end of a 12 year friendship

[MaidenMinx]

it's been about 12 hours since this friendship exploded spectacularly in my face. I'm in quite a bit of shock because my whole aim was to end things peacefully. Some people don't do peacefully.

So I've vented here about this friend before. I used to call her my best friend. If you want the back history, click my name and find the threads. I'm too tired to link.

So on Christmas Eve she got a call from her the mother of her ex boyfriends child. She was told that her ex had been sleeping with this woman the whole time they were together. She was told that this woman didn't feel bad because my 'friend' was the other woman.

My 'friend' then rang me up and exploded at me. Her ex was a family friend so she was convinced we had all known that he hadn't really broken up with his babymama and we were all laughing behind her back. I was offended that she could think such a thing but rather than let that surface I tried to tell her I hadn't known. She wouldn't listen.

Christmas day she called to tell me she couldn't be my friend anymore because she couldn't trust me. I simply said "I'm sorry for that. I hope we can be friends again". We talked for a bit almost amicably.

A couple of days after that she told me she wanted to drop my Christmas present around, and that she'd leave it on the doorstep. I told her hers would be waiting for her. When she arrived she rang the door bell (her present was in plain sight) and we exchanged presents and hugged. I was sad to see her go.

I thanked her for my present via text once I opened it. I don't recall all the details of the text conversation that we had, I just know it ended with us mutually agreeing space would be a good call.

I'm one of those people that when I request space, I mean a lot of space. Months worth. No contact at all.

Yesterday I was discussing all of this with my therapist and told her I was considering ending the friendship all together as we were in completely different stages of our lives and I feel we had outgrown each other. My therapist advised against this. I admitted that the thing that had me thinking this so much was a festival at the end of February she was supposed to attend with my husband and I. I didn't want to go with her any more and wanted a nice weekend away and alone with my husband. My therapist suggested that I tell her just that and we decided together that I should email her with "Hi, Hubby and I would like to go Soundwave alone this year. With this in mind we have organised alternative accommodation. Just thought you should know."

I came home yesterday afternoon and sent the email. Moments later I had a call from a private number, I don't answer those. I got a voicemail calling me petty and pathetic and telling me the friendship was over and that she was coming over to tell me to my face. At the time my husband was getting ready for work and I said to him "if she does show up, I'm calling the cops so I don't engage in a screaming match with her" She then started sending me threatening texts telling me that she's going to **** up my relationship, report me to docs and have my son taken from me and generally screw my life anyway she can. By this time I was angry and I told her she could try and if she did I would make sure she lost her job (which I could easily do, it's as simple as suggesting they drug test her - which by the way is one of the reasons I figured the friendship had run it's course. I have quit pot, she didn't believe I could do it and didn't want to lose a smoking buddy).

She did end up coming over and true to my word I called the cops rather than open the door. I told her they were on her way. Feeling shaken I called my brother and asked him to come over. He came over and started a screaming match with her that eventually got her to leave. (I am going to apologise to my neighbours today for being subjected to the language that came out of the pair of them yesterday). The cops showed an hour after I called them and I explained the situation. I wanted it on record that this psycho hose beast had verbally abused me and made threats. Unfortunately by then I had deleted the text messages and black listed her on my phone.

So here I sit, still in shock. I wasn't trying to end the friendship yesterday, just buy some time until I had decided if she was someone I wanted in my life or not. I don't think I would have been able to end it amicably as I wanted to, I think I would have gotten that reaction out of her regardless. A big part of me says "good bye to bad rubbish" another part says "what the **** did I do wrong? How could I have done it differently?"

Thankyou once again, forum, for the place to vent.

[MaidenMinx]

I'm suddenly feeling very lonely. I want to join a gym next week and am hoping I'll make friends there. I might give volunteering at the canteen at my sons school another go this year.

[asdfg789]

I'm also a sentimental person and would also hate to see the end of a long-time friendship, even a toxic one.

But I suspect that your friend will somehow come around cos her reaction was clearly very immature, but not surprising, given her history.

Don't feel too bad. Do the gym and the volunteering thing. (:

[sadie_genie]

It is not about the length of a friendship but the quality of it that matters the most. If you don't feel that you can derived pleasure from it and that you are no longer compatible with her, ending it is the right thing to do.

I have friends who I have known for 16 years and the friendship just get better with time.

