Falling Out With Everyone

Katgurl

I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment. I have fallen out with four of my friends recently and I don't care. I feel hellbent on eliminating people from my life. I can't explain it. I feel like people are cluttering my life and driving me crazy. I feel like friendships are too much hassle and are distracting me.

I am alarmed by the fact that I DON'T care and that if I am getting rid of people (from different groups) the common denominator ie problem is ME.

Some background - I have lots of different friends. I always had a very hectic social calendar. I am in my 30s now and I feel different to when I was in my 20s. When I was younger I took a lot of drugs, was out of control, refused to go to college, slept with every scumbag who spoke to me and lived like a vampire. I now regret the things I did and choices I made. I wish I'd fullfilled my potential, was academically successful, had a partner, was well off and planning a family.

I did get over this extreme drug abuse phase and built an ok career in sales and had a couple of ok LT relationship but while the partying tapered it still continued over the years and I feel that the drugs had their way with me in the end ie they sent me on the wrong path, because I was behind schedule by not attending university I landed into the wrong career and then continued on an uphill battle.


I have spent last few years trying to change. I have returned to college to retrain. I also work and I take my career seriously although ultimately I plan to change career when I graduate. I worry about my drinking and always keep an eye on it because I am prone to addictions and I don't want it to get out of hand. I am being very proactive about meeting someone as I would ideally love a family.

I feel my friends don't support this that they either dismiss my efforts to meet someone, reassure me my career is a success (it is, it's just not what I wanna spend my life doing and something I got into without qualifications) and seem to take my efforts to improve my life as a rejection of them. I should point out that most of them are married at this stage and have laid off the partying so it's not that I'm not turning up to events. I feel like they have all made changes but they don't want me to, that they want me to always be accessible as a reminder of their old lives. I feel like my goals are ignored or undermined and lots of my friends are frankly, a bad influence.

I also feel (and this is where it gets a bit weird) that I just don't want the complicated close friendships we had in our teens and twenties. I want to focus on my own stuff and be left alone. I want to be allowed set my own prioriites without everyone else sticking their oar in.

Finally, I have had a lot of chances in life coupled with being very bright academically but I know that this is my last chance and I don't want to have people around me who are a bad influence.

I know I sound like a horrible snobby unappreciative person but this is why I need to get it out.

What I'm wondering really is if I am pushing people away and will regret it in a few years time or is it reasonable to want to paddle off alone, build my adult life and set the foundations for a comfortable old age?

strandroad

Looks like you're growing up and reevaluating your relationships, there is nothing wrong with that as long as your criteria are sound. Are you pushing everyone away or rather identifying those who are not supportive and taking a break from them only?

doireann08

Hi Katgurl

It sounds like you are stuck in a rut and want to make some changes. I don't understand why you fee you have to obliterate everything and everyone from your past.

Have these 4 friends done anything specifically to warrant you breaking the friendship or is it a case of you need some space right now to meet new people who you have more in common with?

I think you could regret cutting contact with your old friends - It's hard to understand where you are coming from without understanding the full context? Have you explained how you feel to them?

Katgurl

doireann08 wrote: »

Hi Katgurl

It sounds like you are stuck in a rut and want to make some changes. I don't understand why you fee you have to obliterate everything and everyone from your past...

I think you could regret cutting contact with your old friends - It's hard to understand where you are coming from without understanding the full context? Have you explained how you feel to them?

thanks for reply.

Yes I agree that I may regret culling people from my life and wonder am I doing something irreversible.

I know I haven't given specifics -

one friend and I always always end up in the same argument. She is longterm unemployed and a heavy drug user. She thinks I am a complete shallow sell-out and constantly criticises my desire to be good at my job or make money. Yet she has allowed me dig her out financially for years. She calls my work friends snobby assholes and entirely pointless. She says I'm obsessed with making money. I'm tired of defending myself. I just want to earn enough to be independant and feel i've achieved something with my life.

