I Wrote an Email to Myself and Discovered a Woman Who Terrifies Me
I’m not too ‘woke’ or wise to end up in an abusive friendship.
Sometimes when I’m facing a dilemma and need advice, I picture myself as a columnist or one of those call-in radio show shrinks from my favorite rom-com (Sleepless In Seattle) and TV show (“Frasier”), lending an ear to a stranger in need. I don’t do this because I have supreme confidence in my psychoanalytical abilities; on the contrary, this exercise helps me to refocus where I do see my strengths (being intelligent, rational, easy to talk to) as opposed to my weaknesses (having tons of self-doubt).
I tried this exercise a few days ago after a two-year friendship had ended. I sent the following email to myself:
Dear Kim,
A close friend of mine (I’ll call him Matt) keeps making comments about my job and living situation that make me feel bad about myself. After attending graduate school I moved back into my parent’s house so that I could gain some much-needed work experience and improve my job prospects. I’ve confronted Matt in the past over hurtful comments he’s made toward me or about women in general. But nothing has changed. Lately his comments about my personal life have become more frequent and more harsh and it feels like he just doesn’t respect me very much. In college I had a habit of breaking off friendships too fast over trivial matters, and I don’t want to make the same mistake again with one of the most rewarding friendships I’ve ever had. But I can’t keep pretending his comments don’t bother me. I guess what I’m asking is: How do you know when a friendship is truly beyond repair?
Anguished in Atlanta
My knee-jerk reaction to the email indicated this wasn’t as much of a dilemma as I had made it out to be: “Why on earth do you want to be friends with this person?” I blurted out. “He makes you feel like crap and doesn’t care that he hurts your feelings even when you tell him he does.”
The truth is, I was seeking permission from myself to continue a friendship that had never matured into the things I hold dearest about my friends. I thought I could change him. I thought I could teach him to fight for me, just as I fought for him every time we got into an argument about feminism or Tucker Carlson or the differences between voter suppression and voter fraud. I gave in every time, convincing myself that my true feelings were the necessary expense for his friendship — a friendship that would bear signs of the things I knew I needed if only I gave it more time.
But by the time I wrote that email to myself, I was still waiting to experience the mutual trust and respect that, in my mind, defined close friendships. Matt’s jabs about my living at home in my 30s had become more, not less, frequent, so all the casual hints I’d made that I was hurt by his words were not working. It was time to be direct.
The first time I truly stood up to Matt happened right after he replied to a text message I sent him about a new friend I’d made, saying “That’ll be good for your mental health.” I find unprompted mental health advice to be a bad idea in general. But coming from a friend who routinely took shots at my personal life, and with whom I hadn’t identified any pressing mental health issues, his response felt deeply patronizing.
What makes him think I need something to improve my mental health? And if spending more time with friends is the answer, why hasn’t he invited me out to lunch or to watch a ballgame? Suddenly I was overcome with worry that my friend secretly thought of me as a basket case. But after a few minutes, I realized it didn’t matter what prompted Matt to comment on my mental health. It was hurtful, and I told him as much. But he refused to acknowledge my hurt feelings at all, not even when I explained that how I felt was based in part on a pattern of mean comments directed at me. Instead he told me I was acting crazy and refused to talk to me anymore.
But even then, I left the door open to reconciliation. I told Matt that if he ever changed his mind (about not talking to me), I’d be here; that ultimately, whether or not we had a future as friends was entirely up to him. Yes, even in that moment, I cared more about being the person who didn’t walk away from a friendship than being the woman who stood up to a bully.
Which brings me back to my initial response to the letter I wrote to myself:
Why on earth do you want to be friends with this person?
It turns out that the only way to resolve the dilemma that prompted me to write the letter is to figure out the answer to this question. After all, Matt had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t care how his words affected me— thus, hoping he and I would eventually blossom into the kind of friends I dreamed of couldn’t be the only reason I tolerated his bullying for so long.
This weekend, I confronted a more sobering possibility: Even with my college degrees and feminist convictions, I could still end up in an abusive relationship. The women who do aren’t ignorant or unaware of what’s happening to them — like me, they constantly rationalize their loved one’s abuse as something that wouldn’t happen if they changed their behavior. Matt was never physically violent toward me, but he had all the tell-tale signs of someone who only kept women around that he could control. Accordingly, blaming myself for every fight we had, being afraid to disagree with him about anything, and, most alarming of all, training myself to see “fixing things” with Matt as “being loyal” to him— these were all signs that I was under the spell of a controlling man.
Of course, this weekend wasn’t the first time I considered Matt might have problems with women. There were signs from the very beginning of our friendship (he once claimed women become feminists because of issues with their fathers), but I made excuses for all of them. All that mattered to me was that, in spite of our political differences, we had everything in common and he took me out for my birthday every year. But controlling men are good at selectively distributing affection so that their friends and partners reward them with “good” behavior. If he didn’t care about my feelings, he wouldn’t have spent so much money on my birthday dinner. Therefore, I shouldn’t confront him for calling my opinion stupid. I’ve said this to myself more times than I care to count.
I left the door open to reconciling with Matt, but I doubt I will ever hear from him again. And I suppose by publishing this essay, I am admitting to myself that, short of genuine contrition and counseling on his part, we could never be friends again. But I know that what I’ve lost in Matt’s friendship, I’ve gained in self-respect. I can continue the internal work of understanding what draws me to broken men as friends and romantic partners so that I can form the healthy relationships I know I deserve.
Note: Names have been changed to protect privacy.