[IndiReloaded]

*Did* you know or suspect anything? Or is she just uber-paranoid-freaky?

Anyway, sucks. Not that friendships end (people do move or pass on, etc) but that it was such an ugly way to end it.

[MaidenMinx]

Indi, I had no idea what-so-ever. She suspected things early on and would ask me if I thought he was up to anything and every time I said I didn't think he was that type of person. Honestly, if I had the slightest inkling that he was, I would have told her. Yes, she is uber paranoid.

And thanks guys.

[IndiReloaded]

In that case, her paranoia probably caused her to select for that kind of BF in the first place. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

[MaidenMinx]

My brother has chatted with the family friend (her ex) since and discovered that his babys mama only said all of that to get my 'friend' to back off and leave him alone. She has never understood the concept of NC. So if I have it right (not that it really matters), he wasn't sleeping with them both, he broke up with her to give his family a chance and she wouldn't accept it. This is not how my friend told it to me, but there have been plenty of other lies of omission from her that make it easy for me to believe my brother.

Dear oh dear. This has become such a convoluted mess. No wonder our friendship decayed. Top it off with chemical drug use (not on my part, but on the parts of everyone else involved) and it became horrible.

So yeah, it's more messy and ugly and toxic than I previously hinted at.

[Sonrisa]

OMG, you called the cops instead of talking it out

[MaidenMinx]

Oh, Sonrisa, if you knew this girl you'd know there is no 'talking it out'. If I had let her in my home, she would have started a screaming match that I was not willing to subject my son to. This is our 3rd falling out and the last one actually resulted in her having to be physically removed from my home.

The voice mail she left me in response to the email was her screeching insults and threats down the phone... while she was out the front of her workplace I might add.

When my brother arrived she was in her car on my front lawn. As he walked past her car, she got out and yelled at him "so I guess you're going to be a c**t to me now" He told her to "Shut up and f**k off"

Seriously, I called the police to prevent a scene. If they had arrived in any decent time, a scene may have been prevented. They didn't get here until an hour after I called.

I'd like to know what you would have done differently under the circumstances, especially considering when she told me she was coming over to tell me what she thought of me I texted back that she wasn't welcome and I would call the cops if she did come.

[Lovable]

I think you did the right thing in ending things. Although your friend didn't go about it in a very adult manner by talking things out, but if she's a drama queen, then she ended it in the fashion she is used to.

You know hun, it sucks, but sometimes friendships end. 1 or both of the people grow up & away from each other. IMO...I think it takes a alot of guts to end a long standing friendship that 1 or the other or even both know isn't going anywhere anymore. So many of us don't like change & want to hang on to what/who we know & is "normal" that we hang on to toxic friendships, even relationships.

I've had friendships end over the years, I never talked to the friends about growing apart, we just kind of stopped talking/haning out as much & then 1 day I realized I haven't talked to so & so for a year or more. I think sometimes that can be a little bit easier to deal with, just no more contact, than talking it out. At least it was for me because I know 1 girl in particular would have been exactly like your ex-friend above & there was no way I was going to deal with it or her.

[Lipp]

"A good war is better than a bad peace" in a sense.

[Sonrisa]

what might've happened to make her explode like that is:

1. she says that she can't trust you
2. it ended with us mutually agreeing space would be a good call. (see, that was pretty civil)
3. then she gets this: My therapist suggested that I tell her just that and we decided together that I should email her with "Hi, Hubby and I would like to go Soundwave alone this year. With this in mind we have organised alternative accommodation. Just thought you should know."

if i were you, i wouldn't have made any contact after it was decided on. she must've been very hurt to lose you as a friend, and then having you throw this in her face yet once again, must've been over the top. bad therapist suggestion btw.

[MaidenMinx]

Sonrisa, I think you have missed the point. If you go back and read some of the other threads you might see that she wasn't the only one hurt by the friendship, and her loss of trust in me was her own drug induced paranoia playing up. The email might not have been a good idea in your mind, I personally think it's considerate to let people know of a change in plans as soon as is humanly possible.

Thanks Lipp and Lovable. The shock has worn off and while I miss the good parts of our friendship (that had been missing for quite a while anyway), I am glad that source of stress its out of my life.

[Sonrisa]

I wasn't trying to take sides, I was only trying to understand what could've provoked her to such behaviour.