I have a 'best friend' at school who is quite manipulative.
I met her a year and a bit ago, in my previous school. We became best friends very quickly, and she lives very close to me so we hung out every weekend.
After three weeks or so, she started pushing me around. She would shove me into walls and push me to the floor. She is quite a big and tall and i am slim and very short so it hurt quite a lot. She just laughed and i didnt complain.
Sometimes when she was mean to me i would talk back and then she would ignore me for the rest or the day or week or how ever long she wanted. For some reason i was desperate for her friendship so i kept begging for forgiveness. She says stuff and then denies that she said it just minutes later.This carried on for a year and then we both moved to the same school.
It is a lot worse now. She has become very popular and has loads of social influence. When she is mad at me, she isolates me from everything and noone argues with her.
She also has a habit of stealing my friends it happened with a girl at my old school and at my new school there is a girl who was super nice at the beginning of term and we were pretty good friends. However, when this person decided to become friends with her she stopped talking to me. When they are together they say mean comments to me, but when she is alone we get on pretty well.
I don't know what to do! She is in my house so I have to see her all the time and she constantly excludes me from social events. Do you have any advice?
Sam
Hi there,
Friendships should always be equal, where one person is not more important than the other. You are important and your friends should appreciate that you are worth spending time with. If one person in a friendship is chasing the other, it can create an imbalance. When a friendship is imbalanced it can turn into a negative relationship.
Having friends is good and there's nothing wrong with wanting someone to be your friend. But it's important to remember that a friendship should be equal. No matter how great and amazing someone seems, if they don't feel the same about you then it can start to make you feel like they are worth more than you, which isn't true.
Friends should care about you and how you feel. And they should want to be with you anytime and not only when it suits them. It can be difficult to recognise when someone might not be as good a friend as you wish they were. A good place to start is with your own self-esteem. Remind yourself that you are worth spending time with and nobody has a right to treat you badly.
I can't tell you what you should do about your friendship with this person, but it can be good to ask yourself if you are getting positive things from the friendship or not. Think carefully about whether this person makes you feel good or bad - if all they cause you is stress than you might be happier without them. Remember that there are plenty of other people who you would get on well with and can form an equal friendship with.
If you feel like you want to work on this friendship, you could explain to her how you feel it is imbalanced and explain how she makes you feel. It's okay to say how you want the friendship to be and what needs to change. Being assertive can help you explain things without being rude.
I hope this has helped, thanks for sending me this letter.
Take care,
Sam
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