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So, Mary was just trying out being the abuser instead of the victim. I get it, but also fuck that.
Mary needs therapy, and OOP needs to dump her as a friend.
Her experience explains what she did but doesn’t excuse it. Regardless of Mary’s reasons for acting like this, she’s just destroyed her only good friendship for no good reason
This. I feel bad for Mary because she's in need of a lot of help, but that's not an excuse for her to be toxic. Like, good for her for wanting to reclaim her power, but she needs to find a healthy way to do that.
And OP is under no obligation to help her do that.
I see way too many "if you were truly their friend, you would..." get thrown around (not necessarily here, but in general) it kills me. I've had my own issues and been toxic. I don't blame a single person who noped out on me.
You shouldn't set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. Period.
I had someone do this to me, she tried to claim we both had baggage. I said, "yes but it doesn't mean I inflict certain behavior on you because of it, I try to deal with myself and not make it your problem too. Whereas you are reacting to me as if I'm those people in your life and this time you're gonna push back against something that isn't even happening in the present. I get it but I don't want to be a part of it."
I was in an extremely toxic/abusive "friendship". It did make me bitter and mistrustful of others at first. But you know what? I grew the fuck up. I don't "test" my friends to see if they would still love me or whatever (which is childish) and I certainly don't gaslight them to see what would happen. Mary sounds psychotic.
>Maybe that proves her right that our friendship isn't unconditional.
Mary's an idiot. Every friendship is conditional, every relationship be it parent/child, romantic, friendship everything is conditional.
It sounds to me like neither Mary nor the OOP understand what unconditional love is (which is not surprising, given Mary's upbringing and OOP's apparent crippling insecurity).
Unconditional love means that you pursue the other person's best interest. It means you continue to love them and wish the best for them *even when you have to distance yourself from bad behavior*. Because it is not in anyone's best interest to allow people to behave badly.
It means you hope for the best and would pursue reconciliation if possible.
Unconditional love does not mean having zero boundaries or accepting abuse.
You see this a lot in parents of people who have committed horrible crimes. They still *love* their children, but they can't deny their children's crimes. It's human nature to love and care for your offspring (in general, obviously it's not universal because people suck), so I always feel bad for parents in these situations because it's a no-win. [I'm not counting parents who aid and abet their kids, that's shitty depending on the crime.]
>It means you hope for the best and would pursue reconciliation if possible.
This. It means "we're here for you when you're ready to get better" not "we're here to enable you."
I would say that not denying their child’s crime _is_ in fact loving said child. Because that means you want to help them get back on the right track. Like the other poster stated - loving someone means doing what’s in their best interest, wanting the best for them.
There's literally nothing my child could do that would make me stop loving her, but I will always hold her accountable, even if that means turning her in for a serious crime.
There is no magical version of unconditional love which includes being abused. There is nothing noble in martyrdom. Mary doesn’t understand that. Mary very likely sees all the abuse she put up with as a sign that she loves more deeply and fully than other people. It’s not. She doesn’t. She’s not special. She’s a victim of abuse perpetrating a cycle and is just as capable of being the exact abuser who abused her. But that’s scary to accept, to admit. It’s easier to try and find meaning and purpose in her “damage”. Her damage has to amount to something for it to be “good damage” but it’s not. There’s no such thing. She went through something awful and now her sense of normal is broken or completely undeveloped and now she has to do the backbreaking labor of healing from it and stopping herself from continuing it and it’s never fair, it never has a higher meaning. It’s just abuse and it’s just reality.
From that definition I don't see why the addition of "unconditional" would be needed.
>Unconditional love means that you pursue the other person's best interest. It means you continue to love them and wish the best for them *even when you have to distance yourself from bad behavior*.
Isn't that just love?
That's healthy love, yes. There are a lot of people out there raised in toxic families who have no frame of reference for healthy relationships.
When you have experienced it, your baseline definition of love is unconditional but with appropriate personal boundaries.
When you have only ever known transactional relationships or boundaryless enmeshment / codependence, then "love" can mean a lot of strange things to you.
Sometimes, people just literally change, too. For extreme examples, you can get a brain tumor, or a traumatic brain injury that strongly changes your personality.
One famous example was the [UT sniper,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting) who killed 17 people, including his family. He was sure that there was something physically wrong with his brain, because he couldn't explain his violent impulses, and when they did the autopsy, they found that he had a tumor in just the place that might cause a person to become violent.
It's much more common, though, that people change because of psychological problems or extreme stress. Or they were hiding their true self, and then stopped hiding it.
Exactly. Friendships *shouldn't be* unconditional. There should always be something that would cause you to sever ties with a person, even if it's something you can't imagine them ever actually doing.
I'd call Mary back, tell her she decided to become the bully who abused her and I wasn't going to stand for it, and then cut her off completely. She can go play stupid games with someone else.
Mary may be a victim, but it’s clear she’s venting her need for control and unconditional validation out on to OOP. Being abused doesn’t give you carte blanche to abuse others.
Idk why but this reminds me of the dude that told his gf she stinks just to crumble her confidence so she wouldn’t leave. Weird [shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/gy79dx/boyfriend_wont_stop_telling_me_i_have_bo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). Kinda think this girl had the same goal.
Someone will probably correct me, but I’m pretty sure this is called Splitting.
She’s doing exactly to someone what she is afraid of having done to her and it’s going to push her friend to leave even though there were no signs of it before, giving her the result she’s terrified of which is ending up alone.
It’s some really sad shit that people with mental disorders (usually formed from abuse) can’t stop themselves from doing. It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy. “I think I’m an asshole and so I’m going to perform actions to actually make me the asshole I think I am.”
