Spill the Tea with Tashi #6

SPILL THE TEA WITH TASHI | COLUMN | AROHA / LOVE

Written by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Feature Editor

Q: 20, She/Her

Hi Tashi, new reader of Debate here. 

Recently, my best friend got back together with her ex-boyfriend and I'm so angry about it. I almost don’t know what to do with the amount of rage I feel. For context, I spent months convincing her that this guy is no good. She spent months periodically crying on the floor and swearing off ever speaking to him again. The back and forth has happened at least 3 times that I know of, I suspect it's more. If I went into detail about all the shit he’s done, this would turn into a dissertation, but he’s a soft-boy. He treats everyone around him like props in his sad little artist story. He would ghost my bestie for days, then come back with a cryptic paragraph about how he’s phobic of connection and just needs his “freedom”. Then he convinces her to be grateful that he’s tolerating her. And I’ve spent SO LONG trying to show her what real care looks like. At one point he even said I was a toxic influence in her life, basically because I’ve been pointing out his bullshit. 

Also, she didn’t even tell me they got back together, I found out because she posted a soft launch on insta. I was literally there for her every time he disappeared and reappeared, while he constantly made her feel like she was asking too much. I was the one who was there for her, holding her while she cried, re-writing texts, bringing over wine and watching rom coms. 

Now I just feel angry and sorry for her at the same time. She’s acting all sheepish because she KNOWS she fucked up by getting back with him. She knows I’m pissed about it. I want to find some way of getting over this feeling, but it's hard when someone I love just won’t stop hurting herself. It feels like a horrible merry-go-round of her ex being shit, me picking up the pieces, my friend forgetting everything that happened, and then repeat.

I know it sounds like I’m making this about me, and I guess I am to an extent. I should probably let her make mistakes and try to be less invested, right? It does make me feel a little pathetic to be this affected by who my best friend is dating. But realistically, he’s getting this fake fun version of her, and I’m getting all the messy shit.

What I’m really asking is, how can I stop being so angry about this?

A: Dear Furious Best Friend,

Welcome to Debate, and congratulations on an amazing debut question. I have a lot of respect for your righteous fury, though I’ll admit now, I’m not sure if there is a wholly satisfying answer to this.

I’ve spent many years of my life being the certified emotional support person for friends who do not have their own best interests at heart. It’s simultaneously devastating and infuriating. You just want to grab them by the shoulders, shake them, and scream. But as we all know, we should never, ever shake a baby. 

The memes about hating your best friend's ex more than they do are popular for a reason. When our besties are dating someone, we see the outside perspective. And out of love, we tend to keep a lot of receipts on their behalf. That gets all the more frustrating when you have to constantly haul out your box of evidence, which only gets larger with time, in an attempt to make your friend see reason. So I don’t think you’re being petty, and your anger isn’t self-absorbed — at least, in this advice columnist’s opinion. 

Friendships are a kind of emotional contract. It’s not written down, but there are certain expectations about how you’ll be showing up for each other. One of those is loyalty; the kind where if someone hurts your friend, you’re in their corner. And you’ve been doing that over and over again. So, when she turns around and chooses to go back to an actively hostile person, of course it feels like she’s betraying you.

It feels a bit clinical writing it all down like that, but I wanted to point these things out to demonstrate where your anger is coming from. She’s breaking the untold friend contract. I imagine she’s not doing it to hurt you, but by consistently choosing chaos over care, it feels like betrayal. 

Your friend is probably experiencing a case of “repetition compulsion”. She’s fallen into an unconscious pattern of repeating painful situations from the past in an attempt to gain control over them, and ultimately to try and achieve a different outcome. Basically, she’s trying to fix some kind of original wound by recreating it, even though it hurts. Since she’s your best friend, you might be able to sniff out what that original wound is. 

For example, imagine someone grew up with an emotionally unavailable parent. Maybe they were loving in bursts, but distant most of the time, overly critical, and just inconsistent overall. The child of that parent learns to work very hard to earn affection. They try to be perfect, quiet, helpful, and endlessly accommodating in the hope that they will receive the love they need. 

