Have you ever been in a position where you needed help, been offered it by a friend then lived to regret it?
A few years ago I broke up with my then fiancé which left me looking for somewhere new to live. As you know from previous posts I don't work many hours so I have a minimalist budget on which to survive. I had the choice of moving in with my aunt and uncle to live like a teenager in a small room where most of my stuff would need to be stored in a garden shed due to lack of space or find a room (hopefully larger) to rent in a shared house. While I'd lived with my fiancé I had formed several friendships with my neighbours and while I was discussing my dilemma with one of them she suggested I move in to one of her spare rooms. Her children were grown up, moving out and leaving her with plenty of space plus she could do with the extra money. This was the perfect solution to my problems. The room offered me my needed space, independence and was affordable. Best of all it meant I didn't need to leave an area where I felt at home.
This friend is a very no-nonsense type of lady who has her own set of ideas and principles by which to live her life and for the first few months she was amazingly supportive and helpful considering my vulnerable state. As time went by however I grew more confident again, beginning to do more than just work or sit in my room watching movies and I began to feel that my friend was interfering. Some advice and input was invaluable but the rest was her passing judgement on my life. Also around this time I felt she started to take me for granted. I already cleaned up after myself in the kitchen and hoovered my room every week which is as it should be but then she asked me to extend my hoovering, then clean the bathroom and mop floors. Eventually I was cleaning everything except her living and bedroom. I didn't mind too much, after all I was staying there pretty damn cheaply but then she started going off for weeks at a time and I was expected to house sit her dogs. Even this I would have accepted if I'd not long started dating the man I'm with now and my friend would not let 'strange men' in her house (she berated me for him even knowing where I lived) and this made things really awkward.
In the end, my man and I fell in love and more hastily than we would without her interference, decided to move in together so that we could actually spend time together. Of course, my friend was completely unimpressed declaring us a 'car accident happening in slow motion' then requested two months rent in notice. I did this because despite everything she had been very good to me and I wanted to remain on friendly terms. Since then however she is always rude to my partner, despite the fact that we have been together for eighteen months now, by completely ignoring him when we meet socially. When I arrange to see her, she constantly picks apart my life and points out any flaws before declaring how she thinks I should be. It's so bad that I hardly use Facebook any more because she passes judgement or ridicules EVERYTHING I put. I could just remove her but I'm too spineless because then she'll text or call me to explain why and I'm too nice to just ignore her until she gets the message. How do you explain to someone that their input, judgement and interference in your life has gone too far when you know that despite everything, they helped you when you were down?
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