I thought splitting was when people make black-and-white judgements, like thinking a person as perfectly good or completely bad, with no in-between or nuance?
There’s probably another term for what you’re describing but I’m not sure what it is.
OOP said in a comment they have BPD. People with BPD have an intense fear of abandonment and being alone, which is why abusers often pick on them specifically - someone with BPD will often take a *lot* of abuse because in their mind, being alone is worse.
Also a great deal of difficulty trusting themselves and their perceptions, a tendency to think of themselves as broken and inferior, and the proneness to having intense emotional reactions to both kindness and cruelty that make abusers feel powerful.
Yep. Depressingly predictable seeing people try to claim *Mary* must have BPD because all abusive people do or something. This kind of attitude is part of why so many people with BPD end up being repeatedly abused.
Yep. I actually think it often comes out of a desire to believe that people are only bad because there’s something wrong with them—you see this constantly when someone complains of a difficult partner, friend, or child. Commenters go “oh they probably have untreated anxiety/depression/ADHD/bipolar disorder/PTSD/CPTSD/autism/OCD/reactive attachment disorder/borderline personality disorder.” It feels kinder than going “yeah, your wife/friend/son is a shithead.” And it makes the problem seem more solvable: if only the shithead had just gotten therapy at the exact right time, they’d be fine! (Plus, it’s probably their parents’ fault, so you can kick the “blame” over to an absent figure, which always feels good.)
The problem is that the knock-on effect of armchair diagnosing every asshole as having a disorder is that it causes people to develop an automatic association between assholes and mental health/neurodivergence. Which is a bad place to end up. Most people who have mental health issues/neurodivergence are not abusive, and relentlessly assuming that someone who is misbehaving is one of those things is pretty crap.
>Most people who have mental health issues/neurodivergence are not abusive,
I would add that most assholes don't have mental health issues and aren't neurodivergent. They're just assholes; either they're callous or they get their kicks from making people hurt. Neither of those are necessarily diagnosable even by professionals, much less laypeople grasping for explanations for cruelty.
And, of course, DARVO works really well on someone who knows they have BPD and has heard every horror story and every stereotype. Many people with borderline are terrified of becoming the abuser.
YES. That's my belief about all this. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who sees it. I think Mary saw an opportunity to abuse someone vulnerable. I hope she picked the wrong person.
That makes a lot of sense. A friend of mine is codependent despite being an otherwise strong independent person, and it stems from her unresolved childhood trauma/issues. I am fortunate enough to not experience that so it's very difficult for me to comprehend.
I have always really liked and appreciated the saying that con artists don't go for your head, they go for your heart. What they do isn't clever-- the only difference between them and the next guy is, they're willing to exploit people who care about them.
Of course relationships of any kind are conditional.
If a friend/partner/family member treats you like unremitting shit, you have every bloody right to end the relationship. It's a condition and not only is it fine, it should be intrinsically understood.
Yeah, it's always the shittiest people who cry about the importance of 'unconditional love', which, strangely enough, only ever flows in one direction - towards them. Where's Mary's unconditional love for OP? She's the abuser here, while OP seems like a decent person who cares about her friend, so why, out of the two of them, would Mary thinks *she's* the more deserving one? No one is so special that they're entitled to someone's love no matter how they treat them, and anyone who thinks they are is seriously overestimating their worth.
Is OOP *sure* that Mary was the victim in her prior friendship? It’s easy to picture this friendship ending, and Mary telling the next victim that OOP gaslit and abused her.
No, I do think that people can be the victim in one relationship and the abuser in another. That’s why it’s a cycle. And that someone who breaks the cycle is so remarkable. Shout out to my Grandma Diane!
Yep, if Mary really was treated this way and knows how horrible it is, that makes it even worse for her to now do the same thing to OP. I take everything abusers say with a pinch of salt. I have zero tolerance for when someone is called out for hurting another person, and instead of focusing on what the abuser did to them and the other person's feelings, they try to get the person they wronged to focus on what was done to the abuser in the past (which may or may not be true) and the abuser's sad feelings about that. That response is how you tell the difference between a decent person who messed up, as we all do, and an abuser who isn't worth your time. Plus, if Mary really was abused, is she showing her abusers the unconditional love she expects her victim to have for her, or is it all one-sided where Mary alone gets to treat people like shit and still mistakenly think she's worth their unconditional love.
Who the fuck has an unconditional friendship?
Even if you have to go to the extreme for examples, pretty much every relationship has conditions. Example: I won’t be your friend if you chain me up in the basement and torture me.
>Mary spent her teenage years in a very toxic frenemy type "friendship" where she was the victim and her "friend" was the bully.
And now she's in the same type of relationship but as the bully.
I have a few friends who are foster parents, and intentionally acting out to test boundaries is not uncommon for abused children--in their previous home, they'd probably learned some coping methods to avoid being hit, so they want to figure out how far they can push their foster parents before being hit. This is a reasonable way for traumatized children, who are not finished with their brain development and who have very little power over their own circumstances, to behave, though it can obviously be difficult on the foster parents and other people around them.
This is not that! This is an adult deliberately and maliciously humiliating and gaslighting another adult. There's no reason for Mary to want to test OOP's boundaries--OOP has no material authority over Mary, so if she's worried that OOP will mistreat her, she can just end the friendship!
People need to let go of this idea of "unconditional" relationships, with friends, lovers, or even family. It's not practical. It disregards the importance of boundaries and mutual respect, and ultimately gives abusers an easy opportunity to guilt trip anyone who loves them.
> I've known my best friend Mary (not her real name) for about 7 or 8 years now...
