I have a friend who I’m starting not to enjoy spending time with, and I feel quite conflicted about it because I genuinely love her as a person.
She is kind, generous, and very caring. She shows up in practical ways, cooks for me, invites me over, and is generally very giving. So this is not about her being a bad person. She has a good heart, and I do value that. However, there is something about the dynamic that is making the friendship feel increasingly unfulfilling for me, to the point where I’m starting not to enjoy her company.
She struggles with OCD, mainly health-related, and when it becomes more intense it tends to take over quite significantly. I know I can absolutely relate to what it feels like to be stuck in your head, to fixate, to compulsively check, and to need reassurance. I have a long history of anxiety myself, including OCD, health anxiety, generalised anxiety, panic, dissociation, and anxious preoccupied attachment patterns in relationships. So this is not a lack of understanding. It is simply that the way we cope and the way it is expressed are very different.
My coping has always been very internal. I still seek reassurance and validation, but I tend to do that privately, through research, reflection, or sitting with my thoughts. If I am around someone, my anxiety will usually present as me being quieter, more inward, or mentally preoccupied. For her, it is much more external. She verbalises her thoughts constantly, brings the other person into her internal world, and seeks reassurance in real time through conversation.
At the moment, one of her main OCD themes is around her skin. She believes there have been significant changes, and she is constantly checking mirrors, reflections, and asking me to look. When I am with her, she will ask repeatedly if I can see certain lines, marks, or changes, often asking the same questions over and over again within a short space of time. It becomes a constant loop of checking and reassurance, and it dominates the interaction.
But it is not just the OCD itself. It is the way everything in the interaction becomes centred around her internal world. Whatever is stressing her, whether it is her health, her relationship, or her general life, becomes the focus. She is constantly self-analysing and expressing those observations out loud, commenting on her stress, her tendencies, her behaviour, and her sense of being overwhelmed. She often speaks about how disorganised she feels, how chaotic her life is, how stressed she is, how her cortisol must be high, how overwhelmed and burnt out she is, and how lonely she feels. She frequently reflects on her choices, especially in relation to a man she is involved with, and describes herself as vulnerable, weak at times, and seeking closeness or validation. A lot of what she describes is actually very relatable to me, but she would not know that, because she does not seem to perceive me in the same way she perceives herself.
In many ways, I relate very strongly to what she expresses, including the vulnerability she describes in her situation with this man. I have been in a situationship myself for four years, which is longer than the situation she is currently in, and there are many parallels between the two. However, she does not even know that this person exists in my life. I have never had the opportunity to introduce that part of my experience, and because that foundation has never been laid, I cannot even interject in the moment to say that I relate. It is difficult to express connection to something specific when the broader context of my own experience has never had space to be shared.
There is also a sense that she experiences many of the things she describes as though they are unique to her. The way she speaks about her stress, her vulnerability, her patterns, and her behaviour carries an underlying assumption that these experiences belong specifically to her, rather than being shared or relatable. I often find myself sitting there recognising my own experiences in what she is saying, but without the space to express that recognition.
What I am struggling with most is the lack of attunement. In a balanced interaction, both people are able to step slightly out of their own internal world and tune into the other person. That creates a sense of mutual engagement, where both people can share and respond. With her, it feels extremely imbalanced. It feels like I am about 95% tuned into her, she is about 95% tuned into herself, and maybe 5% tuned into me at most. There is very little sense that she is actually stepping into my world.
Because of that, I shrink myself around her. I do not have the capacity to fight for space in a conversation. It is mentally exhausting for me, especially given that I deal with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and ongoing burnout. So instead of pushing to be heard, I withdraw. I become quieter, more passive, and less expressive, because it feels like too much effort to try to hold space for myself in a dynamic where there is no natural room for it. I find myself going into listening mode, where I am simply present to receive whatever she is expressing. I become, in effect, a passive recipient of her world.
There have been multiple times where I have tried to express something important and have not been able to finish. There was one moment in particular where I said, “I’ve got something I need to tell you,” and before I could continue, she completely cut me off and moved straight back into talking about herself. That kind of thing happens often. She does not seem able to stay in listening mode for long enough to allow me to fully express what I am trying to say. It feels like she cannot remain outside of her own mental world for long enough to take in mine.
Over time, this has led to a situation where there are significant parts of my life that she simply does not know about, not because I have chosen to hide them, but because I have never had the opportunity to express them. I do not feel that she is curious about me. There is very little curiosity about what I might be thinking, feeling, or going through. The interaction rarely moves in that direction.
I hate to use this word, but it does feel like self-absorption. Not in a malicious way, but in the sense that her awareness is so heavily focused inward that there is very little space left to perceive anything outside of that. She is highly attuned to herself, constantly analysing and expressing her own experience, but there is very little recognition of mine.
Because I am not as externally expressive, and because I shrink myself in the dynamic, she seems to see me as calm, stable, and responsive. She sees me as a good listener, someone who is grounded and able to hold space. But that is only one part of who I am, and it is the only part she is being given access to. It is not actually an accurate reflection of my internal experience. I am dealing with a lot myself, both physically and mentally, but it is not being recognised. There are cues that other people in my life pick up on easily, signs of stress, tension, or overwhelm, but she does not seem to notice them.
In reality, given the space, I am someone who can be very expressive, articulate, and self-aware. I can communicate my thoughts and feelings clearly and in a considered way. But within this dynamic, that part of me has no room to exist. It feels as though I am only ever allowed to be the listener, the calm one, the responsive one, and nothing beyond that.
What makes this more complex is that she does show up strongly in other ways. I feel physically cared for in her presence, and there is a level of generosity that I do appreciate. However, mentally and emotionally, I feel completely undernourished. The imbalance in attunement leaves me feeling drained, unseen, and, at times, almost irrelevant within the interaction.
I have realised that I am not someone who can feel comfortable in a dynamic where there is no mutual recognition. I do not need everything to be perfectly equal, but I do need to feel that the other person can actually see me. At the moment, that is what feels missing, and it is making it increasingly difficult for me to feel connected or at ease in the friendship.
Has anyone experienced something similar, where the person is genuinely kind and well-meaning, but the dynamic itself feels so one-sided that you begin to feel invisible in their presence?
TL;DR:
I have a friend who is kind and generous, but extremely self-focused in conversation. She constantly talks about her own stress, anxiety, and life, and I end up shrinking myself and staying in listening mode because there’s no space for me. I feel unseen and unheard, even though I care about her. Has anyone experienced this kind of one-sided dynamic?