I’ve known my best friend Mary (not her real name) for about 7 or 8 years now. I’ve had her back through tough times and she’s had mine. The rest of this post might make her sound bad, but honestly she is not a bad person, she’s a kind and caring friend.
But there is one thing I’ve noticed she does a lot lately that I don’t understand. She seems to keep finding ways to make me feel humiliated.
Recently I was at her place and she came out from the bathroom, sighed and said “This is awkward but every time you use my toilet you pee on the floor. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to say but I’m tired of cleaning it up.”
I was genuinely shocked and embarrassed, and I believed her. It’s not a problem I’ve ever had anywhere else but maybe I was careless or there’s something about her toilet that makes me stand up funny. Next time I used it I was very careful and made sure I checked the floor after I was done. It was perfectly dry, so I washed my hands and left. Ten minutes later Mary uses the bathroom, comes out and says “You peed on the floor again.”
But I didn’t. I checked the floor very thoroughly after I used the toilet. It was dry. I told Mary this and she shrugged and said “OK, if that’s what you want to tell yourself.”
I recently began trying to learn Spanish. I’ve been working really hard, doing 3 to 4 hours of personal study every night and attending private lessons. Every time I mentioned something I learned to Mary she’d correct me, which was weird because a) her Spanish is the same beginner level as mine and b) I know just enough to be able to tell she’s usually wrong. But I just let it go and figured maybe she was right in a different Spanish dialect.
We went to a Spanish language cafe so I could practice, and I wanted to order hot chocolate but wasn’t sure of the word for it. I was about to get out my phone to check but Mary said “It’s chocolate gaseosa.” That didn’t sound right but my Spanish is still beginner level and the waiter was coming, so I went with it. The waiter looked completely confused and kind of amused and we muddled through a conversation where finally he worked out what I actually wanted. Looked up what Mary had told me and she’d told me to say “fizzy chocolate” for some reason.
There’s a bunch of other examples I won’t get into because this post is already long. What I want to ask is how do I bring this up with her? I don’t want a fight about it, but the few times I’ve pointed out she’s not being truthful or I don’t agree with what she’s saying she’s blown me off and been very dismissive.
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TL;DR: Best friend keeps accusing me of things that are untrue or engineering situations that are embarrassing for me. How do I talk to her about it without starting an argument?
37 comments
You need to realize that she is not your friend.
Think it’s time you found a new friend
She doesn’t sound like she’s your friend but she sure does sound like an asshole. Talk to her about see why she’s started doing this, if there’s something going on with her and if she denies it and doesn’t stop then you should rethink your friendship
I think she probably needs to put others down to feel better about herself. Or shes just a bitch. Either way, no true friends would do that. Distance yourself, that will eventually make you feel awful about yourself. And built up resentment to her.
Not a friend. Sounds like a power play that they are doing, but either you confront and say it stops now and see how it goes, or you say that you’ve had enough of their crap and you don’t need that in your life.
That doesn’t sound like a best friend. Why would you want to stay friends with someone like that? A true friend wouldn’t do that to you. If you already brought it up to her and she brushed you off she probably will do the same.
This is the epitome of gaslighting. Ditch her, she won’t change and you’ll be questioning your sanity constantly.
Sorry, she’s not your friend. She’s got issues and it makes her feel good to demean you. Also, is chocolate Caliente the right phrase? Your commitment to study language is admirable. Now go out and find some new friends, whatever language they speak. As long as they are nice to you.
Yeah… she’s not your friend. It feels like she’s wants to put you down to feel better about herself. Maybe she is jealous about something? Seems maybe she’s jealous about you idk
It’s okay to make mistakes while learning Spanish, friend. Most of us Spanish speakers don’t care, we like helping people who are learning! Also, it is true that certain Spanish words varies from country to country. For example, in my country “popcorn” is called “pipocas” but in other Latin countries it’s “palomitas”, “pochoclo”, “cotufas”, etc. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes! But if your friend is being like what you said… I would advise you to cut contact little by little with her.
She might have been a good friend, but she is not a good friend now. You should sit down and have a real talk with here, and if it continues you have to decide if she is the kind of friend you want in your life.