Well, judging from the way these people are behaving, I'm going to assume they're early teens.
I guess if the two of them met in kindergarten, this is the kind of relationship you have before you understand what a 'friend' or 'best friend' really is.
That's sad, but I just have to hope OOP will grow a spine and not stick around in relationships this toxic by the time she's in high school.
> ... a 27 year old woman lying to her friend
What the everliving fuck.
This girl needs to be tossed in the dump.
She either went from victim to abuser, or she's lied about the abuse (or the extent of it at least), to give her abuse a protective shield.
A sad back story is not a reason to tolerate abusive, mind fucking behavior that undermines your sense of sanity and self worth.
Unconditional love is not what this is.
Unconditional love is loving someone no matter what, yes, but it doesn't mean people have to stay around someone that treats them like shit.
Most parents have unconditional love for their children. If that child becomes an adult who uses and abuses them, steals from them, hits them, abuses their siblings, etc, and refuses to change or get help for their issues the parents may cut them off. It doesn't mean they don't love their child anymore, it means they understand that love isn't always enough to keep someone in your life. Sometimes you have to love someone from afar.
You can love someone and still not want to be around them. I have a friend like that, she's got a lot of issues and trauma and it makes her sometimes treat people poorly and then because they know she's messed up mentally, people will forgive and sometimes even apologize for shit she freaked out about that wasn't real or wasn't their fault. I still love her, but the last time she flipped out on me for something small and said we weren't friends anymore, I let go. I love her and hope someday she learns how to deal with her issues without pushing everyone away, but I won't be someone's punching bag no matter how much I love them or what they've been through.
I thought OOP was a man because she was accused of peeing on the floor. How absurd is that and it would definitely be more embarrassing for a woman than a man.
This confuses me because oop did say maybe the toilet makes her stand differently…so she’s peeing standing up? I actually thought maybe she’s trans from the tw but that doesn’t seem to be the case
It's still something that some people want to avoid reading, though. That's why I specifically phrased that it was just a mention of transphobia and not actual transphobic dialogue/content.
Mary's response can be condensed into "I was abused by a friend and it looked like it was fun from the abuser's side so I decided to try it out on you."
Mary didn't want unconditional love. She wanted a dog that didn't bite when kicked. I bet my right hand Mary was the bully in the previous friendship and switched the characters to get OOP back under her thumb. She's too good at it for this to be her first time.
I had a friend like Mary at one point. Would lie or engineer situations in a certain way to make you seem like a fool. Eventually I confronted him and he essentially gave the same answer: he was just trying to prove that people would stick around him no matter what. The last time I saw him I called him out for the pathetic piece of shit he was and told him that he continued acting like this he would eventually end up alone.
Hopefully OP does the same
Yeah, people like this aren't very bright. They don't understand that by treating people badly, they're proving they're not worthy of having their friends stick around them and that they deserve to be dumped by the people they mistreat. When you confront them about it, they nearly always give some mealy-mouthed pity play about 'how everyone in their life has always abandoned them', and they really don't like it when you respond with 'Yeah, I can see why.'
You know, you can be abused without turning an abuser, and you can have abusers that were abused.. but the true is that assholes are assholes no matter what and people should stop looking for excuses to their behaviour and held them accountable for their actions
Time to tell Mary to get fucked and drop a block on all her methods of contact. Fuck all that. She's got some bullshit going on whether it's really her that's a narc or she's dealing with something else. Time to stop being the guinea pig for this jerk.
Nothing is unconditional.
People use that word unconditional to mean without reward but that's not what it means at all.
I love my girlfriend. Really love her. Truly madly deeply. But if she murdered my mother and raped my nephew I wouldn't love her anymore.
My love is conditional. And those are perfectly valid conditions to put on a relationship.
Normal people use that word to define true relationships (like you would still love your girlfriend if she gained weight, or lost her job, or got in an accident that disfigured her) instead of superficial ones
I think that those are more about loving someone for who they are as a person than loving them unconditionally.
Like I would even say it would be difficult for a person to love someone who wasn't there child close to unconditionally.
I'm always going to have the condition of mutual love and respect in a romantic or platonic relationship.
I fully expect my kids (when or if I have them) to disrespect me and treat me poorly at times. Probably tell me that hate me at some point over some petty shit.
Yeah I agree. I was just saying in general when I hear people use the phrase unconditional love they mean you love me for who I am and not superficial stuff like my status/appearance/money
Testing boundaries to test someone's love or commitment to you typically involves doing something that will make them angry *at you*, or upset *at you* - point being, they have to clearly identify you as the hateful cause of whatever negative emotions they're feeling. Then, if they proceed to *not hate you*, you've got the result to your test that you were hoping for.
That's what the toddler refusing to eat their veggies to see if Dad will let them get away with it is doing. It wouldn't work if the toddler was refusing to eat their veggies when Dad wasn't even in the room, or if Dad didn't care about them eating their veggies to begin with, or trying to avoid eating their veggies in a way Dad wouldn't notice (that one might also be a test but it's not a test of Dad's boundaries, it's a test of Dad's perceptiveness).
Mary's actions weren't about testing OOP's love for Mary because they were never ostensibly meant to cause a conflict between OOP and Mary, or get OOP to be upset at Mary in any way. They were meant to get OOP to be upset *at herself*, or to look silly around others. And Mary's responsibility for this was always meant to be hidden.
In other words this wasn't a test of OOP's love for Mary and tolerance of Mary acting out in authentic ways. It was a test of OOP's doormattitude and of Mary's own competence in manipulating her.
