I naively ignored. It was easier to do so, to avoid ruffling any feathers in our little friendship trio. But I also overlooked her glaring flaws because I thought our friendship was real and I thought she was a cool person, a real friend. To make a friend, you have to be a friend, right? We are all flawed, myself included. I genuinely thought I knew her, that she was who she told me she was.
We met in 2015 and bonded over a shared sense of humor, the Sims, our love of books, and even kpop. We had a lot in common, and I always had a fun time with her going out for brunch, watching YouTube videos and movies, talking about books, kdramas, entertainment, and politics. I liked the books she'd recommend, and I learned more about things I wasn't as into, like musicals. We had our differences in taste, but I saw it as something fun -- an opportunity to try new things and learn about stuff that maybe I wouldn't otherwise encounter. As our friendship grew, so did my trust in her, and we shared deeper things about family, friends, and love. She was more reserved than me, I noticed, and even lied a couple of times. Something I noted, but didn't think much about. The lies seemed to come from a place of self protection and embarrassment, nothing egregious. When I moved to El Paso in 2019, I knew things would change, but I was always willing to keep putting in the work, because I genuinely cared about her and our friendship.
When she suddenly ghosted us in 2023, I didn't even notice at first. I was so busy with work and my own life 600 miles away. Our communication was more sporadic by then, but I have other long distance friends that I go longer without speaking to, and we're totally okay, always picking up right where we left off. But after a couple of months, I realized this time was different. And before I felt hurt or betrayed, I first felt so much anger.
Anger that after so many years of friendship and love she felt we weren't owed a damn thing. Anger that it all felt like a test -- her trying to lure us, through silence, to once again 'check in', coddle her feelings one more time, after YEARS of always being the ones expected to be her emotional salve. I was exhausted. I noticed that I didn't have to do that with any other friend in my life. She was, ultimately, an emotional vampire, and no amount of excusing her behavior could make me want to reach out. She no longer deserved my love and my care. She didn't even have the guts to communicate openly and maturely. We were 32 and she was behaving like a 14 year old throwing a tantrum. I realized her emotional intelligence was zero, and I was no longer willing to accept it as something I should care about.
I would like to lay out several examples of her rotten behavior, to remind myself that this is not a friendship ever worth recovering again:
During and after the pandemic lock down, we would all zoom together and watch movies and shoot the shit at least once a week, if we were available. Like 75% of the time she would be on zoom, looking pissed off and/or looking down the entire time, barely speaking to us. We would almost always ask what was wrong and if she wanted to talk, and we were met with evasive answers and shrugs. We thought she needed space, so we let it rock. For my part, I thought she was just lonely and upset and being around people for her was better than being alone. She was mistreating us, and I let it slide. Multiple times.
Like 2-3 years into our friendship, I told her about my sexual assault. I was in tears, and couldn't even call it what it was at the time. Her immediate first response was something along the lines of, "I feel like an older version of myself would be thinking of ways to hold this information against you in the future." An absolutely disgusting response. To my credit, I did express anger and disbelief at her in the moment, but I let it go. Looking back, I wish I had told at least one other friend about this interaction in the immediate moment, but I was so afraid of being disbelieved or made to feel that way again. That interaction kept me from talking about what happened to me for years. It took 8 years later for me to unpack my assault in therapy.
She would repeatedly say that me and our other friend and a mutual friend made her "a better person." That we showed her true friendship. That alone should have raised alarm bells for me. I never knew how to respond, but it sounded like a nice thing to say about someone, so I guess I just took it at face value.
At several points, she would take jabs at us that I think she thought weren't obvious, but I caught them. For example, one time I told her that social media was hard for me when I'm in a tough place, because it's hard not to compare myself to more successful peers. Her response was that she didn't get that because she's not like that. She said she doesn't think that if someone else has something that it means she is less than or can't have it. I was vulnerable and expressed something that is very human, that most of us experience a degree of at one point or another. She was being cruel for sport, because she wanted to hurt me so that she could feel better about herself. And what's funny is that she was lying. At other times she had expressed how comparing herself to others is something she does as well!
I let her into my childhood home and I thought we had a great time. On her last night, she cried and said she felt upset about how my family has pictures everywhere and she doesn't have that at her parent's house. She was literally comparing herself to me in that moment. I told her that having pictures didn't mean we were perfect or didn't have our share of problems. But she said it was still nice to have that outward expression of love. I felt for her in that moment and did my best to comfort her. I now wonder if she felt jealousy or envy towards me, in this misguided way. Did she already resent me? Or is that where it began? Did she ever even like me?
