New friendship - red flags

[SpiralOut]

I'm not sure if I did the right thing in letting the incident go. On the one hand, I wanted to tell her to get her ****ing hands off of me. I told her not to and she ignored me, which was extremely rude of her.

 

 

On the other hand, I don't know if she WANTED me to freak out at her, if that would have given her some sort of satisfaction. She was doing such a good job of acting all cheerful and charming and fake that I would have come off as the crazy one, which I suppose is why she did that.

 

 

She is such a bitch.

[preraph]

Another update. She seems to have realized I don't want to hang out with her because she became angry this past Friday when she asked me to hang out and I told her right away that it's not a good night for me. She practically yelled "why not?? what are you doing??" And I was just like I have plans already. My coworker was sitting nearby and he stood up for me. he told her to leave me alone and then he mimicked her. She must have not liked that because she didn't laugh and she walked away without saying anything.

 

I spoke to my friend the other night and she thinks this girl just wants to have me around so she can have a constant reminder of how much better than me she thinks she is. Which is exactly how I feel when I'm around this chick, it's like she wants me as her side-kick who follows her around and absorbs the occasional insult.

 

This whole thing has made me question what it is about me that attracts people like her. I feel so much better about myself than I have in a long time, so it's not like I walk around staring at the floor with super obvious low self-esteem.

thanks for the advice and support, all. I may start another thread at some point about how to not make myself a target for this sort of thing.

 

I think that's a real possibility that she likes to try to find someone to compare herself to and thinks she is superior. That's deep-seated insecurity on her part, if so, so take comfort in that.

 

You can stop the interrogation by asking her questions. Once I had three journalists over at my house and I was on the couch and they were all three standing over me firing questions at me as if I was the President of the United States or something, just from habit. Not sure what your friend's excuse is, but since you know from experience she uses info to humiliate you or try to remind you of failures or whatever, I'd continue to be very stingy with giving her info.

[SpiralOut]

I'm not angry anymore.

 

 

I now talk to her on the phone when she calls us from her location to ask work related questions. It's fine. I talk to her the same way I would talk to anyone else. However, I still don't like her or trust her. I keep the convo strictly work related.

 

 

I can't remember if I mentioned this before but when she talks she is difficult to understand. Conversation with her is often incoherent. Other people find the same thing. She misses social cues and doesn't recognize sarcasm. When I first met her I immediately perceived that something isn't quite right with her. I didn't want to say so in my first post because I thought it might be too mean to say. I also thought she was harmless. It shocked me to realize how wrong I was.

 

 

Who knows what her deal is. I'm just glad to not have her problems.

[GreenBlueGreen]

Sounds to be on the Aspergers spectrum.

[SpiralOut]

She also had this bad habit of talking about things without noticing that other people (eg me) found it boring. I would show just enough interest so as not to be rude, but that's it. I have never met someone with such a fixation on her family members. She must have talked about her sister and her nephew every single day. It was tiresome. Yet, she never noticed (or cared?) that I wasn't interested. I even walked in on her talking about it to someone else in the break room. The other person looked as though he were about to die from boredom. He brightened up and changed the subject immediately when I walked into the room. I don't think she ever clued in.

[SpiralOut]

Another habit she had: explaining situations to me and waiting to see my reaction. It took me a while to realize that she wanted me to explain the situation to her. I guess that's normal to do sometimes but I found she did that more than the average person, PLUS I didn't feel close to her in the first place so it weirded me out that she chose to ME of all people to ask for advice.

 

 

An example: she went to this guy's apartment to hang out. She made a joke about him having sex with his neighbour. He gave her a funny look then lay down on the couch and turned his back to her and didn't talk to her, basically ignoring her until she left. She recounted it to me afterwards and she seemed confused. It weirded me out that she would be confused. MOST women know better than to say something like that to a guy. Guys can make crude jokes to each other but there are different boundaries to watch out for if you're a woman joking around with a man. That's common sense. And even if you say something by mistake, MOST people are able to recognize their mistake afterwards. That's something that I noticed about her.... she sometimes didn't understand a situation until she had gone home. Then the next day she would say something to indicate that she understood. I'm guessing she would ask her family for their opinion so they could tell her what happened. She needs people to interpret things for her.