Fast forward to adulthood, and they will be drawn to romantic partners who are similarly on-and-off-again. Distant at one moment, love-bombing the next. It’s a horribly painful emotional dynamic, but for them, it feels familiar. They probably believe, deep down, that if they can just get this person to stay and love them, it means they are finally enough. They’ll finally feel like they fixed whatever was broken. Fixed whatever made them so unlovable to that parental figure.

And although I don’t (and you shouldn’t) have any sympathy for Mr Soft-Boy, it is helpful to remember that his behaviour is stemming from some kind of trauma as well. He’s probably as unconsciously influenced by his own repetition compulsion as she is.  But what he needs is a therapist, not a girlfriend he can emotionally steamroll whenever he wants, just to feel something. 

Okay, so you didn’t ask for an introduction into psychology, but I do think it’s helpful to try to understand the root of where your friend’s confusing behaviour is coming from. I won’t deny that watching someone throw themselves back into a burning house while you stand there screaming with a fire extinguisher is more than aggravating. But you’re mad because you care. 

Whether you like it or not, it sounds like Mr Soft-Boy has his hooks in deep. I think of men like this as haunted house actors, all shadows, smoke, and cheap jump scares. To maintain their mystery, they rely on the darkness. Once you turn on the lights, it’s all over for him. Now he’s just some creep with a fog machine and bad makeup. Of course your friend's ex is going to accuse you of being the toxic one, you’re threatening to turn the lights on and expose the wires behind his performance. 

If you want to lift the veil from her eyes, you'll have to be patient. Shoving evidence in her face could defensively drive her closer to that man-shaped cloud from a smoke machine. There is some hope, though. Your messages ARE getting through to her, as evidenced by her sheepishness and inability to confess their re-connection. He’ll be fighting your influence by making her feel sorry for him somehow, or making her feel like she can’t do any better than him. But your consistency will shine through where his can’t. 

So, how do you move on from the anger?

Maybe I’m out of line here, but I say don’t. Even if it’s eating you alive, your anger comes from a good place. Unfortunately, when you couple righteous anger with an inability to fix the problem, you do end up sad, confused and still fucking fuming. But the thing is, your anger is appropriate to the situation. Don’t be afraid of it. Emotions are how we connect with reality. A person is threatening to destroy your best friend's life, I’d be surprised if you weren’t angry. 

Realistically, you’ll have to weather a few more breakups before you see any real change. Of course, you didn't sign up for front row seats to a slow-motion train wreck when you became friends. But someone has to be there to investigate the wreckage, and she’s too close to the situation to see it clearly. 

Whatever happens, your friend needs to see reality, and until she genuinely sees it, she’ll be stuck in her repetitions. All you can do is be there, evidence box tucked under your loving arm, ready for when she needs you.

From your letter, it’s clear you don't intend to end this friendship. If the anger is bothering you so much that you can’t sleep at night, taking a step back emotionally might help. We pay therapists to listen to our problems because they don’t get tangled in the emotional mess. Friendships are often strained when one party is the sober driver of the other's emotional drunk-dialling. You could write an angry letter that you don’t send, because you can’t realistically be a therapist, clean-up crew, and bouncer for your bestie when she can’t stop herself from re-inviting chaos into her life. 

The care and compassion you’ve given is more than most people would. And again, that doesn’t make you pathetic. It makes you someone with deep love who wants the best for your friend. ‘The best’ being a strong grip on reality. That’s a valuable quality that you should cherish. 

Hopefully, your bestie will turn the lights on and realise she’s been hoodwinked by a bad-faith actor. Until she turns that light on, she probably won't realise the kind of love she needs has been provided by you all along. But she will realise, it’ll likely take more break-ups, and more wine-fueled rom-com nights, but she’ll be all the more grateful to you when the penny drops. She can’t be in a relationship with an illusion, and the more reality you inject into her life, the less vivid the illusion will become.