She would go through phases where she would ignore us on Slack or change her profile picture to something shady and not speak to us. We would be concerned and confused, so we'd reach out to check if everything was okay. We did repair work, or attempted to, MULTIPLE TIMES throughout our friendship. I did my best to express care, and model that care for her. She was unwilling to learn, evidently.
During one of the hardest seasons in my life, when I had to quit an abusive job, I needed my friends by my side. I vented and they listened and were supportive. I was grateful, and expressed as much several times. Years later, she told me she resented me for needing so much that it felt like she had no space to express her struggles. I told her that there was always space for more than one person's issues, but also that sometimes one friend does need more than others. I thought I always expressed concern for them back, and I never stopped asking them about how they were doing. That was another red flag -- that she held that grudge, unbeknownst to me, for so long.
These are the main red flags, but I know there were others that I excused or overlooked at the time. I chalked things up as being personality differences, or her depression talking. I did have a gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that told me I couldn't fully trust her, but I suppose we see what we want to see in people. I now know it was my intuition desperately trying to barrel through kool-aid-man-style, but I kept ignoring it. I regret that the most.
TWO YEARS later (last week), my friend found a blog post this former friend had written when she ghosted us back in 2023. It explained her reasoning behind her dumping us, and it was a steaming load of shit. First, I found it hilarious that it took us two years to even notice this. Once I realized she ghosted us I unfollowed her on everything and took her up on her offer to get out of my life expeditiously. I did have moments where I felt bad. That same sympathy came knocking -- she's struggling, she needs help, she wasn't all bad -- and my sympathy wasn't a knife, it was genuine. But I would remind myself of all of the ways she failed as a friend. I cycled through anger, confusion, sadness for like 2 months. It helped to unpack it all with my other friends. A couple told me they kind of always knew she was a lousy friend, and were glad I was finally clear-eyed about it all.
Her blog post detailed her supposed journey through people pleasing. She claimed to give and give and give to others (us), and never received the same back. She said a bunch of other shit, but it's not worth taking down point by point. The main points were that she never received the love and care she put forth (a COMICAL accusation), and that she pretended to like certain things and be someone else to please others. She admitted to lying about who she was for YEARS, and acted like this was normal! She also said she rid herself of her people pleasing ways by no longer doing a single thing she doesn't want to do. She claims she dropped people unceremoniously from her life, and that she feels not the slightest remorse for it. She also said that if anyone cannot give her exactly what she wants and needs, then she will not have them in her life.
I need to stress in the strongest possible terms that this is an anti-social way of being. Navigating the world in this way is extremely selfish, not because we need to appease everyone around us, but because nobody is perfect. Nobody is able to be everything we need them to be at all times. People are flawed and complex. Relationships require reciprocation, communication, and understanding. Her view of human relationships is disgusting to me. It is transactional, it is unforgiving, it is cruel. We cannot control other people, and ultimately, that's what she wants to be able to do. There is only one result to such an existence, and it's isolation and loneliness.
I see what she is doing. She is pushing people away under the guise of putting herself and her needs first. She is justifying her anti-social and intolerant behavior by claiming it's self-liberation from people pleasing habits in order to avoid the pain and disappointment that comes with human relationships. If she avoids people, then they can't hurt her. But it also means she's more likely to end up alone. Ironically, she risks self-fulfilling her own fears and frustrations about people. Ironically, she ends up hurt anyway, because she's hurting herself.
She claimed what broke the camel's back in our friendship was that we didn't respond adequately enough when she texted us that she was anxious and needed a pep talk that January in 2023. She claims up until then she had been a great friend, giving and giving and giving. By that point, she had been distant, rude, checked out. We'd checked in, on occasion, but after YEARS of always being the only ones to check in and coddle her feelings and her struggles, we were fatigued. I felt like she kept testing me as a friend. I felt taken for granted. If anything, we'd been pouring and pouring into her, and never getting the same level of care in return. While she was being distant and a bad friend, I had two brain MRIs and was also diagnosed with PCOS. She never knew because that's how little she was speaking with us about anything substantive. For months!
Even still, I responded to her text the best way I knew how. I was in the middle of a family gathering for my cousin's birthday. I was at the table gabbing with my loved ones. She did not express she was in crisis.