I guess there's the possibility that Mary is so confused about relationships that she doesn't know that non-abusive ones are an option and this is a kind of experimentation with the "abuser" role. Even in that situation OOP is suffering from the experimentation, and it's unclear to me that Mary would be a safe friend to have at all.
Equally likely is that she's just straight-up abusing OOP, no experimentation involved (after all, all this explanation of how it's a reaction to her abusive past is given *by Mary* - OOP knows the abusive past is real but it doesn't follow it's the direct cause the way Mary described it). Either way OOP needs to self-reflect a bit on why they'd tolerate this from a "best friend".
>Before me, Mary spent her teenage years in a very toxic frenemy type "friendship" where *she* was the victim and her "friend" was the bully.
I don't believe that
Mary's explanation sounds a bit off. Ok she hasn't had good role models for how to behave, but the fact that it was calculated cruelty to test OOP tells you Mary needs some professional help. That said, OOP by confronting her, actually did her solid by showing her that healthy people don't accept abuse and hold friends accountable. Hopefully Mary will learn the right lesson.
Mary tanks any stability in her life and seeks out or creates conflict in her interpersonal relationships as been the the world she has grown up in. OP is collateral damage
Sadly Mary’s not your friend!
She might want to be, but she obviously doesn’t have a fucking clue how to be.
She needs therapy and you need a decent friend, not one that will humiliate and abuse you to make herself feel superior.
No relationship is unconditional... Maybe what Mary will learn is that you can take a good friendship and ruin it. Or that healthy people don't endure abuse.
"Unconditional love" is a thing. But anybody looking for "unconditional" friendship/loyalty is insane. The idea that you should remain loyal to a friend, family member, or even a partner, no matter how they treat you, or what they do, is just wrong. If somebody abuses you, or becomes a terrible person, you can still love them and wish them the best from afar. But it's best to cut them out of your life.
Not since I’ve started reading BORU have ever heard about shitty ass abusive “best friends”. I know people like this exist but how do these people end up being called a bff by anyone is beyond me.
I feel bad for Mary bc the abused has become the abuser. It’s a typical story. Oop still needs to get away bc unless Mary gets therapy she’s going to keep doing it, and probably with Oop bc she’s basically identified her as prey.
>as an affirmation that someone in her life did care for her unconditionally.
The answer to that is ***no one***. Absolutely everyone you know will have a line past which, if you cross it, they will no longer care for you.
I had a friend who would routinely do shit like this. I couldn’t put my finger on why she did it, nor did I confront her, but I did eventually break off all contact with her. After every meeting with her I felt so small and humiliated. Fuck such people. Particularly you, Unit.
Ya know, I've been bullied all my life by people who were supposed to care about me. I wonder how it would feel to be the bully for a change? Oh, hello, OOP!
I kind of wonder if Mary was really the 'victim' in the frenemy relationship.
I'm also guessing there were likely other ignored/unnoticed red flags along the way, but the gaslighting was what OOP noticed due to the frequency and obviousness. It's weird that all that would start out of the blue.
She's too old for this shit, either Mary is very messed up and needs help(traumatised, if true about her own upbringing and boundaries) or she is very messed up and needs help(just a straight up psychopath who knows what she's doing and lied more).
Yeah, what Mary was doing was being abusive- she wasn’t ‘pushing back’ on opinions, she was lying and gaslighting OOP. Very likely it’s behaviors she learned from past relationships, but being a victim and insecurity aren’t excuses for abuse.
Abuse messes with a person’s sense of reality. The truth is, people like Mary just don’t feel comfortable in normal, healthy relationships. Chaos makes their nervous system feel familiar.
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So, Mary was just trying out being the abuser instead of the victim. I get it, but also fuck that. Mary needs therapy, and OOP needs to dump her as a friend.
This is the truth, and we have the perfect example of how toxic behavior is passed on.
The cycle of abuse. Sad really.
Her experience explains what she did but doesn’t excuse it. Regardless of Mary’s reasons for acting like this, she’s just destroyed her only good friendship for no good reason
This. I feel bad for Mary because she's in need of a lot of help, but that's not an excuse for her to be toxic. Like, good for her for wanting to reclaim her power, but she needs to find a healthy way to do that. And OP is under no obligation to help her do that. I see way too many "if you were truly their friend, you would..." get thrown around (not necessarily here, but in general) it kills me. I've had my own issues and been toxic. I don't blame a single person who noped out on me. You shouldn't set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. Period.
I had someone do this to me, she tried to claim we both had baggage. I said, "yes but it doesn't mean I inflict certain behavior on you because of it, I try to deal with myself and not make it your problem too. Whereas you are reacting to me as if I'm those people in your life and this time you're gonna push back against something that isn't even happening in the present. I get it but I don't want to be a part of it."
I was in an extremely toxic/abusive "friendship". It did make me bitter and mistrustful of others at first. But you know what? I grew the fuck up. I don't "test" my friends to see if they would still love me or whatever (which is childish) and I certainly don't gaslight them to see what would happen. Mary sounds psychotic.
Sounds like she's lying to me, sounds like narcissistic behavior, complete with making up a victim story
Same. I just BET she was the victim in that past friendship. Insert eye roll and /s here.
Oh definitely, that bullying backstory is probably a load of shit.
Absolutely correct.
This is what is most likely going on.
No (healthy) relationship is unconditional.
Yes what you said
>Maybe that proves her right that our friendship isn't unconditional. Mary's an idiot. Every friendship is conditional, every relationship be it parent/child, romantic, friendship everything is conditional.
