A
female
age
26-29,
anonymous
writes:Me and my best friend Lucy have been best friends for almost 3 years, we do lots of things together, have classes together and hang out all the time. She's always been quite high maintenance, she's very insecure and makes up for this by acting overly arrogant, so to everyone else but those that know her really well, she seems like a b**ch. Unsurprisingly, this means that not many people like her - but she does not realise this. She is genuinley one of the sweetest, kindest people I know and not at all the person she puts on. Shes a bit of a hypochondriac and a serial worrier with fears of everything which can be annoying at times, but she tries hard and I do love her so I put up with it. After she got her GCSE results (she got 10 A*'s) she has been in a downward spiral of 'depression,' saying that she can't cope with the pressure and the workload. She feels that she is a special exception and doesn't realise that everyone else around her, including me, is struggling just as much.Shes been put on antidepressants and is currently speaking to 5 specialists, which she loves to tell me about. Shes always making excuses about why she can't do something and if others are around she looks at me knowingly as I am the only one that knows about this. Its almost as if she loves having this secret.She complains about every little thing, and often has massive moodswings, she can be loud and shouting one moment and then sat back, scowling the next, looking very sorry for herself. This then causes everyone at the table to stop and look at her and say 'OMG whats wrong?' to which she just shakes her head and pouts. Ok, what I have written makes me sound like a horrible person, but I am not. I have supported her through all of this, having to reassure her that she'll be fine/ok/briliant every few minutes. I didn't mind this at first, but this has been going on since September and now I am more than bored of it. I can't deal with her stress anymore. She thinks her life is so bad and is constantly telling me about it and complaining , to which I nod my head, sympathise and reassure. I cannot remember the last time she asked me how I was. I lost it with her today and snapped at her. She was whining about something and asked me several times, 'Will it be ok if I do this? Some people did this, I'm going to do that? Will that be ok? Are you sure? I don't know if it will be ok? It's really really important to me, do you think that will be alright?' I responded with - 'You're going to be fine, you're the best at..'She then did her sad face and began to say 'but' and I just snapped. I have never snapped at her before. I literally shouted back 'You are going to be fine and I won't discuss this with you if you are going to be stroppy.' It came out harsher than expected. She stormed off and had a cry with her boyfriend but we made up in the next lesson when I apologized and said that it came out harsher than expected.Its like walking on eggshells with her, I can't say anything without causing her to get upset. I know she is going through a hard time, but that is not my fault and I cannot pick up all the pieces every time she has a wobble, which is every 5 minutes. How can I explain this to her without upsetting her? I know feel that she depends on me too much. I love her lots and love being her friend but having to sort her out is upsetting me.
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male
reader, Serpico  +, writes (30 January 2013):
She is what I call a emotional "vampire." They are quite common, and they will suck the life out of you every chance they get, esp when they find you are a willing donor.
My advice is stay far from those people. The relationship will always be one way.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (30 January 2013): Don't be her rock anymore because clearly it's not doing any good. If it was doing any good, you wouldn't need to still keep on being the rock in this friendship. Define and stick to some boundaries. for example you may decide to go down the old road of giving her sympathy and comfort (since that's your automatic response) but set a time limit of, say, 10 minutes. If after then she's still going on and on, then that is when you get up and leave, say you have another appointment or something. she doesn't really want real solutions to her problems. Rather, she finds receiving other people's sympathy and attention to be reinforcing, therefore the more sympathy and attention you give to her, the more she will need. Your caring and efforts are not helping her and it's not helping you either because it just makes you simmer until you boil over and snap. repeat: if you keep giving someone help and yet it doesn't seem to make any difference because she keeps needing more and more help (meaning that your previous help didn't really have an effect) then you need to stop giving before you completely wear yourself out and get upset. be the rock for people who will in turn be your rock when you need help. that's what real friends are. Don't waste your energy and time on people who aren't interested in positive change they just want attention and find that playing the helpless victim is the way to get it.
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