emotional abuse??

[snufkin]

One of my best friends has recently started getting... well... mean to me. we’ve known each other for about 3 years now and they’ve lived with me and my parents for about a year. Current situations make it hard for either of us to move out, and I don’t want to have to kick them out on the street or anything. Anyway. It kind of feels like they want me to be mad at them. They’ve said cruel things to me and I almost always feel bad when I’m with them now. We used to have little arguments and maybe they’d say something terrible but I’d move on but now it’s nearly every conversation. It started getting bad when they got a boyfriend. They constantly blame their shitty behavior on either missing their boyfriend (long distance at the moment) or on their star sign (cancer). I can’t talk to them about the things they say because they immediately take it as an attack and get defensive and make it about them again. I know everything they say to me is just projection and it really has nothing to do with me at all but I’m getting to the end of my rope. I love them dearly and want to fix this but I don’t know how.

[Monsoon]

Hi Snufkin,

 

Apologies for my late reply. Your post somehow got lost, but I finally came across it. Thanks for coming to us for support. We are here to help you.

 

I'm sorry to hear you've been going through this as it must be really hard. I wonder, to stop them being so defensive when you confront them, could it be that you maybe write things down in a letter? It is important for this letter to say that you care about them and want to fix this, but you cannot carry on the way things currently are. By writing a letter, this takes the physical confrontation element out of it which usually makes people defensive. This also gives the recipient time to calm down before they respond.

 

As you said, behaviour like this is always a projection of something else that the other person is going through. Maybe you could say this in the letter and ask what's going on? Alternatively, if this doesn't work, you could have a conversation with someone else mediating. The mediator could ensure that no one is interrupted when speaking and that the tone of the conversation remains respectful.

 

How does this sound? If you don't find it useful, let me know and we can figure something else out.

 

Speak soon,

 

- Monsoon