I'm very familiar with anxiety. The things that work best for me are to ground myself and get myself physiologically out of fight or flight, before I can address anything else. So I responded with ways that work for me to get out of my head. I suggested movement, distracting TV. When I had my last big anxiety spiral, I got on the couch, got my weighted blanket over me, grounded myself with things i could see, feel, and hear, and watched BTS videos. She claimed we told her to "go on a walk and watch TV," as though we were dismissing her. I understand she could have felt misunderstood. But we are not mind readers. Nobody is a mind reader! If you have extremely specific needs, and do not detail them, how can you hold it against someone when they don't perfectly guess what you need? I feel insane even having to state something so obvious! I go back to what I said before -- rather than address these issues with us in a conversation, she decided we did the wrong thing and therefore should be dropped forever.
Mental health struggles, which I am personally familiar with, are not an excuse to be an intolerant and hurtful person. And our actions, even those while in the throes of depression or anxiety, do have consequences.
She claimed in her blog post that she's much happier now, because she surrounds herself with friends who do support her. This can't possibly be true. Her other friends were rarely around, she hardly ever spoke about them, and when she did it was to vent, or for us to realize they were lowkey bullying her. And if she had these other friends, why was she only texting us her anxiety crises?? Why did she only expect us to be her boyfriends, therapists, emotional punching bags? If you have such incredible friends and you're no longer lonely, why are we the only ones you're holding to these ridiculous standards?
Ultimately, her blog post reads to me like the desperate attempt of a manipulative person, hoping for her friends to read it and feel enough guilt to reach out to talk things through. A test, in other words. But to be perfectly clear, even if I read this shit in time, I would have never reached out. I would have helped myself out the door of her life, at sprinting speed, even!
It's so gross to treat relationships in these exacting, transactional ways. I'm grateful she wrote this stupid blog post, because it further cements what I've already figured out. She was never a real friend. I can accept that just fine -- it's something I'd already made peace with a couple years ago. What's so upsetting to me about this situation is that she used therapy speak to justify her shitty behavior, seemingly learned nothing from us over the years, REFUSED to go to actual therapy, and spat on the genuine care, love, and friendship I extended to her for almost a decade. I was vulnerable with her. I was honest. I was myself. And all I got in return was a backhanded blog post on an obscure, third-rate beauty blog. She read ONE book about people pleasing, took all the wrong lessons from it, and is claiming to be healed! It would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing. There really are unhealed people like this out there, who lack introspection, and just walk around hurt and hurting others.
I think what's also frustrating about this situation, aside from everything I've already listed, is that this person is the type to be happy that she made you mad. She's the type to take petty joy in upsetting those she sees as rivals. If she knew her behavior upset me, she'd take joy, and it pains me to give her any joy whatsoever. But I don't feel things for her sake, to spite her, or in spite of her. I feel things because I simply do, and I will never be ashamed of that. Vulnerability is beautiful, and I will never let a cruel and self-hating person convince me otherwise.
For the record, I don't disagree that people pleasing is a cycle we should break if we find ourselves in it. People pleasers tend to label themselves such, but can't see that absolutely no one is pleased, not even them! I'm perfectly fine with being disliked. Not everyone is for everyone. It's ironic because I remember telling her that, multiple times. But even so, I have never in my life treated anyone in the way she treated me.
I'm grateful to have genuinely kind, loving, fun, and supportive friends in my life. I take pride in nurturing those relationships, because they are meaningful and important to me. I don't show up for people and do things for people because I'm keeping track and expect everything I give exactly back. I do it because I want to, because I love them, and I make it easy, I think, for them to reciprocate those things if it's what they want. The keyword is reciprocity. We are friends because we want to be in each other's lives. No one is held against their will.
If she had just been woman enough and come to us and said she just wasn't vibing with us anymore, we would have accepted that. It might have been a tough conversation, but I would have respected her for it either way. I will do my best to learn from this experience, and to not self-betray by ignoring my intuition ever again.
The hard truth is we held a mirror up to her, and she was forced to confront her shortcomings. She is someone incapable of feeling true empathy for others, she gets off on feeling superior, she has to make others feel small, she relishes in feeling like she manipulated someone or won over them. And ultimately, she is unable to accept love and friendship because she is unable to provide those things to others and to herself.
Before I read her blog post, I would tell my friends that I'd be open to a conversation with her if she was willing to have one. After this, that door is officially closed and bolted shut. I know my worth, plus the tax. At least this brought me and the other friend in our trio even closer. Our values align and it rules, actually! I move forward knowing I remained genuine, honest, and true to myself despite the overtime work she put in to tear me down. And I'm proud of myself for that.
Okay --- now that I've processed this by writing it out, I release it forever.
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