Dear Eric: I have a friend, from college 40 years ago, who I’m only now realizing is a needy, self-aggrandizing narcissist.
In all of that time, absolutely no one in my circle has ever liked her.
She has driven people away, including her spouse, but maybe subconsciously I thought with me it was different. She has lived far away for most of the time I’ve known her, and our relationship is mainly by phone.
Every interaction involves her “sharing” updates on her possessions, homes, cars, wealthy people she interacts with, how expensive and famous her children’s universities are, how perfect and accomplished her children are, her amazing vacations and on and on.
The times she has visited haven’t gone well. Her children always tell mine how poor we are (we’re comfortably living a good life), how everything they have is better and how small our house is. My children hate them.
I’m tired. The latest is that she announced I will need to be available next year to spend time with her when she comes to visit relatives.
I explained that I cannot promise anything due to caring for my elderly parents and my need to be available. She was furious (it’s a whole year away! Can’t you promise me that time?!) and proceeded to berate me by text about all of the ways I’m a bad friend and how I need to evaluate whether I want to continue our friendship. I don’t!
I’ve so far avoided her, but is there a better way to end this? I don’t do well with conflict.
– Stuck with a Bad Friend
Dear Friend: It sounds like she’s provided you with an off-ramp. She may have meant the comment about evaluating whether you want to continue your friendship as a threat to make you fall in line, but you can and should take it at face value.
You’ve evaluated and decided it doesn’t work for you. It sounds like it doesn’t work for her either.
If you want to avoid being berated again, write her a letter. It needn’t be vindictive or cruel. Indeed, you might find the most peace in separating with love, acknowledging the time you had together, and wishing her well.
Dear Eric: I have a close friend of more than 40 years who lives in a very large and expensive city. When I travel there, I will often ask if my wife and I can stay with her.
She is acquainted with a number of our friends who live in her city but never sees them unless I come to town, nor do they reach out to her if I’m not there.
However, when we are there and she joins us and other friends, she tends to commandeer the conversation, talking primarily about herself and her relatives, which is off-putting to me and to our friends. It makes it so that I don’t really want to invite her along on most of these visits.
I do genuinely enjoy her friendship and her company but more when it’s just us. I do try to reciprocate her generosity by taking her out to dinner or cooking for her, as well as spending time together during the visit.
I’ve asked other friends if I should feel obligated to invite her when seeing people whom she knows somewhat. They seem to think I should not feel obligated.
I have a lot of guilty feelings about not asking her to come but I also would like to see my friends without her if I want to, guilt-free. I don’t know how to address this issue as it’s awkward to say to her that she can be self-absorbed in her conversation.
Any ideas? I know I can pay for a place to stay but it’s nice to be able to save money by staying with her.
– Grateful Guest
Dear Guest: I suspect there’s a way to solve this without having an uncomfortable talk about her conversational skills.
Now, was this an on-going issue with a group that gathered regularly, I’d suggest kindly bringing it up. But it’s simpler to just ask her if she minds if you have solo friend time on your next visit.
There are some friends who hope and expect to spend every minute with their visiting guests, but it sounds like she’s a different type and might be totally fine with wishing you a fun evening and catching up with you afterward.
It’s best not to make every friend visit off-limits to her. From your letter it seems that you’re making the rounds with different configurations of friends, so perhaps choose one or two that you’d like to see without your host friend.
Talk to her in advance to see if she has any strong feelings about it. Hopefully, she’ll understand that not every outing needs to be a group outing.
Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram @oureric and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.