The second friend is a big drinker and always mocks my concerns about my drinking. I think she might have a problem herself ie she couldn't stop when she was told to by doctors and again when she was pregnant. These are her choices and it's her life but it's not somewhere I want to be. I have a tendency to drink heavily on a night out and I always keep an eye on myself and monitor if I'm overdoing the partying. She always tries talk me out of things like giving up for a month to train for an event or going home if I feel I've had enough. She also was very vocal about her disapproval of me going back to college, why did I need a degree? When I announced I was marathon training she spent weeks talking me out of it.

The other two friends are guys that over the years i've had flings with. I was very clear about not wanting casual hook-ups but that's what they ended up being. It's not that I'm angry I just think it was a stretch calling them friendships when they weren't. I don't want them in my life, the first guy because it's gone on for years on and off and I think he took advantage of me whenever I was vulnerable, the second guy because I'm crazy about him and I feel I need to be away from him to get over him.

I feel suffocated by everyone, I want some simplicity and I feel like everyone is pulling me all directions with no consideration for what I want.

I got a huge telling off for refusing to travel
across country for friends birthday dinner when it was in middle of my exams. I got similar telling off (still going on months later) for missing speeches at my friends wedding - I'd been on contract overseas and come off a 13 hour flight, I was beyon exhausted and jetlagged and had flown back especially.

Katgurl

mhge wrote: »

Looks like you're growing up and reevaluating your relationships, there is nothing wrong with that as long as your criteria are sound. Are you pushing everyone away or rather identifying those who are not supportive and taking a break from them only?

I'm not pushing everyone away but people who seem to not want me to change / improve / achieve things I can be proud of in life.

Miss Fluff

I think you've shown remarkable judgement cutting them out of your life to be honest Katgurl. They certainly don't sound like loyal or supportive friends - real and true friends will support your decisions and choices and will want to see you achieve what you set out to achieve. One is a druggie loser who scrounges money off you, one if a booze hound is jealous that you can knock it on the head when you want and the two blokes sound like losers who were out for one thing. You seem to have got your head together and are now re-evaluating things....I don't think any of the four that you describe would be any great loss. In fact I think by distancing yourself it would probably be a very cathartic and positive feng shui exercise on your part...

LegacyUser

The girls sound like they want you to keep up the bad behaviour and not improve yourself so that they aren't the only ones who haven't done as well as they've wanted to. It seems that they are jealous, plain and simple. One wants you to keep drinking so she doesn't feel as bad about the amount she drinks. The other one doesn't want you to further your career because she's unemployed. It's like when someone tries to derail your diet because they don't want you losing weight when they can't themselves.

The guys just sound like they take advantage of you and use you and aren't really friends at all. Or were you using them as a hook up as well?

I'm confused as to why your friends wouldn't want you to find someone nice if they're all married. That just seems odd.

Are there friends you want to keep in touch with? Or are you just sick of them all? What about family? If you're cutting everyone out, I'd be a bit worried.

Da Shins Kelly

So you're pushing away people who don't want the best for you. What's the problem?

Firetrap

You've done the right thing. From what you've described of your own life and the changes you've made, they'd have fallen away sooner or later anyway.

Katgurl

I suppose the problem is that I am wondering if I am demonstrating a skewed perspective.

My friend (the longterm unemployed drug-user) and I have not actually fallen out but the reality is that I want to. In fairness to her, she has stopped taking drugs recently and this is huge given she has spent the last ten years of her life using recreationally. We were drinking the other night and she asked me why I didnt like a group of her friends (i dont like them). I said that it wasnt the case i didnt like them (this was not true) but i didnt like their incessant drug-taking because she was trying to quit, i knew it was hard and I didnt think it was good for her to surround herself with that lifestyle because the worst thing about changing your social life is when you eliminate a huge part of it, it can be very boring and empty unless you are around other activities. Anyway (now we had drunk a good bit) she told me I was so completely judgemental about people who took drugs, i thought i was better than them, i went on like i had been through some serious addiction (i have no interest in competing with who was more f*ked-up), did i think the life i had wasn't good enough, i was shallow for thinking life was all about money and buying ****.