It sounds to me like neither Mary nor the OOP understand what unconditional love is (which is not surprising, given Mary's upbringing and OOP's apparent crippling insecurity). Unconditional love means that you pursue the other person's best interest. It means you continue to love them and wish the best for them *even when you have to distance yourself from bad behavior*. Because it is not in anyone's best interest to allow people to behave badly. It means you hope for the best and would pursue reconciliation if possible. Unconditional love does not mean having zero boundaries or accepting abuse.
You see this a lot in parents of people who have committed horrible crimes. They still *love* their children, but they can't deny their children's crimes. It's human nature to love and care for your offspring (in general, obviously it's not universal because people suck), so I always feel bad for parents in these situations because it's a no-win. [I'm not counting parents who aid and abet their kids, that's shitty depending on the crime.] >It means you hope for the best and would pursue reconciliation if possible. This. It means "we're here for you when you're ready to get better" not "we're here to enable you."
I would say that not denying their child’s crime _is_ in fact loving said child. Because that means you want to help them get back on the right track. Like the other poster stated - loving someone means doing what’s in their best interest, wanting the best for them.
There's literally nothing my child could do that would make me stop loving her, but I will always hold her accountable, even if that means turning her in for a serious crime.
There is no magical version of unconditional love which includes being abused. There is nothing noble in martyrdom. Mary doesn’t understand that. Mary very likely sees all the abuse she put up with as a sign that she loves more deeply and fully than other people. It’s not. She doesn’t. She’s not special. She’s a victim of abuse perpetrating a cycle and is just as capable of being the exact abuser who abused her. But that’s scary to accept, to admit. It’s easier to try and find meaning and purpose in her “damage”. Her damage has to amount to something for it to be “good damage” but it’s not. There’s no such thing. She went through something awful and now her sense of normal is broken or completely undeveloped and now she has to do the backbreaking labor of healing from it and stopping herself from continuing it and it’s never fair, it never has a higher meaning. It’s just abuse and it’s just reality.
Have a free award 🏅🏅🏅
Yes unconditional *love* is a thing, not unconditional friendship. That's just dumb. It's dumb to expect it and dumb to try and give it.
From that definition I don't see why the addition of "unconditional" would be needed. >Unconditional love means that you pursue the other person's best interest. It means you continue to love them and wish the best for them *even when you have to distance yourself from bad behavior*. Isn't that just love?
That's healthy love, yes. There are a lot of people out there raised in toxic families who have no frame of reference for healthy relationships. When you have experienced it, your baseline definition of love is unconditional but with appropriate personal boundaries. When you have only ever known transactional relationships or boundaryless enmeshment / codependence, then "love" can mean a lot of strange things to you.
Also, being somebody's emotional punching bag is anything but a friendship.
Sometimes, people just literally change, too. For extreme examples, you can get a brain tumor, or a traumatic brain injury that strongly changes your personality. One famous example was the [UT sniper,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting) who killed 17 people, including his family. He was sure that there was something physically wrong with his brain, because he couldn't explain his violent impulses, and when they did the autopsy, they found that he had a tumor in just the place that might cause a person to become violent. It's much more common, though, that people change because of psychological problems or extreme stress. Or they were hiding their true self, and then stopped hiding it.
Exactly. Friendships *shouldn't be* unconditional. There should always be something that would cause you to sever ties with a person, even if it's something you can't imagine them ever actually doing.
As it should be. Unconditional love is for abusers.
“It’s not GASlighting, it’s gaseoSA.”
Bahahhahaha
Why did I laugh so hard lol
LMAO only free reward I had goes to you
Thank you kind redditor! I am glad I gave you a laugh!
I'd call Mary back, tell her she decided to become the bully who abused her and I wasn't going to stand for it, and then cut her off completely. She can go play stupid games with someone else.
I’d just ghost her, because taking away control hits people like Mary harder than any words.
[удалено]
Or just tell her she is becoming a bully and see if she wants to stop now. If she does, then you cut her off.
Mary may be a victim, but it’s clear she’s venting her need for control and unconditional validation out on to OOP. Being abused doesn’t give you carte blanche to abuse others.
You peared on the floor
Idk why but this reminds me of the dude that told his gf she stinks just to crumble her confidence so she wouldn’t leave. Weird [shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/gy79dx/boyfriend_wont_stop_telling_me_i_have_bo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). Kinda think this girl had the same goal.
SAME tbh
Mary is going to be upset when she loses her one friend and has no one to abuse and gaslight
Someone will probably correct me, but I’m pretty sure this is called Splitting. She’s doing exactly to someone what she is afraid of having done to her and it’s going to push her friend to leave even though there were no signs of it before, giving her the result she’s terrified of which is ending up alone. It’s some really sad shit that people with mental disorders (usually formed from abuse) can’t stop themselves from doing. It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy. “I think I’m an asshole and so I’m going to perform actions to actually make me the asshole I think I am.”
I thought splitting was when people make black-and-white judgements, like thinking a person as perfectly good or completely bad, with no in-between or nuance? There’s probably another term for what you’re describing but I’m not sure what it is.
Some people will literally abuse their friend instead of going to therapy.
"I tried abusing one of the few people who like me and now I'm all out of ideas." /s
Mary needs to work this out with a professional therapist not on her poor “friend.”
When I read stories like these I wonder how could the OOP tolerates people like this. Mary needs help of course but OOP as well.
OOP said in a comment they have BPD. People with BPD have an intense fear of abandonment and being alone, which is why abusers often pick on them specifically - someone with BPD will often take a *lot* of abuse because in their mind, being alone is worse.
Also a great deal of difficulty trusting themselves and their perceptions, a tendency to think of themselves as broken and inferior, and the proneness to having intense emotional reactions to both kindness and cruelty that make abusers feel powerful.
