Dear Eric: I have a friend, from college 40 years ago, who I’m only now realizing is a needy, self-aggrandizing narcissist. She has driven people away, including her spouse, but maybe subconsciously I thought with me it was different. She has lived far away for most of the time I’ve known her, and our relationship is mainly by phone.
Every interaction involves her “sharing” updates on her possessions, homes, cars, wealthy people she interacts with, how expensive and famous her children’s universities are, how perfect and accomplished her children are, her amazing vacations and on and on.
The times she has visited haven’t gone well. Her children always tell mine how poor we are (we’re comfortably living a good life), how everything they have is better and how small our house is. My children hate them.
I’m tired. The latest is that she announced I will need to be available next year to spend time with her when she comes to visit relatives. I explained that I cannot promise anything due to caring for my elderly parents and my need to be available. She was furious (it’s a whole year away! Can’t you promise me that time?!) and proceeded to berate me by text in all of the ways I’m a bad friend and need to evaluate whether I want to continue our friendship. I don’t!
— Stuck with a Bad Friend
Dear Friend: She may have meant the comment about evaluating whether you want to continue your friendship as a threat to make you fall in line, but you can and should take it at face value. You’ve evaluated and decided it doesn’t work for you. It sounds like it doesn’t work for her either. If you want to avoid being berated again, write her a letter. It needn’t be vindictive or cruel.
Dear Eric: I have a close friend of more than 40 years who lives in a very large and expensive city. Whenever I travel there, I will often ask if my wife and I can stay with her.
She is acquainted with a number of our friends who live in this city but never sees them unless I come to town, nor do they reach out to her if I’m not there. However, when we are there and she joins us, she tends to commandeer the conversation, talking primarily about herself and her relatives, which is off-putting to me and to our friends. It makes it so that I don’t really want to invite her along on most of these visits.
I do genuinely enjoy her friendship and her company but more when it’s just us. I do try to reciprocate her generosity by taking her out to dinner or cooking for her, as well as spending time together during the visit.
I’ve asked other friends and they seem to think I should not feel obligated.
— Grateful Guest
Dear Guest: I suspect there’s a way to solve this without having an uncomfortable talk about her conversational skills. Now, was this an on-going issue with a group that gathered regularly, I’d suggest kindly bringing it up. But it’s simpler to just ask her if she minds if you have solo friend time on your next visit.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
