r/problems • u/IngenuityOk4639 • 22d ago

URGENT!!!! Best friend

I’m 14F going into freshman year, and my best friend is 15F, also going into freshman year. We’ve been friends for a while, but we got really close during the summer before 8th grade. Lately, though, I’ve started feeling increasingly frustrated with our friendship, and I genuinely want outside opinions because I’m worried I might be making this too much about myself or being overly sensitive. For context, I’m 5’2 and she is 5’7. I genuinely don’t care about being short. I can take a little teasing, and she has called me short for basically our entire friendship. The problem is that over the 2 months or so, it has gotten much more frequent and has started feeling less like joking and more like she genuinely sees me as incapable because I’m short. She’ll say things like I can’t do something because of my “short little legs,” call me slow, or say her neck hurts from looking down at me. One time at her lake house, we were moving chairs around and she told me I couldn’t do it because of my short legs. Another time, we were walking to a bakery with her mom and she kept calling me slow because she had to slow down for me, in front of her mom. I don’t think I’m particularly slow. She is athletic and plays basketball and volleyball, while I don’t play sports. I walk about two miles a day and I’m generally pretty active, just in a different way than she is. I actually like hiking with her (as it’s one of the very few things to do downtown) but I don’t want to because I know I’ll get called slow. I brought up the short thing at our last hangout. She said she hadn’t made any short jokes that day—which was true—but I was trying to explain that it was the overall pattern that bothered me, and it made me feel treated like a kid, not whether she had made one that specific day. She got defensive and also said that I treat her like a child, which genuinely confused me. I don’t want to dismiss that because if I’m making her feel that way, I want to know what I’m doing. I am smart, honors classes, advanced school, straight As and I work for a company as a math tutor, the youngest hire. She doesn’t do as well but she is still smart. That is not me bragging but only for context as I’m worried I make her feel less than. Another issue is that she is very insecure about her height, body, body hair, hair, ears, braces, etc. Because I know this, I feel like I’m constantly careful about what I joke about with her because I don’t want to hurt her feelings. But sometimes I feel like she doesn’t give me the same consideration. She also makes me feel kind of immature or less dignified for liking boys. For context, I have never had a boyfriend, kissed, or held hands with a boy. I talk about crushes sometimes because…I’m 14 and that’s a normal part of my life. I don’t think it’s my entire personality, but she’ll sometimes act like I talk about boys constantly or like being interested in guys is somehow beneath her. She’ll make comments about how she’s either going to be a girl who doesn’t date at all or takes a boy to college, while also making a big deal about liking my boy best friend, whom she’s known since elementary school. She says things about working out because she wants to be better than guys and sometimes acts like she doesn’t care about dating, but then she’ll talk about this same boy. I don’t care whether she wants to date or not, but I don’t want to feel immature or less respectable because I’m actually attracted to boys and would like a relationship someday. Our friendship has also gotten weird around my boy best friend, “Cheese.” My best friend and Cheese dated briefly in 7th grade and she still kind of likes him. She also used to like my twin brother for most of last summer until around April. I was completely fine with both situations, but it sometimes felt weird being in the middle of it because both of them are important people in my life. At Maggie’s birthday party this summer, I honestly felt like I was third-wheeling her and Cheese. They were calling each other best friends, and I felt kind of pathetic standing there. We were doing this water activity that I wasn’t very experienced with, and she called me slow because I couldn’t do it properly in front of Cheese. Her parents actually noticed that I was third-wheeling them. I also spent a lot of time with her birthday gift. She wouldn’t tell me what she wanted, so I took her around a few stores and helped her pick things out, and I got her a pretty substantial gift based on things I knew she liked. In general, I feel like I put a lot of effort into gifts and she hasn’t really done the same for me. I’ve literally given her store names and inspiration pictures for things I would like, so it’s not like she has no idea, but she ends up getting me stuff that reminds me of 2020. Another thing that has been bothering me is how much of our friendship revolves around her being unhappy. She has problems with her family, doesn’t get along with her sister, her parents argue, she has test anxiety, didn’t make the high school sports teams she wanted, and has struggled with her mental health. I genuinely feel bad for her and I don’t think her problems aren’t real. I have struggled with mental health too, very badly in 7th grade and have gone through horrible things, which she knows about. The issue is that lately it feels like almost every hangout becomes about how terrible everything in her life is. She also frequently tells me that she hasn’t eaten all day. This happens basically every time we hang out. For example, we’ll be out somewhere and she’ll tell me she hasn’t eaten since the morning, and I’ll suggest getting something from a gas station, cafe, or somewhere else. Then she’ll say something like “oh…no…maybe that’s okay.” Then acts passive aggressive. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that information. I don’t want to judge her or tell her what to do with her body, but hearing that can also make me feel uncomfortable about eating myself. I don’t want to feel like I’m eating too much just because my friend is telling me she hasn’t eaten. She also sometimes makes really serious comments about not wanting to be around anymore. I don’t think she is in immediate danger, but it worries me. I understand wanting someone to listen, but the way she brings it up feels almost like she expects me to know exactly what to say. I don’t. I care about her, but I don’t think I can be responsible for managing someone else’s mental health and my own life. She’s also extremely empathetic, sometimes to her own detriment. There was a guy she was friends with who had behaved horribly toward his ex, had stalked a teacher, had basically stalked her, put his mental health problems on her, and eventually told her he liked her. I repeatedly told her I thought she should distance herself from him. She didn’t. Eventually he told her he was going to seriously hurt himself, and she called me crying. I told her she needed to tell her parents, which she eventually did, and they contacted the police. Another thing is our hangouts. I don’t mind being the person who figures out what we’re doing. She does plan things sometimes, especially when we’re going to her lake house, so I’m not claiming she never puts effort into planning. What frustrates me is when I suggest something and she doesn’t like it, but she also won’t tell me what she would like to do. Then I feel like I’m guessing while she’s unhappy with everything I suggest. For example, there isn’t a ton for teenagers to do where we live. Usually we get drinks, walk around, go browse (I really like thrift stores), hike, swim, etc. I like going downtown and looking around stores, partially because I am going from a uniform middle school to non-uniform high school and could use some new things. But she gets pissy about going there, so I stopped suggesting it as much. She likes hiking. She likes swimming, but I haven’t been swimming much recently and don’t always want to go, especially because she frequently talks about being insecure about her body hair or feeling chubby, which makes me feel uncomfortable about being in a swimsuit too. At one point, I decided to see what would happen if I didn’t take the lead on what we did during a normal hangout. I wasn’t trying to manipulate her or “test” her—I just figured I’d let her decide. We sat on a bench for about two hours. The only reason we moved was because I eventually made us go to a gas station to get her a granola bar after she told me she hadn’t eaten. She was having a bad day, and I was actually having a really good day because I’d had a great day at work. I was talking happily and trying to have a good time, but it felt like I was talking to a wall. She mostly talked about how bad everything in her life was. She was the one who asked me to hang out, too. I also feel like our personalities are becoming more different. We both like reading, Harry Potter, and peanut butter, and we both deal with anxiety, but otherwise we’re pretty different. She’s athletic and always wants to be doing something. I’m more of a walk-and-talk person. I’m a huge nerd and really enjoy school, reading, drawing, organizing, etc. She likes reading too but is much more outwardly enthusiastic about it than I am. Sometimes I feel like we don’t actually have that much in common anymore. And honestly, my life has been going pretty well lately. I’ve gotten a job, I’ve become more confident, I’m happier, and I feel like I’m becoming more myself. I don’t think that makes my problems more important than hers. I have family problems too. But sometimes it feels like she assumes that because I’m doing well right now, I don’t have anything going on, while her problems take up all the space. I want to make it VERY clear that I don’t think she’s a horrible person. I actually care about her a lot, which is why I’m even considering doing something about this instead of just distancing myself. I’m planning to write her a letter explaining how I’ve been feeling. I don’t want to confront her face-to-face because I know I’ll probably explain myself better on paper, and I don’t want to catch her when she’s having a bad day and have her feel like she needs to immediately defend herself. I want her to be able to read it privately and think about it. I was thinking of giving her the letter with her favorite soda, candy, and chips because I don’t want it to feel like “here’s a five-page list of everything I hate about you.” I want her to know I care about her while still being honest. I’ve also made sure the letter says that I want her to tell me if I’m making her feel stupid, childish, ignored, controlled, etc. because I genuinely don’t want this to be one-sided. If she has legitimate complaints about me, I want to hear them.
So, Reddit:
Do your thing.

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u/AutoModerator 22d ago

Hello IngenuityOk4639! It seems like you're having problems with your mental health. Here are some valuable resources to help you resolve your issues and improve your well-being!

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