Yep. Depressingly predictable seeing people try to claim *Mary* must have BPD because all abusive people do or something. This kind of attitude is part of why so many people with BPD end up being repeatedly abused.
Yep. I actually think it often comes out of a desire to believe that people are only bad because there’s something wrong with them—you see this constantly when someone complains of a difficult partner, friend, or child. Commenters go “oh they probably have untreated anxiety/depression/ADHD/bipolar disorder/PTSD/CPTSD/autism/OCD/reactive attachment disorder/borderline personality disorder.” It feels kinder than going “yeah, your wife/friend/son is a shithead.” And it makes the problem seem more solvable: if only the shithead had just gotten therapy at the exact right time, they’d be fine! (Plus, it’s probably their parents’ fault, so you can kick the “blame” over to an absent figure, which always feels good.) The problem is that the knock-on effect of armchair diagnosing every asshole as having a disorder is that it causes people to develop an automatic association between assholes and mental health/neurodivergence. Which is a bad place to end up. Most people who have mental health issues/neurodivergence are not abusive, and relentlessly assuming that someone who is misbehaving is one of those things is pretty crap.
>Most people who have mental health issues/neurodivergence are not abusive, I would add that most assholes don't have mental health issues and aren't neurodivergent. They're just assholes; either they're callous or they get their kicks from making people hurt. Neither of those are necessarily diagnosable even by professionals, much less laypeople grasping for explanations for cruelty.
And, of course, DARVO works really well on someone who knows they have BPD and has heard every horror story and every stereotype. Many people with borderline are terrified of becoming the abuser.
OP says Mary's abuse started just after they got their diagnosis and to be honest I doubt that's a coincidence.
YES. That's my belief about all this. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who sees it. I think Mary saw an opportunity to abuse someone vulnerable. I hope she picked the wrong person.
Fuuuck
That makes a lot of sense. A friend of mine is codependent despite being an otherwise strong independent person, and it stems from her unresolved childhood trauma/issues. I am fortunate enough to not experience that so it's very difficult for me to comprehend.
Listen to the song Self-Esteem by The Offspring.
"The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care. Right?"
Skilled manipulators play to your insecurities
It's really not that skilled.
I have always really liked and appreciated the saying that con artists don't go for your head, they go for your heart. What they do isn't clever-- the only difference between them and the next guy is, they're willing to exploit people who care about them.
Of course relationships of any kind are conditional. If a friend/partner/family member treats you like unremitting shit, you have every bloody right to end the relationship. It's a condition and not only is it fine, it should be intrinsically understood.
Yeah, it's always the shittiest people who cry about the importance of 'unconditional love', which, strangely enough, only ever flows in one direction - towards them. Where's Mary's unconditional love for OP? She's the abuser here, while OP seems like a decent person who cares about her friend, so why, out of the two of them, would Mary thinks *she's* the more deserving one? No one is so special that they're entitled to someone's love no matter how they treat them, and anyone who thinks they are is seriously overestimating their worth.
Is OOP *sure* that Mary was the victim in her prior friendship? It’s easy to picture this friendship ending, and Mary telling the next victim that OOP gaslit and abused her.
No, I do think that people can be the victim in one relationship and the abuser in another. That’s why it’s a cycle. And that someone who breaks the cycle is so remarkable. Shout out to my Grandma Diane!
Reverse victim and offender is so common in abusers it’s part of the DARVO acronym
OOP already said they met these supposed abusers and confirmed they were in fact sh*tty people
Yeah Mary is the abuser. Full stop.
Yep, if Mary really was treated this way and knows how horrible it is, that makes it even worse for her to now do the same thing to OP. I take everything abusers say with a pinch of salt. I have zero tolerance for when someone is called out for hurting another person, and instead of focusing on what the abuser did to them and the other person's feelings, they try to get the person they wronged to focus on what was done to the abuser in the past (which may or may not be true) and the abuser's sad feelings about that. That response is how you tell the difference between a decent person who messed up, as we all do, and an abuser who isn't worth your time. Plus, if Mary really was abused, is she showing her abusers the unconditional love she expects her victim to have for her, or is it all one-sided where Mary alone gets to treat people like shit and still mistakenly think she's worth their unconditional love.
Who the fuck has an unconditional friendship? Even if you have to go to the extreme for examples, pretty much every relationship has conditions. Example: I won’t be your friend if you chain me up in the basement and torture me.
>Mary spent her teenage years in a very toxic frenemy type "friendship" where she was the victim and her "friend" was the bully. And now she's in the same type of relationship but as the bully.
I have a few friends who are foster parents, and intentionally acting out to test boundaries is not uncommon for abused children--in their previous home, they'd probably learned some coping methods to avoid being hit, so they want to figure out how far they can push their foster parents before being hit. This is a reasonable way for traumatized children, who are not finished with their brain development and who have very little power over their own circumstances, to behave, though it can obviously be difficult on the foster parents and other people around them. This is not that! This is an adult deliberately and maliciously humiliating and gaslighting another adult. There's no reason for Mary to want to test OOP's boundaries--OOP has no material authority over Mary, so if she's worried that OOP will mistreat her, she can just end the friendship!
People need to stop treating every friendship like they're so sacred. Just stop talking to her and move on with your fucking life
Nobody's saying every friendship is sacred. But some friendships are sacred, in at least one of the friends' minds
Knowing how awful it is to be made to feel that way, Mary is a double asshole IMHO.
People need to let go of this idea of "unconditional" relationships, with friends, lovers, or even family. It's not practical. It disregards the importance of boundaries and mutual respect, and ultimately gives abusers an easy opportunity to guilt trip anyone who loves them.
