fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3308 ]

[ SECRET POST #3308 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3308 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 065 secrets from Secret Submission Post #473.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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What are some friendships (fandom or IRL) you had to drop? (For whatever reason.)

I had a friend who kept arguing with me. It was so weird because I'd say something innocuous and suddenly be defending myself; she never apologized, either. I think a lot of it was her depression talking, but it got to be too much.

This sounds a lot like my situation from years ago. I used to bicker with one of my friends all the time in high school. It really wasn't healthy, and we stopped talking/hanging out (we still had class and clubs together, due to shared interests that had brought us together in the first place) junior year and spent all senior year being super awkward. I was as much to blame as she.

We're gradually getting back in touch, seeing each other again. We still have a few mutual friends. She seems a lot happier with herself now, and has a great fiance, and I've matured too. I think we can be adults now.

I hope that either you eventually mend things like we did, or that things are just better for both of you now that you're not in contact.

I don't know if I'd call it a friendship... friendly acquaintance? Another writer in my fandom had a lot of overlap in our readers and we liked a lot of the same tropes so people assumed we must be besties or something. We've chatted, but I just couldn't. She's super opinionated about everything, and her opinion is the only right opinion, so when she found out I didn't like X, well, I was WRONG WRONG WRONG and here's a 50 page essay on how wrong I am and how if I were smarter, I'd like X the way she did.

I don't think she did it on purpose to be a jerk but she's not self aware enough to realize that she sounds like an obsessive pedant who browbeats other people into agreeing with her. For a long time she'd try to engage me in another "friendly chat" about something but I stopped responding to her comments.

Did we have the same fandom friend

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 00:48 (UTC) - Expand

People who cannot stop talking about their fandom or their ships no matter how many times you remind them you have no interest. Somehow they circle the conversation back toward something about the ship or spam a youtube video at you that has something to do with their show.

I can't be your friend if there's nothing to be friends with besides a strawman shipper, sis.

An abusive bully who consistently preyed on my paranoia when I was severely mentally ill and convinced me all of my other friends hated me and were constantly talking about me behind my back (they were not).

I mean I dropped a friend cause I found out that behind my back she was saying I (a lesbian) was trying to steal her boyfriend BUT THAT WAS HIGH SCHOOL AND SHIT LIKE THAT JUST HAPPENS IN HIGH SCHOOL

Other than that its mostly: Friends treat me or others really badly so I phase them out.

Ooooh man.

So, I made friends with a guy early on in my first semester of college. He was a neat guy. We had fun together. I even drank for the first time with him.

The following year, he got really, really heavily into pot. His personality started to change. He became argumentative and judgmental and so convinced of his own rightness that you couldn't even play a game with him without him dragging things down. When a few mutual friends approached him about it, he took it the wrong way -- he thought they were concerned about him embracing Communism (which is a whole other ball of wax. Picture a dude who gets into MLM and talks about how he's going to be manage his own team and be making bank soon while simultaneously praising Marx and Lenin).

I drifted away from him at this point, but still maintained contact, because we had been really good friends, and I didn't want to let go. He eventually cut back on the pot and started getting a little more "normal" again, so I started spending more time with him. It was kind of like before, but there were...moments. He'd talk about being on the level, figuring shit out. He'd had an "awakening," you'd see. He was tapped in, spiritually.

And then he started insinuating that I should leave my boyfriend (now my husband) for him.

It went back and forth on that front for years. Sometimes, he would drop hints about being into me. Other times, he would try and enlist my help to get with some other girl (the last one was much, much younger than him. He and I had graduated college years ago, and this girl was a freshman at our alma mater). And all the while, the crazy continued. He'd talk about Communism in the same breath that he'd announce he was going to the casino. He'd try to get me to quit my job to join him in his latest get-rich-quick scheme. He'd solicit money from people, and heap heavy doses of guilt on them to get them to give in. He started smoking again. Went to Occupy Wall Street and dressed up as cartoon characters. Talked about demons and numerology and bad energy.

I gradually increased the distance between us over the years until he finally did something that made me break it off for good: he said to me, while I was trying to get pregnant, that if things didn't work out with my husband and I, he'd be there, and that I should give him a chance.

Nope.

He sounds like someone I knew in college who also smoked loads of weed.

he said to me, while I was trying to get pregnant, that if things didn't work out with my husband and I, he'd be there, and that I should give him a chance.

Wooooooooooooooooow. That's...all sorts of creepy. And his political beliefs-sigh. He's the sort of idiot who gives us liberals a bad name :/.

You definitely made a good choice to back the hell away.

I dropped a friend pretty fast after he told me I was a shitty friend for not being sympathetic to his desire to physically attack a girl half his size and 4 years his junior (this was in undergrad). I'm honestly barely including all the weird and unsettling details. He turned it into me "abandoning" him and at the time I was really cut up about it but the older I get the more I'm glad I peaced when I did.

