Anon with the persistent friend here! Thanks for the advice! Honestly one of the reasons I’m so hesitant to cut it off is because one of our first “serious” convos we had was when he was saying how it was inevitable everyone would leave him and shit and he doesn’t want to disappoint me or the others and I was like bro the only way you’ll disappoint me is if you give up, and I’m not gonna leave. Now I don’t want to prove him right by y’know leaving. I know that was then and this is now and I couldn’t have predicted it’d go like this but I still feel shitty about it.
Hi again, anon.
I’m not surprised to hear that that person said that.
While expressing frustration with a difficulty to maintain relationships with people in that way can be genuine and sincere, it is also manipulative, whether deliberately so or accidentally so.
From personal experience I can tell you before I learned to set and maintain boundaries I was trapped in a few toxic relationships (including an abusive romantic relationship) by people who constantly reminded me that “everybody leaves me.”
It’s good to be a good friend.
But someone else’s mental health is never more important than your own.
Don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
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