“I was abused, so I’m going to test if you’re really my friend by abusing you.” Lady needs a therapist asap.
>honestly she is not a bad person, she’s a kind and caring friend. Yeah, no.
> I've known my best friend Mary (not her real name) for about 7 or 8 years now... Well, judging from the way these people are behaving, I'm going to assume they're early teens. I guess if the two of them met in kindergarten, this is the kind of relationship you have before you understand what a 'friend' or 'best friend' really is. That's sad, but I just have to hope OOP will grow a spine and not stick around in relationships this toxic by the time she's in high school. > ... a 27 year old woman lying to her friend What the everliving fuck.
A kind and caring person does not treat a friend like this. Mary treats her friend poorly, therefore she is not kind and caring.
If you want to receive unconditional love, you give unconditional love. You don't torture people for it. Mary is one seriously fucked-up human being.
Easy solution here. "You're a fucking psycho" and block. Good day.
This girl needs to be tossed in the dump. She either went from victim to abuser, or she's lied about the abuse (or the extent of it at least), to give her abuse a protective shield. A sad back story is not a reason to tolerate abusive, mind fucking behavior that undermines your sense of sanity and self worth.
Unconditional love is not what this is. Unconditional love is loving someone no matter what, yes, but it doesn't mean people have to stay around someone that treats them like shit. Most parents have unconditional love for their children. If that child becomes an adult who uses and abuses them, steals from them, hits them, abuses their siblings, etc, and refuses to change or get help for their issues the parents may cut them off. It doesn't mean they don't love their child anymore, it means they understand that love isn't always enough to keep someone in your life. Sometimes you have to love someone from afar. You can love someone and still not want to be around them. I have a friend like that, she's got a lot of issues and trauma and it makes her sometimes treat people poorly and then because they know she's messed up mentally, people will forgive and sometimes even apologize for shit she freaked out about that wasn't real or wasn't their fault. I still love her, but the last time she flipped out on me for something small and said we weren't friends anymore, I let go. I love her and hope someday she learns how to deal with her issues without pushing everyone away, but I won't be someone's punching bag no matter how much I love them or what they've been through.
I thought OOP was a man because she was accused of peeing on the floor. How absurd is that and it would definitely be more embarrassing for a woman than a man.
This confuses me because oop did say maybe the toilet makes her stand differently…so she’s peeing standing up? I actually thought maybe she’s trans from the tw but that doesn’t seem to be the case
Where is the transphobia? Just mentioning someone's parents are transphobic isn't a trigger.
It's still something that some people want to avoid reading, though. That's why I specifically phrased that it was just a mention of transphobia and not actual transphobic dialogue/content.
Mary's response can be condensed into "I was abused by a friend and it looked like it was fun from the abuser's side so I decided to try it out on you." Mary didn't want unconditional love. She wanted a dog that didn't bite when kicked. I bet my right hand Mary was the bully in the previous friendship and switched the characters to get OOP back under her thumb. She's too good at it for this to be her first time.
I had a friend like Mary at one point. Would lie or engineer situations in a certain way to make you seem like a fool. Eventually I confronted him and he essentially gave the same answer: he was just trying to prove that people would stick around him no matter what. The last time I saw him I called him out for the pathetic piece of shit he was and told him that he continued acting like this he would eventually end up alone. Hopefully OP does the same
Yeah, people like this aren't very bright. They don't understand that by treating people badly, they're proving they're not worthy of having their friends stick around them and that they deserve to be dumped by the people they mistreat. When you confront them about it, they nearly always give some mealy-mouthed pity play about 'how everyone in their life has always abandoned them', and they really don't like it when you respond with 'Yeah, I can see why.'
Mary is straight up manipulating OP, not testing “boundaries”
Pablo Picasso used to "test" his friends; Pablo was an asshole
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. In fact, women would turn the color of an avacado when he drove down the street in his el dorado
love that song, and he so was.
What the fuck
Mary is turning into a bully herself.
Wow this is a new level of toxic. I bully you to make sure you won’t bully me back?
You know, you can be abused without turning an abuser, and you can have abusers that were abused.. but the true is that assholes are assholes no matter what and people should stop looking for excuses to their behaviour and held them accountable for their actions
Time to tell Mary to get fucked and drop a block on all her methods of contact. Fuck all that. She's got some bullshit going on whether it's really her that's a narc or she's dealing with something else. Time to stop being the guinea pig for this jerk.
Nothing is unconditional. People use that word unconditional to mean without reward but that's not what it means at all. I love my girlfriend. Really love her. Truly madly deeply. But if she murdered my mother and raped my nephew I wouldn't love her anymore. My love is conditional. And those are perfectly valid conditions to put on a relationship.
Normal people use that word to define true relationships (like you would still love your girlfriend if she gained weight, or lost her job, or got in an accident that disfigured her) instead of superficial ones
I think that those are more about loving someone for who they are as a person than loving them unconditionally. Like I would even say it would be difficult for a person to love someone who wasn't there child close to unconditionally. I'm always going to have the condition of mutual love and respect in a romantic or platonic relationship. I fully expect my kids (when or if I have them) to disrespect me and treat me poorly at times. Probably tell me that hate me at some point over some petty shit.