She’s not worth hanging out with. Just start putting distance between the two of you
Sis, I know it is hard to let go of people but she is intentionally trying to humiliate you and that is not something a friend does. Don’t even bother confronting her about it because she won’t acknowledge you are correct, kind of like the pee on the floor thing.
From now on, you are unavailable when she reaches out. Totally and completely. Go to that spanish cafe and meet people to hang out with there. Go to a hiking club. Hang out with other friends but do not hang out with this woman. She will keep doing this because she wants to and its fun. She is very well aware she is doing it and enjoys it.
I really don’t like the idea of throwing the whole best friend away.
The toilet situation is so strange, I would have asked her to show me the pee on the floor? Best friends can talk about pee, figure out what’s going on with the toilet/pee together.
When she corrects you, and she’s wrong, then discuss it. It doesn’t have to be an argument. One of you pull out your phone and Google it. Sometimes people are just wrong. We are all human.
If you value this friendship then have a talk with her in person about how you’ve been feeling. Don’t let her blow you off, have the conversation and let her know it’s important. Try to gain her perspective on all this, maybe there is something you are missing.
I lost a best friend because she could tell everyone (her family, friends, and the Internet) that she was mad at me and why- but she couldn’t tell ME directly when she was upset. Scared to hurt my feelings, scared of my reaction, I’m not sure. But friendships don’t survive without communication and it isn’t always easy.
I wouldn’t even be friends with her, just cut her off. Liking to humiliate you isn’t exactly a great quality to want in a friend.
Is she the same overweight Mary who goes swimming with random people in random swimming pools call her out tell her the last time you came over you pooped like a dog in my toilet and it got clogged, tell her off do the same thing back to her. Insult her back.
She might be your friend, but she is not a very good one. Friends don’t try to undermine each other. It’s hard to realize that someone you love/trust/like has ulterior motives. You say in another comment this behavior is a recent development. It could be BPD that is developing. I had a friend who did similar things (ex. Told me I vomited all over the bathroom one night when I was drunk, when other ppl said that never happened/it was clean). Her BPD started to get worse & she started to do completely unacceptable things to me & others. They feel threatened by you and have to find ways to undermine you in order to feel better about themselves. It’s a power play, gaslighting, sucking your energy & you should start to distance yourself from this person.
You need a break from this friendship. If your friend is pissed at you about something she needs to say it out loud instead of doing this weird, passive-aggressive bullying.
Wow. Not hard to figure out she’s NOT your friend. How have you not figured that out yet?
You mention that this is a recent development. Were there any other recent events in your life that had a positive impact on you, that could’ve possibly made her friend jealous? Anything bad in her life? My thought is that something happened that made her feel interiour of you and now she’s trying to compensate by trying to put you down. Maybe she’s doing it on a subconscious level.
About the pee problem. Could it be the splash after the flushing? Or after hand washing? Cuz I, f.e. after washing hands shake the water off them, so there are naturally little droplets all over the place. Never been a problem for anyone tho. Or maybe she lies or pees on the floor herself.
What about other aspects of your friendship? *In the present* is she supporting in any aspects of your life at all?
I think you really should call her out once again. If she dismisses you, then maybe your friendship has run its course. It’s sad, but it happens more often than one might think.
She sounds like she either doesn’t like you or is jealous/threatened by you. I know you’ve been friends for a long time but she’s absolutely negging you which is a crappy thing to do.
I would distance myself away from her, but if you don’t want to do that talk to her about how you appreciate the friendship but there’s instances (as you’ve mentioned) when she hasn’t made you feel good and you’re sure that isn’t her intention. Perhaps give her the chance to explain herself and go from there
This person is not your friend. Why do you put up with this? She is not a nice person.
she’s not your friend, friend
She’s probably a caring friend as long as she feels superior to you. Once she doesn’t she does something to make herself feel like your below her, your humiliation is her gratification. If you guys have been friends for years I’m sure their are tons of instances she’s done this to you. This is an abusive relationship, she is not a good friend to you.
