How do you tell when a friendship's gone bad?
Hi, I'm a long time lurker, first time poster and...yeah.
Anyways, there's a person, A, that I've been friends for a couple years and she's been there for me though some rough times, and we've been through one major fight that was a little odd. Basically she got upset I was sharing our mutual hobby with someone else she knew, and freaked out. That caused me to panic and lie and well...she proceeded to drag me over hot coals for a few weeks along with changing her story about what had happened a couple of times. During that time period I apologized multiple times, sometimes even during the same day. It's not the first time she's changed stories like that - though usually it shows up in the form of 'changing what you said to be what she *wishes* you said' than this.
That was at the end of last year, and things seemed to get better after I took a few weeks off of our friendship. During that time I seriously considered ending the friends, but ended up deciding to give it a shot and it really seemed to be working. Then a few of weeks ago she started getting passive aggressive and even a little confrontational for no real reason I can tell. I've been acting the way I normally do, and things are going great in her life. I tried riding it out because hey. Maybe she was just having a rough week, but it's become pretty clear that's not the case. There have been a couple times I almost got up and just walked away because I was just that tired of it, and as a result it's starting to seem like it's time to cut off this friendship.
The problem is that I *know* I sometimes get a bit rash about this type of thing, and I can't tell if it's that or if it's really not worth sticking it out.
Edit to add more information: A and the other girl are friends. As far as I know there's no bad blood between them, they just don't do our hobby [co-writing stories if that helps] because they don't enjoy the same types of plots, etc. There are actually two reasons behind the lie 1. I didn't actually know that B was the same person A was talking about. She didn't mention last names and B's first name is fairly common so it wasn't an 'Oh yeah! I know her!' moment for me. 2. A was having a panic attack over the idea it was B while we were talking and that triggered an 'OH NO, ABORT, ABORT!' reaction which was bad, I admit. How she'd 'found out' was because B'd told her something that I'd told B and basically went 'Hmm, that sounds like something Eco's said to me before.'
The next day after A'd calmed down said that she'd thought about it/talked it over with another friend and that the main reason was because she had a habit of being possessive over her friends, and that she thought I only wrote stories with one person so she thought she was 'losing' me. I apologized for lying, explained why I'd done it and we agreed to forgive and forget. Things seemed to calm down, if be a little awkward for the next couple of days when B started bringing the fight up again, except this time she was saying that she'd only started having a panic attack because she 'knew I was lying', and essentially made me jump through hoops to apologize. Then she started doing it on an almost daily basis for the next week or so [to the point that another of my friends started calling it 'Hell Week'], during which I went back and checked to make sure I wasn't mis-remembering the order things happened in [mostly texts]. Come to find out she was changing her story, and that I had done it after she'd started panicking. At that point I took the couple weeks from talking her, and things were fine again.
Sorry if that's now too much information. I wasn't completely sure what you'd want.
Anyways, there's a person, A, that I've been friends for a couple years and she's been there for me though some rough times, and we've been through one major fight that was a little odd. Basically she got upset I was sharing our mutual hobby with someone else she knew, and freaked out. That caused me to panic and lie and well...she proceeded to drag me over hot coals for a few weeks along with changing her story about what had happened a couple of times. During that time period I apologized multiple times, sometimes even during the same day. It's not the first time she's changed stories like that - though usually it shows up in the form of 'changing what you said to be what she *wishes* you said' than this.
That was at the end of last year, and things seemed to get better after I took a few weeks off of our friendship. During that time I seriously considered ending the friends, but ended up deciding to give it a shot and it really seemed to be working. Then a few of weeks ago she started getting passive aggressive and even a little confrontational for no real reason I can tell. I've been acting the way I normally do, and things are going great in her life. I tried riding it out because hey. Maybe she was just having a rough week, but it's become pretty clear that's not the case. There have been a couple times I almost got up and just walked away because I was just that tired of it, and as a result it's starting to seem like it's time to cut off this friendship.
The problem is that I *know* I sometimes get a bit rash about this type of thing, and I can't tell if it's that or if it's really not worth sticking it out.
Edit to add more information: A and the other girl are friends. As far as I know there's no bad blood between them, they just don't do our hobby [co-writing stories if that helps] because they don't enjoy the same types of plots, etc. There are actually two reasons behind the lie 1. I didn't actually know that B was the same person A was talking about. She didn't mention last names and B's first name is fairly common so it wasn't an 'Oh yeah! I know her!' moment for me. 2. A was having a panic attack over the idea it was B while we were talking and that triggered an 'OH NO, ABORT, ABORT!' reaction which was bad, I admit. How she'd 'found out' was because B'd told her something that I'd told B and basically went 'Hmm, that sounds like something Eco's said to me before.'
The next day after A'd calmed down said that she'd thought about it/talked it over with another friend and that the main reason was because she had a habit of being possessive over her friends, and that she thought I only wrote stories with one person so she thought she was 'losing' me. I apologized for lying, explained why I'd done it and we agreed to forgive and forget. Things seemed to calm down, if be a little awkward for the next couple of days when B started bringing the fight up again, except this time she was saying that she'd only started having a panic attack because she 'knew I was lying', and essentially made me jump through hoops to apologize. Then she started doing it on an almost daily basis for the next week or so [to the point that another of my friends started calling it 'Hell Week'], during which I went back and checked to make sure I wasn't mis-remembering the order things happened in [mostly texts]. Come to find out she was changing her story, and that I had done it after she'd started panicking. At that point I took the couple weeks from talking her, and things were fine again.
Sorry if that's now too much information. I wasn't completely sure what you'd want.