I’m starting to suspect my (F22) best friend (F22) of 11 years is abusive.

I’m gonna try to keep this as short as possible, with as much info as possible.. (on mobile so I apologize if the format is annoying.) Throwaway because she follows me on Reddit.

Any advice or input is greatly appreciated.

Some backstory; My (F22)best friend (F22) of 11 years went to the same school when we were younger, and had one friend in common. This mutual friend I will call Rose was very close to both of us, but we never became friends until a year or two later because she (in her own words) hated me, and thought I was the most annoying and childish person on the face of the planet at the time. She has in later years admitted that this was because of jealousy since I also was good friends with Rose, but mostly because she was jealous of my hair. When she told me we both laughed because it was so stupid.

This jealousy came forth in ways of little comments about my looks, my clothes etc. generally she just tried to put me down, but disguised in a “jokey” way.

But one day, minutes after insulting my new sweater, she came over to me apologized for making fun of me and my clothes. We instantly became best friends that day and were tied at the hip ever since. We have basically grown up together, she is more like a sister to me than anything else. Granted, her remarks did continue into our friendship in the early years but in a more lowkey way. The most prominent memory I have is that she would always comment on my boobs, or more so lack of boobs, which caused me to buy bras with the most push-up I could find for years. The bra however did not put a stop to her comments. But all comments of this or any nature stopped when we were around 15/16, so I thought she’d just matured a bit and I never really thought much of it again until now.

She started having extreme moods swings around this this time though, and could flip out and get extremely mad over stuff that other people might get a mildly annoyed at. When we were 15 to 16 we had a period of time where we would argue a lot, basically any time I would disagree/ say no or not want to do something she wanted me to do it became an argument because she would never let it go and I eventually had to give in- and then the argument would be over.

An example here is that we were in a bunk bed on vacation with her family when we were 16. They had gone off to buy groceries and the two of us were left to sleep in. Well, her step sister also staying in the same room as us forgot her phone in the room, and her alarm went off. As the alarm was blaring she asked me to come down and turn it off. Seeing that I was top bunk and she was just over an arms length away from the table the phone was on I told her that she is much closer to it and I on the other hand would need to climb down and up again. I found it extremely unfair that she would not even consider turning it off and stood my ground. This turned into a screaming match until I eventually gave in and climbed down to turn it off.

2018-2020 was probably our best years with the least conflict. During 2018-late 2019 I had a major glow down (extreme face bloating, acne etc) and I sort of wonder if this could of had a slight impact. During this time she would take pictures of me/us and want to do photoshoots etc but this has become pretty much non existent in the following years. We were on vacation together this summer to Prague and I took probably 15 pictures (randomly) of her because I thought she looked good and it would make her feel good and I’ve just realized she didn’t take a single one of me. I think she was generally happier in 2018-2020 (before lockdown, and non related to me) She was at a good place in life, we had lots of friends both mutual and our own and were sociable a lot and just had a lot of fun. She also had her first serious boyfriend for about 6-7 months during this time, but unfortunately she cheated on him and has regretted it ever since, and has never really gotten over him.

During 2013/2014 and late 2020/2022(3) she has been dealing with undiagnosed depression and I wonder also If this could be more so the culprit to her behavior towards me. She hasn’t really talked much about it to me, and trying to talk to her about what she’s feeling is like pulling teeth. I do think this is because she hasn’t had the conversation with herself and processed her feelings, but rather tried to smoke them away. She has pretty much been high since 2020 till now with the longest break of 2 weeks because she was visiting family in Argentina. She has wanted to quit for a long time, but relapsed after 2 days to a week every time. She is now seeing a psychologist but she says she can’t talk to them about weed. She has also been to a clinic specifically to talk about substance abuse.

Enough back story.. let me get to the point of writing this post. And I’m sorry, that was quite a bit and I’m grateful if you’ve made it this far.

She has always been short tempered, and quite difficult to talk to about things she doesn’t want to talk about without her getting angry, more so interested in her own wants than those of others, getting her way and extremely good at lying. Most of our conversation is about her, and I don’t really get the feeling she cares all that much about what I have to say. With exceptions of course, I can think of the top of my head three times she was truly therefor me when I needed her. But we’ve always suspected she might have ADHD and up until the past few weeks now I have just thought that this behavior was because of the adhd and I’ve not really thought too much of it.

However, her behavior has during the past month has shifted completely. It is as if all her worst qualities are multiplied by a hundred and displayed without any filtration. I’ve never during the 11 years I’ve known her experienced anything to this degree. She was staying at my place for a week, during which absolutely everything we did was what she wanted to do, and if I wanted to do something else she would flat out refuse and get mad and say but she wants to do \*this\*. (Which was listen to music, absolutely all the time. For hours on end we would lay in my bed just looking at my tv that was on Spotify playing music.) Little things like whilst making dinner she would tell me the water to the pasta doesn’t have to boil that hard and turn it down and that it only has to boil a little bit, that I’m wrong for having a strong boil to the water and refuse to let me boil it the way I’ve always boiled pasta, but at the same time refusing to help make the food except cut a couple greens and then act as if she’d done all the work… Literally just anything I would say or suggest she would slam down on. She did agree to watch tv for maybe 4-5 hours total during the week she was here, granted she chose the show and I didn’t care I just wanted to do anything else but music. Except for the very first day she was here, that day we watched a show the both of us wanted to watch. She had her clothes thrown all around my room, I tried cleaning a bit the first two days but eventually just gave up and accepted it. She could not sleep at night and said it was as if she had extreme insomnia and kept me up until 4 in the morning every night walking around slamming doors, playing and talking with the dog etc. It was as she was trying to keep me up on purpose, and did not care at all that I asked her to please be careful with the door and please stop at least talking out loud to the dog. She would just say his name and commands on repeat. “Sammy, SIT! Sammy Sammy Sammy SIT Sammy! Good boy! Sammy !? Sit!” And this is mind you, at 3/4 in the morning in the room I was trying to sleep in.

And then if I tried to express my feelings, and how this was starting to effect me she would either turn it right around to me and gaslight me, get mad and try to start an argument instead of a conversation, or totally ignore what I just said and come with accusations, for example she said “I feel like you’ve been manipulative the whole time!” And I’d ask for an explanation for what makes her feel that way and then she said “Okay well fine maybe not but at least this summer!” And then continue to shift the subject or add new accusations when I try to ask her what I’ve done that makes her feel this because I was utterly taken aback by this and have absolutely no clue what I might have done. And then she would switch subjects and vibe completely acting completely content and “normal” and then be annoyed that I was quiet and not saying much. This happened constantly, she would through out crazy accusations- with no explanation, then act completely normal and expect me to do the same. By the end of this week I was utterly mentally exhausted and felt physically sick. She has taken absolutely no accountability for how she behaved, and shifted absolutely all blame on to me, even now in the week after when I’ve tried to talk to her about it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as I’ve repressed a lot already, I think it’s some sort of defense mechanism, but seeing this post definitely didn’t turn out as a short one it’s probably just as well.

I’m beginning to think she might be emotionally abusive, mostly because of the absolute zero capacity to take any responsibility for her actions, and trying to lay absolutely everything over on me, and anyone else she possibly can. But any other input or perspective is very welcome as this extreme behavior that has been the past month is completely new.

Thank you if you’ve taken the time to read all of this, and I really appreciate any advice or thoughts anyone may have on this because I really am at a loss.

TLDR: Best friend of 11 years suddenly acting extremely manipulative. Feels like i am being emotionally abused but she doesn’t see anything she’s doing as wrong and means I am to blame for her behavior.