My good friend of 5 years is someone I care about greatly. She’s been there for me through a lot, and I consider her one of my closest friends.
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Since we met in college, she’s always had a fixation on characters from TV shows, movies, anime, etc. Her laptop and backpack are covered in stickers and charms from the various fandoms she’s in. I asked her about it a few years ago and she explained that fantasizing about fictional relationships with them helps her cope with stress. She is also on the Autism spectrum , so her hyper fixations manifest as obsessions with characters. In the beginning I was very sympathetic to this, it seemed harmless as most people have characters/people they admire.
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Over the years this “admiration” has gotten more and more parasocial (if that’s an accurate description). She follows fan accounts on tumblr, reblogging images of the same actor who plays her favorite character, she owns numerous merch items of said character, she even identifies as a part of the “fictional other” or F/O community. She showed me her tumblr blog dedicated to writing fanfic about an imagined life with this character and the celebrity who plays them. At one of our group outings, she brought along a plushie of this character to have breakfast with us.
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She’s always been more on the immature side, needing help finding jobs, writing résumés and cover letters. Even when it came to college, it never seemed like she took agency in her decisions. The school we went to offered free professional development classes, but she’d need convincing and constant pushing to try those resources out. Just like the fictional other situation, I was sympathetic at first and always happy to help, as not everyone grows up knowing the same things. But the older we get the more I wish she’d grow up.
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Often it seems like during our conversations, if she’s not talking about her obsession with her fictional others, she’s bored and won’t really engage. Many of our conversations make me feel like I am carrying them. Combined with the constant assistance in helping her with “adulting,” it has been hard to see this obsession as anything more than arrested development. I will concede that this could be ableism on my end. Just because something is a bit “cringe” doesn’t make it bad. But I’ve also built a bit of resentment towards this behavior, especially when she’ll complain about not being able to find a real relationship, but will invest so much time into a fictional one. I want to have a friendship with her, but a part of me also feels like I don’t.
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\*\*TL;DR:\*\* I think my friend is childish and selfish and is letting obsessive media consumption get in the way of our friendship. Am I being shallow about our relationship, or are there boundaries I need to set?
3 comments
It doesn’t sound like her obsession is the problem, but your lack of shared interests. You just don’t seem to have much of anything in common so you don’t enjoy talking to her or spending time with her, which makes you two rather lacking in compatibility to be friends. What do you like about your friendship with her? What is it you are seeking to maintain?
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It’s okay to step back from a friendship because you don’t enjoy spending time with them anymore. You’re at the age where some of the bonds you formed with people in college start to fall away. You’re growing into different people. It happens.
Your friend has a community of people who will support her in her main hobby and that’s great. You don’t have to continue to force a connection that is naturally growing weaker. That isn’t ableist—no one is owed friendship, and if she’s going to allow her social life to be swallowed by her fandom, you don’t have to be part of it.