Your “friend” is sabotaging you for her own sick enjoyment. Don’t talk to her about it, she knows what she’s doing. Drop her and I’d distance myself from anyone who remains her friend.
She’s practicing her gaslighting skills, you’re unfortunate being her puppet sorry
She is undermining and manipulating you. She is not your friend.
People humilliate what they don’t love and respect, hence she is not your friend. She finds pleasure in embarrassing you and that’s almost sadistic, she won’t stop unless you stop it.
We all need friends, but the kind of friends that will give you a helping hand when you fall, not the ones that will push you lower to the ground.
I had a friend on and off for 26 years. She did some strange things and didn’t have much in common but stayed friends. Long story short, I broke up friends with her when she I realised she was always trying to humiliate me and put me down in many ways privately and in front of others for no reason and that she had been doing that for over a decade.
I was there for her through all of her problems (she had so many due to the way she was). I realised she was a sociopath. She kept me sweet by being helpful but also a way to feel superior over me. I dropped her and never looked back. I just wish I had done it much sooner but I was always so nice and excused her bad behaviour towards me. My mistake.
Okay first of all, purposely humiliating someone is the OPPOSITE of kind and caring. Like complete opposite 😩😂anyone who is actually nice would never do this!
I would be blunt. Especially in moments of bold face lies…”why are you doing that? You’ve done it x, y, and z times as well and I don’t appreciate it” altho you may see mary as a friend, she sees you as a punching bag. Might wanna consider that
How can you describe her as ‘kind and caring’ and then go on to say all the really shitty things she does to you?? She’s *not* kind and caring, she’s covertly malicious.
I was once dating a guy for a year-ish with next to no problems. One night, he wakes me up from a deep sleep and tells me I was snoring. Like, kind of roughly shaking me awake and sounding somewhat pissed. I apologized, changed position and fell back asleep. He woke me up again, same thing, annoyed with me about snoring, so I again apologized, checked the time on my watch and rolled over. But by now, I was wide awake and laying there wondering why he had never mentioned me snoring in the entire previous year. I was trying to figure out why I would suddenly be snoring so loudly that I was waking him up or keeping him from falling asleep. So I’m laying there puzzling it out, when he roughly shakes me and semi-shouts that I am snoring *again*. Only I was *wide awake* and hadn’t fallen back to sleep, which he assumed I had. So what the fuck?? I sat up in bed, turned to him and said “Actually, I’m wide awake and haven’t gone back to sleep since the *last* time you woke me up and I was *not* snoring so what the fuck are you doing??” He would *not* back down. He *insisted* that I *had* fallen back asleep and just wasn’t aware that I had. I pointed out that I had checked my watch and it had only been 4 minutes since he last woke me. No matter what I said, he stuck to his ‘story’. Classic gaslighting. I made him go sleep on the couch (we were at my place) which he did. I didn’t bring it up the next day but I started paying close attention. He would say subtle things like ‘I really hate it when people do this particular thing this particular way’ which was how I did it. I would respond noncommittally and he would come up with *another* thing that ‘people do’ that annoys him and so on. He was passive-aggressively dissing all kinds of things about me down to *how I exhaled when I was smoking a cigarette*. It was pretty obvious the relationship was over and he either didn’t want to be the bad guy and say so or was trying to fuck with my self-esteem. I dumped him.
And you need to dump your so-called ‘friend’.
You mentioned this is a recent development…so i’m going to share another opinion – is it possible that it is something medical? Seeing pee on the floor when there isn’t – possible hallucinations? Do you guys have mutual friends you could consult to see if this behaviour extends to them as well? Her family/boyfriend? It sounds weird, too weird of a behaviour, especially if she wasn’t exibiting this behaviour in the past.
Straight up ask her what her problem is.
Yeah thats not a friend . Friends dont do that
Horrid cunt of a friend
A friendship should never leave you feeling shitty.
Pull your head out your ass. That bitch is not your friend. Periodt.
Have you recently lost weight? Gotten a better job? Have a great partner? Has something changed in your life for the better?
Because it sounds like she is jealous and feels the need to tear you down.
She is not your friend.