Codependent friendship & third parties

[Queen of Spades]

Today I'm going to share a story involving me and 2 other girls. It all started about 11 years ago, when I met and befriended X. Me and her had lots of thigs in common back then, so we became best friends in a matter of months. Everything was great, we would laugh and talk about stuff, we would hang out and have a lot of fun. When we were teenagers, we took part in a piano contest (a common hobby that we shared) and she'd got a higher award than I had. That went to her head and she started changing her attitude towards me in that she became arrogant and started thinking way too highly of herself. One year later, my piano playing skills had improved fantastically. Needless to say she became jealous of me and she started putting me down, saying that I play like shit and the like. One day I'd had enough and decided to cut her dead with no explanation. I stopped answering her texts and calls. 

Several months later, she showed up at my piano class with a letter of apology and a cute drawing, and I forgave her. In the meanwhile, however, she had met another girl, let's just say Y, and the two had lots of things in common. X got me in touch with Y, and for a while, we were like a BFF trio. One day, however, I realised that me and X were no longer best friends, since she had slowly started...replacing me. She would only tag Y in bestfriend-related memes/posts and so on. I tried to live with it. 

4 years ago I came out to Y about being aromantic and demisexual (I was afraid of telling X because her religion is strict - no sex before marriage & so on). Y forced me to tell X, too.. I did, and her reaction hurt me to no end... I decided I didn't want to be friends with her anymore... But several months later I had forgiven her and tried to accept that she had been just brainwashed... 

But after all that, another issue had occurred: as I said, the two of them were BFFs, while their friendship with me was at a lower level. The two of them shared things with each other I didn't know about, and so on. For this reason, hanging out with both of them at the same time didn't feel right anymore. They would spend quite a bit of time without me anyways. But whenever I tried to invite either of them anywhere, she would INSIST on our hanging as a trio, which made me feel uneasy. I started doubting whether they even saw me as their friend at all and started growing apart from them. They noticed that and confronted me about it, and last year I managed to persuade them into agreeing to celebrate my birthday individually (one day for X, another day for Y). Things between me and X were right, but Y was pushy about certain stuff (blaming me for avoiding people I didn't feel comfortable around anymore and stuff). Me and Y would burn each other, she would feel offended by my joke attempts, although she roasts people a lot. Sometimes I would exaggerate, changing her nickname on messenger, and she removed me from the chat group. About 6 months ago she did that and I spammed her facebook profile with pusheen stickers as revenge :p. She blocked me and hasn't unblocked ke to this day. But now comes the interesting part: I was like "well, if she won't unblock me, that's it - i'm fine without her" she used to remind me of things beloging in the past which made me uncomfortable talking to her, so her blocking me for good seemed great. But this summer X complained to me about Y ignoring her for her boyfriend and stated that this is why she forgot to unblock me. As you know, this kind of people disgust me to no end. But a few weeks ago I joined this chat group, where X and Y are also present. (unforunately we can see each other's messages in groups despite her having blocked me). She started roasting me again. Like nothing had happened. I decided to ignore her, hoping she would leave me alone, but she didn't, and one day I'd had enough and decided to give it to her straight. Of course she started reminding me of things I had done in the past and refused to leave me alone, so I took it one step further and shared some personal pictures of her (in which she was frowning and making faces), hoping she would get so angry as to leave me alone for good. But X intervened and blamed ME for having a shitty attitude towards Y, defending her. I tried to explain to her that while she might tolerate people who ignore their friends for their romances, this is a hard limit for me... but to no avail. She can't seem to accept the fact that me and Y are not right for each other and she insisted she needed a functional trio. The 2 talk 24/7, have each other's passwords, if X knows someone, then Y knows him/her, too, and the other way round - a relationship which, to me, does not seem healthy AT ALL. And it seems that if one befriends either of them, then it is MANDATORY that s/he is friends with the other, too! I don't want to be dragged into this... I told X I would start chatting with Y on our group again, but only for the former's sake. I feel like I'm in deep shit... I don't know how to open X's eyes and make her realise her relationship with Y isn't healthy at all and that the latter might be having a negative influence on her. Sometimes I just want to walk away from both of them and leave them to their weird relationship. But on the other hand, I wish X could understand that our friendship is just fine and that it should not be affected by Y, and that the BFF trio does not exist anymore... I just don't want Y in my life, I feel nothing for her, she is no friend of mine. 

[Silyun]

Wow that is hard. It may seem tough but maybe you should put some distance between X and you as well. Whenever she's ready to detach herself from Y, you can hang out together and do stuff but until then it seems complicated to do so

I agree with you, it doesn't sound healthy but if they both agreed to that, there's nothing you can do

[Queen of Spades]

On 9/25/2018 at 12:23 AM, Silyun said:

Wow that is hard. It may seem tough but maybe you should put some distance between X and you as well. Whenever she's ready to detach herself from Y, you can hang out together and do stuff but until then it seems complicated to do so

I agree with you, it doesn't sound healthy but if they both agreed to that, there's nothing you can do

Well, I actually don't want her to break the bond with Y. All I want is get her to accept that me and Y are not right for each other and that she has to stop trying to drag me into their game. I am comfortable with chatting with Y on a messenger group where at least another person is present. But I can't handle hanging with her in real life.