an-throwaway

[an-throwaway]

Right. Here we go. @am-i-the-asshole-official, here's some info and answers to questions in the notes of the handmade gift post. I don't want to get into a super specific amount of detail for personal reasons, but I will clarify what needs clarifying. As a very kind person in the notes pointed out, I don't owe you an explanation, but I'm giving a bit of one anyways.

First, my use of the term 'gaslighting'. I realise I slightly contradicted myself when I said the friend probably wasn't trying to hurt me. That's what they always claimed, and I cant know their true intentions. What I do know is that I stopped being able to trust myself. I was unable to trust my own perception on things because this person was always, always telling me how I was wrong, and how everything was always somehow my fault. I became responsible for their mental state, their wellbeing, their everything. If anything went wrong, no matter how much involvement I had in it, it was my fault. I couldn't even trust my own feelings, because this person would tell me that they weren't real and they they would tell me what I was 'actually feeling'. They also monitored everything I did, everyone I spoke to, inserted themselves into every plan I made, and got mad at me for 'being better friends with other people' and 'not loving them enough'.

Secondly, the falling out. I'm not going to go into detail about what was said, but I will summarise. I confronted them about their dependency on me, and asked them to please stop hurting me if they wanted our friendship to continue. I gave them specific examples, and explained my point of view. They then proceeded to write paragraphs upon paragraphs about how it was all my fault, they were treating me like that because I was treating them worse, I had brought this upon myself, and if I wanted anything to change I would have to change how I acted towards them.

Thirdly, my overreaction. Again, I'm not going to go into detail. Insofar I had been telling this person that I still wanted to be friends, I just didn't want to be in an actively damaging relationship. This changed, I started saying that I didn't want to talk to them again, I didn't want to see them, etc etc. I got incredibly defensive of myself, and potentially a little too accusatory. We were both young, I have no idea how much of their behaviour was deliberate and how much of it was not.

Fourth and finally, the gift itself. As I mentioned, I never found out what this gift was. I still don't know. I could make a guess, but knowing this person it could be literally anything. What I do know however, is they had a tendency to give me gifts of things I had little to no care about or interest in, but were instead things that they cared about. I understand wanting your friends to be into the same things you're into, but I'm talking along the terms of flower crowns and jewellery that were completely different to my style. So yeah, could've been anything.

This is the only info post I'm going to make about this. I'm not sharing any more details, this was a messy and very painful time in my life and I don't want to bring the guts of it up again. For the most part, I've moved on. They haven't. I see them around occasionally and despite the time that has passed I can so easily see the hatred in their eyes for me. But I digress. Judge me as you will, and remember you are not owed personal information.

AITA for refusing a handmade gift?

This happened a little while ago but it’s still niggling at me so I figured I’d send it here.

At this time, I (then 19X) had a friend (then 19X iirc) who I knew was making me a gift. This wasn’t a birthday gift or a christmas gift or for any special occasion, they were just making something for me. I didn’t know what the gift was, but I knew they had been working on it for a while.

We had been friends for I think about a year and a half? It’s hard to remember. Anyways we’d been friends for a while and we were really close. Too close. I started to notice that my ‘friend’ had been gaslighting me and becoming overly dependent on me for months, if not most of our friendship. I don’t use these terms lightly, this happened over a year ago and it's fucked me up to this day. We’d talked about it before after an… outburst they had that really hurt me, and they promised they were going to try to do better.

I don’t think they were deliberately trying to get worse. I don’t think they were deliberately trying to hurt me (at that point in time at least. In the future, well, that’s another story). But inevitably, they got worse. We had a MASSIVE falling out, and in retrospect I think I was a little bit too harsh in some of the things I said to them.

This was only a couple of days after they had finished making me the aforementioned gift. I knew they had put a lot of time and effort into it, and they told me that they could deliver it directly to my house. I kind of… freaked out. This was immediately after our argument, like, I’m talking the same conversation (the falling out happened via messaging), and they didn’t actually ask if I wanted them to drop the gift off, only that they would come to my house the next day and leave the gift for me.

I said no. I said absolutely not do not come to my house I don’t want the gift I don’t care what you do with it just don’t come here. Again, in retrospect, I feel like I may have been too harsh. They made a gift for me and I refused it. I still don’t know what it was going to be, and I am no longer in contact with this ‘friend’, and haven’t been for a considerable while.

So yeah, tl;dr: I had a massive falling out with a friend who really hurt me, they tried to give me a gift they’d been making, and I refused. AITA?

What are these acronyms?