I moved out on my own without any roommates and for the following year attempted to stay in touch with her and see her. She only lived a few blocks away from me so it didn't seem unreasonable that we could have coffee once in a while and still be close, however she would always back out of our plans at the last minute saying she was sick or busy. I also noticed on her Facebook wall that she was clearly making plans to spend time with other friends and seemed to be following through on those.

Then, last spring her boyfriend who had moved here from the UK broke up with her, telling her that he finally had enough money to make it on his own and that he didn't need her anymore. Though I was upset with her for the way she treated me over the year before, I pushed those feelings aside and attempted to be there for her, messaging her to let her know that if she needed someone to talk to I was still here for her. She ignored my message and instead decided to turn to my boyfriend for support. This threw me over the edge. I trust my boyfriend and I know there was nothing suspicious going on, but I feel that if she is going to ignore me as a friend then people in my personal life are off limits to her to turn to for support, it's just inappropriate.

A few weeks later, she wrote me a brief message apologizing for being a bad friend and saying that she was going through a lot with the break up. I know that she has a hard time with confrontation and having difficult conversations so this seemed like a significant step despite the brevity of her note. I took this as an opportunity to open up communication with her again so I wrote her a message firstly acknowledging and thanking her for the apology followed by an explanation as to why I've been feeling upset (I figured she deserved my honesty if we were going to get past this) and then summarizing the message by comforting her over the break up. Before I sent her this message, I ran it by a couple of close people to make sure that it seemed fair and that I wasn't letting my anger get the best of me.

A couple days later, she started posting status updates on Facebook passive aggressively attacking me for my message to her, claiming she'd never read anything so "selfish" and "possessive" in her whole life. I was shocked at this and messaged her saying I did not at all mean to come across as either of those things and that we should probably talk about this. Instead of doing that, she decided to continue posting hateful statuses about me on her page. Eventually I decided to delete her because she was clearly not going to listen or be respectful towards me and I was so fed up with the accumulation of stuff that I've had to put up with from her up until that point.

About six months later, she started slowly interacting with me on Facebook again. She seemed to be in a better place and I thought maybe we could try to work things out. I wasn't sure if I wanted to or not, but I thought I'd be responsive to her in order to get a feel for how things stood. I've seen her a couple times over the past few months but she always brings her new roommate with her to tag along (who is not someone I actually know). It seems to be me that she's afraid of seeing me alone because we haven't talked about what happened. About a week ago she wrote me asking if I wanted to have coffee with her during the week and I said yes, gave her a list of times when I was available and she told she'd get back to me. She never did, which was very typical of her behaviour before we had our falling out.

I realize at this point she is likely not a good person to have in my life. I wish we could talk about what happened because I have so many questions and feel that I deserve an apology from her, but I don't see how communicating with her would be possible, given how she's responded to it before.

My question is do you think after all of this that it's worth still trying to have a conversation with her about everything? If so, how would you recommend I go about it, given how she's responded to my messages in the past and that she typically blows me off for face to face get-togethers? If not, how would you recommend I go about ending this friendship again, this time permanently?

Thank you so much for your time, and again I apologize for how long this turned out to be.

Take care,

Rachel

ANSWER

Dear Rachel,

No friendship is perfect and there are always misunderstandings or disagreements that need to be patched up---so open communication is vital in maintaining good friendships. But it can't be one-sided.

You deserve a lot of credit for your patience with this woman who sounds like an awful candidate for a friend. You have attempted on numerous occasions to communicate your feelings, understand, and forgive.

At this point, I think you have to chalk this experience up as a loss and begin to accept the fact that this woman is TOXIC and undeserving of your friendship. Another apology would be meaningless. Your once-friend/roomie sounds very self-centered, immature, unreliable and spiteful. End your "friendship," defriend her on Facebook, and move on to other healthier relationships that are more stable and mutually satisfying.

You need to think about why you have been so forgiving to someone who has treated you so badly on so many different occasions. She's abused your friendship. What is it about her that you find so attractive or intriguing? Working this through, perhaps with the help of another person, might help you avoid painful situations like this in the future.

Hope this helps!

My best,
Irene

Prior posts on The Friendship Blog about toxic friendships

Five ways to unload a toxic friend

Toxic Friendships: It takes two

When good friends turn toxic

Why don't friends just talk about it

Have a friendship problem or quandry? Ask The Friendship Doctor.