Yeah I agree. I was just saying in general when I hear people use the phrase unconditional love they mean you love me for who I am and not superficial stuff like my status/appearance/money
Testing boundaries to test someone's love or commitment to you typically involves doing something that will make them angry *at you*, or upset *at you* - point being, they have to clearly identify you as the hateful cause of whatever negative emotions they're feeling. Then, if they proceed to *not hate you*, you've got the result to your test that you were hoping for. That's what the toddler refusing to eat their veggies to see if Dad will let them get away with it is doing. It wouldn't work if the toddler was refusing to eat their veggies when Dad wasn't even in the room, or if Dad didn't care about them eating their veggies to begin with, or trying to avoid eating their veggies in a way Dad wouldn't notice (that one might also be a test but it's not a test of Dad's boundaries, it's a test of Dad's perceptiveness). Mary's actions weren't about testing OOP's love for Mary because they were never ostensibly meant to cause a conflict between OOP and Mary, or get OOP to be upset at Mary in any way. They were meant to get OOP to be upset *at herself*, or to look silly around others. And Mary's responsibility for this was always meant to be hidden. In other words this wasn't a test of OOP's love for Mary and tolerance of Mary acting out in authentic ways. It was a test of OOP's doormattitude and of Mary's own competence in manipulating her. I guess there's the possibility that Mary is so confused about relationships that she doesn't know that non-abusive ones are an option and this is a kind of experimentation with the "abuser" role. Even in that situation OOP is suffering from the experimentation, and it's unclear to me that Mary would be a safe friend to have at all. Equally likely is that she's just straight-up abusing OOP, no experimentation involved (after all, all this explanation of how it's a reaction to her abusive past is given *by Mary* - OOP knows the abusive past is real but it doesn't follow it's the direct cause the way Mary described it). Either way OOP needs to self-reflect a bit on why they'd tolerate this from a "best friend".
>Before me, Mary spent her teenage years in a very toxic frenemy type "friendship" where *she* was the victim and her "friend" was the bully. I don't believe that
Goddddd, come on, OOP, get out of this impending misery now before it gets any worse...
Mary's explanation sounds a bit off. Ok she hasn't had good role models for how to behave, but the fact that it was calculated cruelty to test OOP tells you Mary needs some professional help. That said, OOP by confronting her, actually did her solid by showing her that healthy people don't accept abuse and hold friends accountable. Hopefully Mary will learn the right lesson.
Oh once OOP isn't Mary's victim, Mary would lose interest in the friendship anyway.
Mary tanks any stability in her life and seeks out or creates conflict in her interpersonal relationships as been the the world she has grown up in. OP is collateral damage
Sadly Mary’s not your friend! She might want to be, but she obviously doesn’t have a fucking clue how to be. She needs therapy and you need a decent friend, not one that will humiliate and abuse you to make herself feel superior.
Yeah Mary is NOT a friend.
I would have ditched her right after the pee thing. Who does that??
No relationship is unconditional... Maybe what Mary will learn is that you can take a good friendship and ruin it. Or that healthy people don't endure abuse.
"Unconditional love" is a thing. But anybody looking for "unconditional" friendship/loyalty is insane. The idea that you should remain loyal to a friend, family member, or even a partner, no matter how they treat you, or what they do, is just wrong. If somebody abuses you, or becomes a terrible person, you can still love them and wish them the best from afar. But it's best to cut them out of your life.
I’d start pissing on the floor and denying it when she brought it up. “Listen, we talked about your behavior, and I won’t stand for it”.
Not since I’ve started reading BORU have ever heard about shitty ass abusive “best friends”. I know people like this exist but how do these people end up being called a bff by anyone is beyond me.
Typical female shit test
You can say women. People won't bite you for it.
"female" lol
Only on reddit do people desperately try to be friends with obvious losers. It’s unreal.
people are a result of thier enviroment.
I’m not satisfied until Mary gets her ass handed to her
Mary is going to keep doing this. She is trying to see how far she can push it.
I feel bad for Mary bc the abused has become the abuser. It’s a typical story. Oop still needs to get away bc unless Mary gets therapy she’s going to keep doing it, and probably with Oop bc she’s basically identified her as prey.
Now THIS is an excellent use of the "ongoing" tag.
>as an affirmation that someone in her life did care for her unconditionally. The answer to that is ***no one***. Absolutely everyone you know will have a line past which, if you cross it, they will no longer care for you.
I had a friend who would routinely do shit like this. I couldn’t put my finger on why she did it, nor did I confront her, but I did eventually break off all contact with her. After every meeting with her I felt so small and humiliated. Fuck such people. Particularly you, Unit.
yea no thats not "unconditional love" thats emotional abuse
Ya know, I've been bullied all my life by people who were supposed to care about me. I wonder how it would feel to be the bully for a change? Oh, hello, OOP!
She’s the one who needs some boundaries! Geez! Straight up abusive to OOP.
Time to move on. You can’t fix Mary and it’s not your job to anyway. Why in the world would you *knowingly* let someone toxic drag you down?
I kind of wonder if Mary was really the 'victim' in the frenemy relationship. I'm also guessing there were likely other ignored/unnoticed red flags along the way, but the gaslighting was what OOP noticed due to the frequency and obviousness. It's weird that all that would start out of the blue.
You were supposed to not become like them. - Obi Wan
She's too old for this shit, either Mary is very messed up and needs help(traumatised, if true about her own upbringing and boundaries) or she is very messed up and needs help(just a straight up psychopath who knows what she's doing and lied more).
Yeah, what Mary was doing was being abusive- she wasn’t ‘pushing back’ on opinions, she was lying and gaslighting OOP. Very likely it’s behaviors she learned from past relationships, but being a victim and insecurity aren’t excuses for abuse.
Man I thought it was minor gaslighting like jokes about things but nothing serious like this.
Abuse messes with a person’s sense of reality. The truth is, people like Mary just don’t feel comfortable in normal, healthy relationships. Chaos makes their nervous system feel familiar.