Friendship Troubles

[DeVille]

Hi there. I hate posting about my issues constantly. Feels like I’m bothering everyone. But I’m… really, I just don’t know what to do about this. It’s been a source of turmoil for about a year now.

I don’t want to go too into detail. If anyone wants to know more you can DM me because I know this is some identifying information for the person involved. I’ve been friends with someone for about 2(?) ish years now. We met over a video game. I’ll be honest, all we’ve ever done since we became friends was fight. We fought over everything. We fought over religion, trans rights, gay rights, etc. He told me some personal stuff that has me struggling to think well of him, and I’ve told him personal things as well. Christmas 2 years ago he decided he wanted to send me a letter in the mail, and I made sure he knew I was incredibly uncomfortable with the idea. He kept asking anyway and I caved because I’m weak as hell. I agreed to draw him art in return. He now has my address and I know for a fact he sometimes looks at my house in Google Maps. This creeps me out really badly. Again, this Christmas, he asked to send a letter, but this time I had deleted my address from out Discord chats… and yet a letter still came in the mail. So he has it written down? My parents saw the letter and are now pressuring me to send one back even though I didn’t even give him permission to send it in the first place (at least not after lots of begging). I want to block him but he has my address. I don’t know what to do. (Also I might want to delete this post after I get some replies just so he doesn’t see it in some freak-chance, just so the mods know)

[Micro]

Hey @DeVille,

Thank you so much for sharing this. This sounds like a stressful situation and I hope you know that whenever you need a post to be deleted, you can just ask a mod or an admin for that, or even flag your post + explain why, and it will be deleted quickly. It’s important to keep this place safe for you - so do what’s comfortable for you, always. Safety, whether it’s objective one or as a feeling, is a priority.

Regarding your friend, I wouldn’t say their attitude is necessarily shady at first, but it’s a personal perspective and our own boundaries are probably different on this matter. For example, I personally know personal informations about people I’ve met online and dearly care about. I too noted these just because I lose that kind of information very easily and I don’t want to bother someone or be suspicious if I ask this just before the birthday of an online friend, lol. However… if someone told me they weren’t comfortable with this, I would respect what they say and erase their address from my address book. I would forget about it, because they would have expressed their discomfort.

I hear what you said about being “weak”, but let’s be honest: setting boundaries is hard. Saying no to someone can be very difficult, especially if we don’t want to upset them. As a person who hates conflict and tends to be a people-pleaser if I’m not careful, I totally understand the fear that goes along with asserting your voice. You are not to blame. Communication is just hard sometimes and we all have our own limits on this matter. On his end, maybe your friend not very good at understanding what makes you uncomfortable or not either. So when you combine both a lack of clear boundaries on one hand and maybe of empathy on the other hand, it’s a good recipe for someone to take up all the space in a relationship, and for the other one to feel overwhelmed by it.

How you feel makes sense. I was uncomfortable too when an online friend shared from nowhere some personal informations coming from my facebook page because they googled my name… wasn’t a fun time at the moment as I tend to need privacy and share on my own terms. He did it for fun, but still at the moment it scared me.

For your situation, I’d say that you have different options from now.
1/ If they’ve been obviously threatening, I’d recommend you to block them directly and let your parents know about the situation.
2/ On the other hand, if he didn’t threaten you in any way but still ignored your boundaries, trying to have a honest discussion with him about it could be a good thing. To clearly ask him to not send you letters and to delete your address from their contact list. You have the right to explain that talking online is okay, but you don’t want it to be more “real”.
Even with this second option, it depends on if you actually want to keep this friendship or not. In both cases, a respectful and honest conversation could help both of you, whether it’s to assert your boundaries/for him to respect your limits, or to officially go separate ways and make sure it happens in a smooth way for both of you.

Besides the fact that he knows your address, at this point, is this a relationship you want to maintain, or not at all? From the answer you got, you might know what to do.

[DeVille]

I purposefully didn’t go into too much detail but I will mention that he seems to always try to talk about sexual stuff around me, or complain about something and bring us into another argument. I know I shouldn’t be doing it but I’ve been trying to ignore his messages for a while now because I just can’t take the stress but he continuously pings me. I get anxious every time I see the red circle on my discord icon. He also talks about moving to where I live and coming to see me, and trying to take me out for pizzas and stuff which sounds like a great thing and i literally would be excited if it were someone i was close to and who respects my boundaries but I keep telling him I don’t want that and he keeps bringing it up. I have plans to go to amusement parks with my two best friends who are accepting of the fact that I have sensory issues and am scared to go outside a lot of the time in the future.

He hasn’t threatened me, but it’s a constant that he keeps pushing me. It’s getting tiresome. I used to get into arguments all the time for fun when I was a kid and now that I’m 19, I don’t want anything to do with that kind of attitude anymore. But every time I talk to him it’s fight after fight after fight. He purposely insults things I hyperfixate on just to get me to react sometimes.

To answer your last question, no. It’s not a friendship I want to maintain. I’ve tried, but I have limits. I feel horrible saying it but I do. I try to accept people from all walks of life but he really makes me regress into the worst version of myself I’ve ever been, and I just want to let go for the sake of my mental health, but the fact that he has my address is weighing on me heavily. I also told him details of abuse I’ve been victim of (that my family doesn’t know about) and the anxiety that he’ll send a letter in the mail telling them everything is insane.

[Micro]

It’s not a friendship I want to maintain. I’ve tried, but I have limits. I feel horrible saying it but I do.

You have the absolute right to end a friendship, especially if the person makes you uncomfortable and is pushing you to be someone you don’t want. All the things you describe are more than good reasons to end a friendship, but even without it, as long as you want to stop it, it has to be respected regardless of the reasons behind.

Now, his own capacity to understand your perspective is another side of the situation, and something you won’t be able to control. You can only try to make the transition as smooth as possible, so it wouldn’t degenarate into something damaging for you. I totally understand your anxiety related to the idea of him disclosing private things to your parents.

Based on how you know him, how do you think he would react if you try to discuss with him about ending your friendship and asking him to remove your address?

[DeVille]

If I suggested ending our friendship he would probably think I’m joking, ask why, and then criticise everything bad I’ve ever done around him. Which is fair because I literally just said I’ve been bad around him, because he brings it out of me on purpose by antagonising me. And it’s not that he doesn’t know about autism, cause his little brother has it and he finds it hilarious. So.
My other two friends told me to just outright block him which has crossed my mind more than once, but then the elephant in the room issue comes back to bite me.

[Micro]

Sorry for responding literally days later…

With what you describe, his attitude definitely sounds toxic. Kind of pushing the right buttons and expecting a reaction from you afterwards… you’re absolutely right for trying to distance yourself from him.

I hear what your friend says and this risk/stress that it would imply for you. What’s your gut feeling about it? And just to imagine the worst scenario, how would you handle it? Figuring this before can help you, just to give yourself a perspective and a plan so things can still be in your control, no matter what.

[DeVille]

It’s fine! We’re all busy people haha. I’m just happy someone replied to me in the first place.

What he says about moving here, or what he would say if I suggested ending the friendship?
The moving thing bothers me to no end cause I just straight up don’t want to deal with him in real life, and I know he’d blame me for coming here and I just wouldn’t come out my house. I’m already scared to go outside in case I run into people from my high school, it would be worse knowing I could run into him at any time.