u/Slow_Friend_6104

Hello.

I wanted to share this because I am still quite traumatized by what happened and led up to me having to block said "Friend".

First: I am autistic, found that out throgh therapy very late in my young adulthood (I am still a young adult, 20s). There are many things that I do not comprehend because I do not feel such emotions. The concept of jealousy/envy makes very little sense to me because, in my brain, one simply doens't have enough information to be jealous of what someone has. Being jealous/envious of something another person is or posesses is therefore something that kind of frightens me - especially when one finds out that a person feels that way towards me.

I also think its because I have made experiences where finding out a "friend" was jealous of me came in tandem with the attempt to physically harm me. I went to therapy and thought I had eliminated whatever it was in me that attracted those kind of friendships.

I was very wrong.

A friendship that began three years ago with a person that was very dear to me was revealed, through many behaviours of this person - to nevr have been what I thought it was.

So we met at University.

For years she would have this tendency of asking boundary-crossing questions - basically wanting to know about every detail of my life. I always brushed it aside, though I had to often set boundaries and literally tell her "that is none of your business" - which she would then after a day basically ignore and ask again. She most of all always asked questions that would make me reveal to her basically where I was in my career or life. When I told her about problems I encountered during mym university life/classes - she would not stop asking who it was that was creating me problems. She would always say she "wants to know because maybe she knows them" - which was a RED FLAG to me, always.

This behaviour is something I now know to be monitoring behaviour and something people do who are not only secretly competing with you but also jealous of you.

What led up to me blocking her was that we needed to complete interships in our bachelors. I helped her write/correct/edit her cover letters - which led to her landing several internships. I was ill for some time during my studies, so my search for interships became a little delayed. I am also a woman of colour studying in a very white country - and of course had not considered just how much prejudice, racism and the additional nonsense could impact said search.

Let's note: This "friend" basically used me to help her - but never considered to even ask if I needed help, which my therapist had to remind me of, because my autistic brain doesn't keep score. I truly enter friendships from an, in hindsight, naive place. Comparing myself to my friends, competitiveness, envy, jealousy towards A FRIEND is something unimaginable to me, because I am supposed to be your friend, and friends, in my mind, do not do such things to one another.

Know also that when I began my search, she would not stop nagging to know where I was applying to - she who already had all the internships she needed. When I asked her why she was asking me, she said it was because she wanted ideas to where she, too, could apply.

I later came to find out that the few spots I revealed to her she went on to apply, too.

Now...

Durign our friendship, there were times she had tried to position herself above me in very strange ways - which I ofc brushed aside.

This time, when I applied to the same company she interned at, I suddenly receive message from her out of the blue, where she wrote only these words:

"I can see your application."

Nothing else.

I was weirded out. Completely weirded out. My ex friend comes from a well-off family, where she never had to work. Those internships were basically her first jobs. I thought maybe she doesn't know that one is not supposed to reveal such things, maybe that's supposed to stay inside information?

So I asked her: "Ok... are you supposed to share information like that?"

This completely caught her off guard. She hadn't thought about it, and she knew not how to respond to my question - whcih in hindsight tells me it was an attempted power-move, basically trying to let me know she was above me in this scenario and could control what would happen to my attempt to apply there.

She then, after a day responded that she sent it to the higher ups. I thanked her but this weird feeling wouldn't leave me.

After I had my interview there,

hours after, I recive a message from her, suddenly telling me that she just found out that "So MaNy PeOplE aRe aPpLyInG tO tHe SaMe PoSitIoN".

Now mind you, she basically haunted me so that I would tell her when I had the interview. Had I not told her - I would probably never have received this message.

I, as a friend would never message my friend a message like this after they had what to them was a great, promising interview. In that moment, I got angry and asked her how this information was going to help me. She responded that she overshared sometimes because of her "ADHD" and that she "panics about little stuff" to which I then told her that it's inconsiderate to basically plant insecurity into other people just because she is feeling panic.

... which she found funny. Planting doubt into youur friend and then going "oops sorry it was my ADHD" is a sorry excuse for conscious, purposeful sabotage.

When I responded that I truly didn't care, whether I heard back from them or not (because it was one of the last places I wanted to intern for", she suddenly had notes to give me on my attitude for such things. Basically, this was to trigger me and then check for my reaction.

I stopeed responding to her texts from then on. What she had done did induce a an anxiety attack, and it was from that moment on that I truly realized something was up with her.

I began to think about our friendship seriously then. And only then did I begin to notice things that I had completely ignored.

The monitoring of course.

The imitating.

The numerous times she had made fun of my culture/my language.

Her boundary crossing/posessive line of questions and behaviour.

And then this sabotaging.

I sought counself with my mother - who told me that this was a jealous fake friend, who was attempting to mess up things for me.

Then I sought counself from my therapist, who said the same.

And then my brother sat me down, and had to literally tell me "Y/N, I have noticed that you appraoch the world from a very innocent and honestly, extremely naive place, and you completely miss when someone actually wants your downfall/failure."

It was quite sobering - traumatizing also. I began to isolate, and I must admmit that I will from now on be very wary of female friendships - because may had turned out similarly to this one.

I stopped messaging her or responding to her, but this girl would not stop texting me. Wanting to know whether I was hired or not, xyz...

And when I didn't respond to her, she went into a group chat with mutual friends we had, and began asking her monitoring questions there. I didn't respond there either.

Seemingly that wasn't clear enough.

Because then, on campus, she literally came to find me. And this was, besides other things that happened which go into a more spiritual spehere,

[I had a dream - a dream which in my culture can only mean a spiritual syphnoning/spiritual attack. When I told my mother and she performed a cleansing on me which is supposed to remove any and all spiritually vampiric ties, evil eyes, hexes etc - it was her who messaged me immediately after this cleansing - in my culture a clear sign that it was her who was doing these things to me - that is all I'm going to say because many people don't believ ein such things and this is not the right subreddit for this kind of stuff]

the last straw.

This to me, meant that she in a way felt as though she had ownership of me or felt entitled to my attention, presence and energy.

So I blocked her. I am very sad about it, because I really liked her as my friend. I am still shocked/traumatized that she did this to me, and I am left very confused about how I didn't see any of this.

And somewhere, I also dont trust my judgement of people anymore because i thought I was over selecting people like her as friends. But I was wrong.

I am afraid that she will not respect this boundary, too.

But yeah, that's how I lost a friend.

Please forgive any grammatical errors.