 

 

Also, I don't think I mentioned this before, but one time she told me that she had no friends for 6 years. She told me that she walked around by herself all the time. Then, her family members asked her "how could you have no friends?" They weren't very nice to her by the sounds of it. I'm not sure if that's true or not. She has this bad habit of telling half-truths. But if it is true, it would explain a lot.

 

 

I guess I'm thinking about it now because I am now able to look back without feeling angry. I can see things a bit more objectively.

 

 

If she really is on the Asperger spectrum, I wonder, should she have mentioned it to me? I wonder if it would have made a difference. Or maybe she was never diagnosed.

Edited July 27, 2015 by SpiralOut

[applej4]

OP, you’ve said a lot about this Jen person who is supposedly a friend (this is a very long thread), but you haven’t said anything positive. You say you’re not that close to her. Why are you spending so much time wondering about her and trying to figure her out? Why bother? Is this someone you even want as a friend? My advice: distance yourself and move on.

[SpiralOut]

OP, you’ve said a lot about this Jen person who is supposedly a friend (this is a very long thread), but you haven’t said anything positive. You say you’re not that close to her. Why are you spending so much time wondering about her and trying to figure her out? Why bother? Is this someone you even want as a friend? My advice: distance yourself and move on.

 

 

 

I am fascinated by strange people. That's why this thread is still going on. It drives me crazy when I can't figure someone out.

[GreenBlueGreen]

I am fascinated by strange people. That's why this thread is still going on. It drives me crazy when I can't figure someone out.

 

You mention the random topics Jen talks about. I gather she has either Aspergers or ADHD. Similar but different mental disorders.

[SpiralOut]

I have left the company that we were both working for. I don't have to hear about her from other people or talk to her on the phone. I am extremely unlikely to ever see her again. I just deleted her from my facebook. I guess I could have done that earlier but I didn't think to. Goodbye forever!

[whichwayisup]

I have left the company that we were both working for. I don't have to hear about her from other people or talk to her on the phone. I am extremely unlikely to ever see her again. I just deleted her from my facebook. I guess I could have done that earlier but I didn't think to. Goodbye forever!

 

Great!! And even better that you deleted her (block her too) since you two are not friends and you can't stand her.

[SpiralOut]

Enough time has passed that I can see it all clearly now. I could not see it before because my self-esteem was too low for me to even imagine, let alone admit, what was happening.

 

She had a huge crush on a guy at work. He and I got along really well. Nothing ever happened with us, as I don't mess around with guys at work, but she got jealous anyway. That explains all her jabs about my ex-boyfriend and her bitter comments about how "all the guys like her [me]." It might even explain why she kept trying to set me up with some guy she knew, even though she knew nothing about him, and I wasn't interested. She didn't seem to care if we were a good match or not.

 

She loves to be the center of attention. I did not consider myself to be popular at work, nor do I really care about popularity, but when I look back on it now it's fair to say that I was better liked than her. That explains why she would blurt out rude things about me (usually when people were paying attention to me, or I had just made people laugh), corner me in the break-room and try to imply that other people (my work friends) don't actually like me, gossiped behind my back to other people that I don't do anything (oh yes, I eventually found out that she was doing that), told me to my face that she thinks I have no life.

 

At the same time, she acted jealous of my friendship with another girl I went to yoga class with. I think that's why she told me all the time about how stupid she thinks yoga is, and even complained about yoga to other colleagues. I think she was upset that I hadn't invited her. Well last time I checked, it is okay for me to have friends and do stuff with them. She also paid too much attention to my after-work activities and would act quite angry if she found out I had met up with someone we both knew. I later found out years later that she got angry if people met up without inviting her. So I guess that's what that was all about.

 

She was jealous, plain and simple, and lacked the maturity to control herself. She wanted me to be her friend, perhaps thinking I could connect her with other people or bring her into a social group, but at the same time she didn't want me to be better than her. Not that I ever was better than her, but inside her head, she thought that I was. She felt threatened by me. She thought I would take away her love interest and she thought I was stealing the spotlight away from herself. I don't even need to be the center of attention; it's not something that I go out looking for. People just liked me. Sorry for not wearing a paper bag on my head and sitting in the corner.

 

Anyway, I just thought that I would post an update. It feels good to finally see things clearly. I was confused for such a long time!

Edited July 4, 2016 by SpiralOut