Schizophrenia.com

This friend of mine

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#1

I’m just venting here, so thank you in advance for reading and for any input you might have to give me on this.

So, she and I met a couple of years ago in a rally, I was an activist (still like to think that I am but I’m not doing anything at the moment), and so was she. We got along pretty great, started to chat on facebook.

Eventually it turned into a weird thing, she has issues, big issues, and she talks to me about them all. I’m not going to go into details because its rude to talk behind people’s backs, but she has serious codependency issues and anger issues.

She lives with her mother, grandmother and boyfriend, that is also a friend of mine.

She doens’t want to work, she doens’t want to study, she just wants to be on facebook all day and complains about her boyfriend having to work because she doens’t want to be home alone.
Of course she doesn’t have any money and all she has is from her boyfriends money he gets from the government and that’s about to end next month.

So, another friend of mine and me talked and she was pretty depressed at the time for not going to see radiohead and we have some money and decided to join in and offer her the ticket and that’s what we did.

The tickets were ordered, I payed for them, this other friend of mine is paying half.

But I sense this depressed friend of mine was kinda into us buying her the ticket and manipulated us.
I think this because we haven’t told her that we bought the tickets, we want to tell her in person, and she sent me a text saying the tickets sold out and that we didn’t buy them… I got the feeling she was positive that I was going to buy her the ticket and now I feel manipulated and kind of feel like she doesn’t really deserve to have it.

I’m not going to back down, I’m giving her the ticket anyway, but seriously, I’m going to back off from her a bit these next few months until the show. I’m tired of being a napkin to her, all she does is complain about her life and how she never gets anything good going on, but she doesn’t do anything to change.

I offered help a few months ago but she told me she refuses help because, and I quote, she doesn’t want the “crazy label”… I told her I have the label and it’s not so bad. :upside_down:

I don’t know, what do you guys think? Was I manipulated?

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#2

Sounds like it to me. Some people can’t seem to help themselves. They have to get all they can out of every situation. I wouldn’t get too angry about it, but I would be careful about letting her manipulate me. You probably want to keep a certain amount of distance from her. If she is willing to be your friend even though you won’t let her manipulate her, you might keep the connection. If she won’t do that blow her off, because she will probably blow you off.

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#3

Yeah, I’ve been talking to her less and less lately. She brings me down a lot and she had a weird reaction to a friend of hers that is bipolar and was having a crisis. I’m too soft hearted, I should be more strong in these situations.

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#4

I would have a heart to heart with her about it. Tell her your concerns. You’re not running a charity (unless you decide to) and a friendship isn’t one sided like that. That’s nice of you to still give her the ticket, but you’re not obligated to keep lifting her up when she does nothing to help herself, and probably wouldn’t do the same for you.

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#5

Yeah maybe. I told her once I don’t really like it when people relly on me too much like I’m a napkin. She apologized for always dumping on me her frustrations, and that was it. I’ll go to the concert with her, but I think I’m backing off after that.

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#6

It sounds like that might be her primary survival mechanism, like rather than having learned how to provide and fend for herself while transitioning into adulthood, for whatever reasons likely from her childhood, it seems like she probably felt the best or only way to survive in the world was to get other people to provide for her. Since she gets upset over something like her boyfriend needing to go to work, it sounds like it’s all about emotional needs deep down, maybe things she didn’t get when she was a child, and maybe she doesn’t even realize that’s what is happening. Based on all the details, my guess would be that it wasn’t really about the tickets or going to see Radiohead, but rather it was about whether or not you and the other friend really care about her, perhaps like a sort of “test” to see if you are “real” friends - not that you need to buy people stuff in order to be a “real” friend, but just trying to imagine what it might be like inside her mind.

So therefore I am guessing that yes you were manipulated, but that it probably wasn’t a sinister thing, she probably sees you as a mother/therapist figure (when she really needs an actual therapist to help her with her actual parent issues, from the sounds of things). So she was probably “testing” for a sense of security / being wanted. You seem to have an altruistic streak in you from various posts of yours I’ve seen, and then I also read in one of your threads that you were in an abusive relationship - predators prey on empaths and such. So my final guess of all these guesses is that you sensed genuine emotional hurt and dysfunction and wanted to help, got manipulated by someone who likely doesn’t even realize they’re manipulating, and naturally, you can’t be everyone’s therapist.

So I would encourage you to see between the lines - it’s not like you were fooled by shenanigans. You wanted to do a kind thing because you are kind person, and it’s still a kind thing. It’s not like you’re a fool. So don’t let someone else’s dysfunctions take away from the situation. But yeah it’s probably time to draw some lines in the sand. She needs to get an actual therapist, and if she has to hit rock bottom emotionally before accepting it, then so be it. Some of us have to learn that way because some of our dysfunctions are so deeply ingrained.

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#7

If I could give you five likes I would.

It’s exactly what I think, exactly. I don’t want to be the kind of person that lets myself be manipulated, it bothers me so much, you have no idea, I can’t think of anything else since we texted yesterday.

I tried getting her to see a pdoc in order to be sent to group therapy, it would do her good, she can’t really relly on people for the rest of her life to be there for her, she eventually alienates people.

She lost her father to heroin and her mother is a recovering addict. When her grandmother dies she doens’t have a place to live. I can’t be there for her in that situation, of course not. She was kinda scanning me to see if I could help her once her boyfriends money runs out, I realized that, and I cut the conversation short. Told her to talk to another one of our friends that always knows of some job, didn’t get an answer.

I’m tired of being the mother/therapist person really, I need a friend I can talk to about my own mental issues, not be drowned by others. And for therapy other than therapy I have this forum, you guys get my problems :upside_down:

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#8

Possible bit of manipulation, hopefully it wasn’t in the forefront of her thoughts to do that… I’ve been screwed over pretty badly before. One of my current roommates is a poor college student, works 15 hours a week and gets paid minimum wage so I was happy to help him out a little by buying him dinner every once in a while but it turned into me buying dinner at the store 4-5 times a week for the two of us, for like, six months. Then one day he came home with a new jacket and he exclaimed, “Check out my new $200 jacket!” And that was the final straw. So I sat down with him and showed him a low ball number of how much I have spent on him, in just food, not to mention he never drives anywhere when we go places, didn’t pay me his portion of the energy bill for 3 months, and low balled me one month in rent ‘without realizing it’. I think it was positive because he said that I had been more than generous, that he felt really bad, and that he would pay me back as much as he could when he could. But that conversation was two months ago and he still hasn’t even made an attempt to pay me back a little bit. I still enjoy him, it’s just complicated. I keep coming back to, you give someone an inch and they take a mile…

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#9

Yeah I was definitely manipulated, I caught her just now trying to buy tickets for radiohead. She didn’t have the money before now she does. I’m regreting offering her the tickets. I’m pissed.

#10

I just saw this. Sorry I didn’t answer before. Sorry about your roomate. I’m pretty pissed right now, she definitely manipulated me.

#11

:persevere: sometimes it seems like people only care about themselves. Sorry about your friend.

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