I had to defend myself without losing my temper (because hers was already lost and it the situation would have exploded) that i was entitled to the life i wanted, that i could express disappointment that i had made a mess of things earlier, it wasnt judgemental to have an opinion on drugs when i had earned that opinion first-hand, that maybe she doesnt think i behaved that crazily but i knew i had for a while completely fallen into the gutter and it took a LOT of rebuilding, that it wasnt an attack on anyone else's lifestyle choices etc

And im just tired of it all. I am sick of not acknowledging that we are grown-ups,that time has passed, that wanting a family, a satisfying career, a house, stability are reasonable things to want.

I suppose the worst thing is that herself and my other friend (who doesnt know what is to be gained from going back to college) feel i'm looking down on them and the horrible truth is, I am in a way. I think it is terrifying that my friend has no career whatsoever despite being one of the cleverest girls in school. I think my other friend is a drunken mess (and believe me i'm not immune to this sort of behaviour either) who has let alcohol negatively affect her life. I suppose thats what is at the root of it all.

I worry that i am dumping them for reflecting bits of my personality that I want to quash. And with that am I getting rid of people for selfish reasons? I'm ignoring all the good traits they have as friends - always listen to my problems, always make time for me etc. What kind of person does that make me?

Da Shins Kelly

These people sound like they just don't want to grow up. Move on with your life and leave them behind if you have to.

Firetrap

Sometimes you have to be utterly selfish. You said yourself that you're prone to addictions and that you've had trouble with drink and drugs. With those sort of issues, sometimes cutting people from your past out of your life is the only way to go. You hear that with drug addicts - they sometimes have to blank their old friends because they'll only drag them down.

Cutting people you believe to be wrong from your life isn't a bad thing per se. These people might not be bad people per se but they could be bad for you. I think if you continue wanting to purge people, then it's time to worry.

thefeatheredcat

I don't think you're judging them, as people themselves, but more the behaviours and crutches in the lifestyle choices but not in judging them but by judging yourself as they are a reflection of you, or rather, of who you were.

In the same way that misery likes company, you've been knocked down by them and not given support because eventually they will have to face an inevitable truth that they will have to make some sort of life for themselves rather than live in a cosy known as opposed to facing out with the unknown. They've seen you have a taste for it, and know that you have the confidence and the desire to explore, and want that independence (which in itself, being independent of others when you always have someone to be dependent on, even just in terms of company can be a very scary thing to some people who are used to have someone to fall back on like yourself to be dependent on) whereas they're not in the same place.

That's not a bad thing though, because perhaps you can inspire them to change their lives in the same way that you have. One way or another they'll be faced with a decision to stay as they are or to take a step to something new. What they choose is not your responsibility.

I don't think it's selfish at all, what you're doing, because it's for a positive reason. To get out there on your own in a new life, you have to be somewhat selfish to get yourself on track to that new start, without distractions. I think it is most likely the right way to go forward for you, to better your life and have the life that you want.

As for the more positive aspects of them as friends... let them know you value those aspects and realise that you probably have shown appreciation of their time during the years. Maybe no harm to leave the door open for them, should they decide to follow what you inspire and can still enjoy the positive aspects of the friendships you have in time.

Katgurl

I'm worried i'm painting a very oneside picture here to get everyone to agree with me.

the fact is i have changed and my coldness is alarming me slightly.

i keep having erratic thoughts like that i've got too many friends to keep happy and why cant life be simple with just a couple of people i'm close with? Why cant i clear out the clutter? These messy teenage-like friendships are immature and a hindrance. Then I am wondering is this my own version of OCD?

i always thought i was lucky that i had so many close friendships. I have painted a really bleak picture of friends who only want to get high wiht me. thats not the case. i always prided myself on investing in my friendships and always going the extra mile and therefore always having people there because i'd put the effort in.

now i feel like i want to hide from the complications and not deal with other people's drama.