I had an LJ friend who was always in some sort of family and financial crisis and every suggestion for ways to make things easier was met with reasons for why it wouldn't work.

They couldn't drop the internet (during a pleasant season) and use the library because they'd have to walk about a mile to get there and only have an hour. They can't not buy that TV season, because it's what gives them joy. They can't go to a food pantry because their family is too proud for that.

And that last one was when I realized I had too many of my own problems to deal with to keep dealing with her drama. Unfriended without a word and then got vaguely called out in a "if anyone else wants to unfriend me for having a hard time JUST DO IT!" post.

Some people are their own "hard time".

oh lord this fandom friend. i had one too

I never know if these people just like complaining, or if they are actually incapable of thinking things through.

You didn't have to give them advice/suggestions you know. Some people just want to vent; they're not expecting you to solve everything for them.

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 01:00 (UTC) - Expand

They couldn't drop the internet (during a pleasant season) and use the library because they'd have to walk about a mile to get there and only have an hour.

That's... an extremely good reason? The other two are ridiculous, but that? You're harsh.

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 01:25 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 04:40 (UTC) - Expand

I had a low-key fandom friend who was always always engulfed in drama, and one night she sent me about 10 texts about typical drama (she said on FB that she'd had a good day; someone replied "did I make it bad?" and she freaked out about how this girl "was out to get her"). I gave a really lackluster response and she was like "ugh, what's up with you?" to which I responded "really bad tbh," as I'd just gotten some AWFUL family news. She didn't answer for a long time and I could tell she was pissed, so I was like "sorry, not up to sugar-coating." I meant that was "wow, I could have been more tactful," and obviously I didn't phrase it great, but she got really mad. When I said I could never tell what was going to upset her, she WENT OFF on me for being emotionally abusive and manipulative--a claim she backed up with "what I learned in psychology 101." Apparently my line about sugar-coating was, in her head, me saying that she was emotionally unstable (?). She yelled at me for a few hours, made a few huge dramatic tumblr posts about how ~somEONE~ was making her want to relapse on her self-harm, and we never spoke again.

You're definitely better off without her. She's not looking for friends, she just wants people to provide unquestioning affirmation of whatever she wants to do.

It sounds rather like she was projecting her own emotionally abusive and manipulative tendencies onto you.

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 15:37 (UTC) - Expand

The first apartment I ever lived in by myself, I became friends with one of my neighbors.

She had health issues and had been abused growing up. This kept her homebound and when she did go out, there were very few places she was willing/able to go.

That was not the problem. The problem was she had an abusive online relationship that had consumed her more than a year before I met her.

The snippets I heard marked this guy as a manipulative asshole and likely catfish.

He demanded her time, always on his terms. He refused to video chat (audio only), told obvious lies about himself, and received gifts from her several times a year which he never reciprocated.

They would argue at least once a month and any time she wanted to change something about their relationship, he would threaten to cut all connect with her. So nothing ever changed.

After one of those fights, I had to talk her out of the bathroom after she locked herself in with a knife.

I probably should have tied things up then as best I could and left, but I wanted to help.

So five more months of her emotional rollercoaster tied to that piece of shit.

I started to dislike her. Her clinginess. How she would be mean to her roommate when the online abuser was being mean to her. Other little things that had been a little annoying before that now grated.

When I moved that winter, I never contacted her again. I very glad I haven't, even if she has seen that light regarding that guy.

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 04:42 (UTC) - Expand

Several, but the ones that stand out:

- Rape apologist psycho bitch.
- The backstabber bitch who thought she could be nicey-nice to my face and then be a bitch behind my back and I wouldn't know or find out (one: I knew pretty damn fast and two: she's actually part of the reason I have a stigma on her first name).
- A super-unstable guy who tried to get people to come to his "coven" and thought he was a vampire.
- Another super-unstable guy who started trying to rely on me for EVERYTHING instead of doing it himself.

An RP friend who seemed to have a new crisis every week, and if you didn't entertain her 24/7 through text and IM, she'd talk about killing herself. It was a nightmare. I literally could not use the bathroom without being chained to my phone.

I had an online fandom friend who turned out to have Borderline Personality Disorder. That shit went bad in a hurry. It ended with me saying, "I want to be your friend, but I'm not okay with you blaming me for your emotions," and her saying "How dare you say that to me. I can barely breath I'm so furious right now. Fuck you for doing this to me." So...pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a relationship with someone who has BPD.

I have/had a guy friend who only wants to be friends completely on his terms. To him, friendship is being able to show up at a person's house about twice a year, completely unexpectedly, hang out for however long he feels like, and then take off. I could never text him and be like "Hey, I've got some free time this weekend, you wanna hang out?" If I text him or call him, he doesn't reply for weeks. And it's not just me, he's like this with almost everyone. When I was twenty, I didn't really mind. But I'm nearing thirty, now, and that shit's not my idea of friendship anymore.

Re: Inspired by #1

(Anonymous) - 2016-01-25 22:14 (UTC) - Expand

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