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So the last two best friends I’ve had have been toxic. I would say I’m the type of person to be more passive. I’m kind of shy and like to keep to myself, but I try to validate and make sure that I make people feel comfortable. In the past, though, when I’ve wanted to stand up for myself, people have called me mean or tried to shout me down, so I feel like I’m backed into a corner where people see me as a pushover and try to push me around but the second that I speak up then suddenly I’m a bully.
I was 21, and my friend was 29 when we first became friends. She was the type to like monologue about her life or would go on and on even if people were giving social cues for her to stop, and she was the type always to want to be the center of attention. She would get upset if people would compliment me and started to put down my personality and say things like you either never say anything, or you talk too much still love you, though or would tell me that my hair looks overprocessed. I did a slow fade with her after she started doing this constantly than she sent me some long text message saying that we shouldn’t be friends after she saw that I had been ignoring her for weeks, and I said OK, hope you the best.
She tried to come back into my life two years later, but I rejected her and told her that I hope her the best. She tried to get info from my mutual friend about me, saying she was worried about me and that her friend was toxic, mostly blaming me.
The last friend(30F) I had was the same type. Where she loves being the center of attention and constantly sends me photos wanting me to compliment her, or any time we go out, she wants me to take 1 million pictures of her. At first, I could put up with this because she was friendly towards me or would compliment me. But recently, her boyfriend cheated on her, so we started going out more to like bars and clubs, and she gets lots of attention. Still, sometimes I want to talk to guys because I’ve been hung up on my ex for years and not talking to guys, and she would get visibly angry any time a guy would compliment me or be nice to me.
Recently I saw someone new, and the week before, I had stayed with her the entire night and played wing women with her and got her phone that she left in an Uber the next day. Then the guy I liked was texting me a week later to come to hang out, and I was with her at a bar. I gave her Uber money to go home and went to see that guy because I missed him and didn’t get to see him the week before, and my friend sent me a message cursing me out and calling me an awful friend.
Then she called me an sl\*t to our mutual friend a week later, saying that I’m sleeping with the whole town even though this person works as a sugar baby or is Work does a sex worker. On my birthday, she started calling me stupid and started calling me names and got angry with me because the guy smiled at me and then the next night, when I didn’t want to go out with her my birthday weekend then, she got angry with me and tried to pressure me to go out with her.
I don’t understand why I keep attracting women like this. They always try to imply that I’m ugly or not as attractive as I think when guys pay attention to me, or they make it as though I’m making them insecure if guys compliment me. How can I stop attracting self-absorbed friends?
TL;DR: Keep having toxic friendships where they put me down and I don’t know why
4 comments
It is not so much attracting bad friends but having and keeping them as friends.
We all encounter “bad” people. It is our choice whether we keep them in our lives or not.
It seems your need to make people comfortable around you is what might be the root cause. Also the general environment you are choosing to make friends in could be another reason.
sounds like in both cases you kept the relationship going because your boundaries weren’t great. make it a point to work on your assertiveness and you’ll gradually find it easier to walk away from people as soon as it’s clear that the relationship isn’t going to work. it’s not easy to stand up for yourself but it’s really important.
it’s also a good idea to just meet way more people – join a sport, go to a meetup, whatever appeals to you. that way, people who don’t respect your boundaries won’t be your only option and it’ll be easier to distance yourself from them.
Being a quieter type of person who tends to let others call the shots because I’m pretty cool (for the most part) with what others want to do when we hang out, I find that I attract such people or I attract the types that will be gung ho for a while then move on to a new victim. Like last year’s Christmas present, you know? Put on a shelf because there’s something new and shiny. I think it’s because we allow it and they know we will.