I will give an example that i think highlights how much i want to remove myself (in an unreasonable way on my behalf) and how i've started to resent the chaotic tribe-like crap. I was on contract last year overseas and it clashed wiht a friends wedding. I need to take work where I can get it to support myself during the college year, the contract was very well paid. the couple are two of our oldest friends and possibly what the entire group has revolved around for over a decade. if the bride didnt have sisters i would have been bridesmaid. I should have been thrilled to bits for her. the wedding was (or should have been) a HUGE deal. i ended up flying back for the wedding cutting my contract short but the truth was, i really really didnt want to. I wanted to stay on the contract overseas for the remaining few weeks, go stay on an island on my own and have a holiday at the end, then start back to college refreshed, tanned and relaxed. i worked since the day after my last exam and all through the college semester, i was exhausted and i wanted a break for myself. i didnt want to go to the wedding. i had absolutely no interest in going, in fact it filled me with dread. at the wedding, the guy i am crazy about had been seated at another table beside a single girl. i wondered if they were being set up and asked one of my friends what she thought. Myself and the guy had slept together (after a lot of complicated build-up) just before i left for my contract and the wedding was first time i saw him so it was very self-conscious kind of reserved but very cute chat when we met, then we were called to dinner. I was really really tired, jetlagged, starting to feel drunk, knew i was obsessing over the guy and the girl he was sitting beside and my eyes were closing and i wanted to cry wiht exhaustion. I said after the meal i was going to slip off to bed and set my alarm for 3 hours from now and not to let anyone know as I didnt want it to be noticed but i was in a horrendous state and needed get myself together. I skulked out and the bride and groom knew nothing about it till i told them myself after their honeymoon, they were fine about it and said that jetlag was a killer and at least i got to stay up for the party. This was 3 months ago and I am still getting told off about it from other friends - how dare i have missed the speeches and gone to bed in the middle of the wedding. It might sound really self-obsessed but nobody said fair play for flying back for it early. I want to tell anyone who mentions it to f**k off, that i didnt even want to go to the wedding, that i flew back especially and that i was in the horrors.

And behind it all, i know its really weird on my part that i genuinely felt detached and didnt want to be part of it particularly. I've looked at the wedding pics and i'm not really in any of them, i think i barely spoke to the bride and groom, i sat most of the night talking to my sister and her boyfriend and just didnt want to get into the wedding buzz at all. Myself and the guy did get together that night, (it wasnt a set-up with the girl after all) and i also resented everyone knowing about it, i felt that we werent entitled to our privacy, that it has to be some big merry group event with everyone knowing more about him than i do despite the fact he and i we were sharing a house, working together, had a lot of history etc that was all just between us and while they might know him and know me, they dont know me and him together.

Sorry none of this is very clear, i just cant really articulate what i'm so upset about - mainly that i feel i have to be there for everyone else but am not allowed be there for myself and also that my life is communal property.

I even find myself wishing we could introduce basic boundaries, that a longstanding friendship is not a licence to annihilate everything i say. For example i said i would have concerns about the guy (discussed above) even though there are things i really admire in him - im extremely attracted to him, he's very hardworking, very honest, non-judgmental, ambitious, has a plan for himself etc but i didnt like the fact he smoked weed every day. This prompted a huge outrage, how dare i be so judgemental, there was a time i smoked weed every day etc and i pointed out i was a teenager at the time and i dont smoke every day anymore so spending time wiht someone who is going to be baked every evening is a bit of a mismatch. And i'm just sick of the constant battering, feeling like i need group approval for everything i do.

Shouldnt we have grown out of this by now? Or am i genuinely closing myself off to people who know me well and I dont want to hear what they have to say?

Ickle Magoo

Hey Katgurl,

Rather than something you should have grown out of, IME the crap friend shed is something you grow into. For years we love having certain mates, we get used to having them & all their little idiosyncrasies as part of our lives, then there is so much water under the bridge it would feel odd not having them as mates - and eventually we go whole circle and the reasons NOT to be friends with people that we're really only friends with out of habit and an historic sense of loyalty becomes greater than all the [distant] memories of the good nights out and things in the past that made the friendship last as long as it did.

If you are seriously worried you should make an appointment with your GP asap but what you are describing is a fairly common occurrence in my circle of friends, current and old.

All the best you. :cool:

Katgurl

Edit - reread Ickle's post and I understand what you're saying now.

thanks everyone for the replies. I've probably whinged on long enough now like a self-obsessed teenager, think i needed to get it out there.

Mods - feel free to lock!

THanks again.