We have been friends for almost 10 years and living together the last 4 years. Over the last few years she has started copying every single thing I do. To the point she repeated my own thoughts and opinions on something to ME as if I wasn’t the one who came up with it.

– First it started with buying the exact same clothes and food I’d buy (even though she doesn’t cook)

– Then it was all my room decor. She literally got a fuzzy rug days after I got one, bought the identical desk I’ve had for 3 years, same plant hangers and similar wall decal

– She bought exactly the same shower curtain and rugs as me then said “well we both shop on Amazon”

– We were both vegetarian for 5 years and I started eating meat then 2 months later she starts eating meat

– I go car camping alone, and after her saying she’d never want to camp alone went a week after I did

– she has always hated online dating and said she’d never want to meet someone online…. 1 week after I was using tinder she was talking about how she met someone on there

– 2021 I was enrolled for a marketing degree for my new job and the same week she said she decided she was going back to school and asked me to send over the links for fasfa & enrollment

– I started a TikTok channel and she had never even been on the app then two weeks later she decided to start a TT channel

– I told her how I was thrifting for “natural wood pieces” and was excited when I found down affordable rattan furniture 2 weeks later we are in a thrift store and she turns to me and my friends and says “I’m looking for natural wood pieces”

Its on another level to the point she gets SO jealous when I bring my boyfriend around that she makes us both uncomfortable. She will sulk and through all this negative energy around so of course I stopped inviting her to things because it’s so hard to be around.

After years i finally brought it up and she made excuses for everything.

What do I do??

Tl;dr: I live with my friend who copies everything I do and gets extremely jealous over my boyfriend

12 comments

  1. I had a friend like this once in high school. It started off innocent, where it seemed cute/funny to wear similar outfits to school or dye our hair red together. For some of the other stuff, I thought I had just found a friend that I clicked well with because we liked so many of the same things. And to be fair, I followed her lead on a few things too, because I thought it was just a best friend thing and it was fun to bond over similar things.

    But then it got more intense. We were roommates for a year and a half in college and I started craving some individuality and she wasn’t letting me have it.

    I ended up telling her I needed space from the friendship and she needed therapy. She ended up getting diagnosed with something (she didn’t tell me what) but realizing that her behavior was unhealthy. We stopped being close friends. It was originally a messy split but we smoothed it over and are on okay terms. We just don’t really talk anymore, only a few times over the years, but we are still Facebook friends. Weirdly, I still see her copy me on things years after we stopped talking. I dyed my hair purple and later she posted a picture of her on Facebook with purple hair. I went into a specific career field and she ended up choosing a similar field despite never saying she had any interest in it before. I don’t think she’s dangerous, I think she just doesn’t have her own sense of identity.

    All of that to say, it’s a mental health thing. She needs professional help. And if you’re uncomfortable, you need to set clear and firm boundaries, not just ask her about it. Make space for your own individuality or distance the friendship if you need to.

  3. You look into not living with her, because she is sabotaging your dating life. The rest of it, you could just ignore, but that you cannot. She clearly has serious self-esteem and anxiety issues. She copies you because she is afraid if she just does what she chooses, she will do things wrong. But you know how to live and be a person, so if she does what you do, then she’s doing things that are okay. She needs therapy to fix that attitude, but you can’t fix her.

  6. Hey love! As someone who was That Friend™️, I’d recommend fading out or having a real solid talk about boundaries. It’s a mental health thing. Can be trauma, can be a personality disorder, attachment issues, anything really, but in any case its something she needs very real help and support on (which you are not and will not be, she needs medical help and platonic support from other people to get through this).

    In my case, it was that I looked up to her. We were in many ways freakishly similar, but in the ways we were not, I felt like I was lacking. Like we were in a race and she was running so far ahead of me, I felt small and discouraged. I still do, somedays. I felt like if I followed in her steps, surely Id have it all figured out too. Thats your teens and 20s for you hun. We reconnected recently after years of down time, space, and both of us working on our traumas.

    It’ll be good to tell her you worry about her and that things have crossed a line for you now, you aren’t okay with how closely she is following in your steps and you need some literal space for now. Set some solid boundaries. If she keeps finding excuses, just step out. Regardless of how miraculously accidental or not this could all be, it crosses a line for you and you arent comfortable. Take care of yourself x

  7. I am wondering if this relates to someone not having their own identity due to a natural mental position or developmental situation or trauma.
    Most of the back ground that has made me into me is hidden from me due to my own version of trauma and my own aspy perspective.
    One result is that I am motivated by others needs and not my own. I even struggle to identify my own preferences other than at a very very high level.
    I have had relationships that were all about doing my best by others rather than what I need. My own needs barely register when someone near me needs help. I put others first because there is no perspective on myself that really comes to mind.
    Right now I am trying to work out how to recover from a relationship failure that had left me doubting everything about myself and my place in this life.
    Due to my first bout of covid, I have too much time to think now. And I am lost in a labyrinth of past and future decisions.
    I have a great close friend who loves my very much but I cannot love her in the same way. I feel even this is a failure on my part no matter how I try as I know we can never be right.
    I also feel she is the first person to put me first and do I owe her better than I am.
    Who I really am is a picture where I can barely see the canvas.
    The best I do is try and make sure that the external motivations are for my kids more than for others.

    To stop rambling, all of this is because I have no clear identity of my own. It is debilitating, embarrassing and continues to traumatise me in every choice I make.

    So from my limited perspective, I would say this person needs guidance in how to explore being themselves. But this will take years and years of small steps. It is so much easier to simply ape someone they admire than to work on a problem that they cannot even see.

  8. Wow, what kind of excuses did she try to make for all of that when you called her out on it? This is all so bizarre.

  9. I did this to a friend, to a much lesser extent. I (M) was basically simping for my long-distance friend (F) of two years, except I just wanted a friend, nothing more. So I got into things she was into, and sort of changed some things about my personality to conform to the friendship. I got sad when we didn’t talk for periods of like 4 ish days, otherwise we talked everyday. I wrote this in past tense, but I still have this problem. I think I should break contact, at least temporarily, while my gf thinks that would be me self-isolating, as she is my only close friend.

  12. This sounds scarily familiar and I really empathize with you. Unfortunately, my friend became erratic in the end and I reluctantly left the friendship. These situations can be confusing because you deeply care for them but may also feel violated by them too.

    It’s possible that your friend probably suffers from an undiagnosed mental health issue, trauma or codependency. It’s unlikely that you can deeply help your friend through these issues if she has assigned you both the role of being the poison/competition and the cure. It’s likely a source of frustration that she’s using others to develop her sense of self, but it likely isn’t producing authentic results… which may be keeping this pattern active. You don’t know who she is because, at the moment, she doesn’t either.

    I commend you for trying to address this with her already and although she didn’t appear receptive, please remember that you still have control over yourself and the amount of access that you give to others. Outside of having a direct conversation, which it seems you already did, here are some basic steps I took that helped me move away:

    >*(1) Learn how to love from afar and know where the two of you end vs. begin. If necessary, you can set an expectation on the amount of contact or access you will be able to have for the foreseeable future. I found there were areas where I weakened my boundaries because it was my friend, maybe you’ll need to reaffirm yours as well?*
    >
    >*(2) Encourage & discuss new, independent outlets. Limit conversations about yourself in the short-term.*
    >
    >*(3) Don’t be afraid to walk away and mourn any complicated feelings.The unfortunate truth is that your friend may have a lot of deep-held trauma and it may take time for them to make changes those changes. Any feelings of frustration or burden are chances to examine your (v valid need for) boundaries.*

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