rina! @FLAMEWREATHS@mastodon.social

lov u

just hold on tight for now!

take it from grandmother trauma survivor: it will be fine, you will get thru this, and you will be able to spot this stuff in the future

smacks you all with a book that says "i'm love you" on the cover

you're all valid and i'm here for you

i once had a friend OFFER to give me a ride somewhere and then accuse me of "not respecting her time" so that was about when i was done with her tbh

if you don't have the energy to help someone plz don't help them anyway if you're just gonna make 'em feel bad about it after... uncool

yeah this maybe goes without saying but if you go out of your way to extend sympathy/help to someone and then throw it back in their face and imply that they made you do that... ur not valid

i've had a ton of experience with this kinda thing unfortunately and it took me until my mid twenties to know how to deal with it/spot it/avoid it in the future

anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk

one final thing i'll say about this is that toxic people can often be very exasperating. you might say rude/harsh/mean things to them in response to their behavior. unfortunately they will try to use this against you in the future. i don't really have advice on this, but anytime you feel like you might be getting hiked up over a conversation (especially via text), you should try to step away from it. don't give them fuel to campaign against you!

this was a whole long tangent. as always, use your judgment and don't jump to snap conclusions about whether or not someone is being toxic. some people genuinely don't understand that what they're doing could be harmful. but it's important to be comfortable in your personal relationships, and you deserve to feel supported by your friends, not bogged down by them.

toxic people will always try to get you to feel bad for what you did or did not do for them, and while some people might not be as blunt or direct about it as the person i just mentioned, it's a very common thread. if you enforce a boundary with someone and they respond to that boundary with either guilt tripping ("i'm sorry i'm a piece of shit", "this makes me feel bad") or gaslighting ("what you're saying is wrong/incorrect"), that's a red flag.

finally: gaslighting/guilting. we all know a ton about this already, and it can come in many forms. the second IRL friend who asked me out self-admittedly "assumed we would get drunk at some point and make out" (which, ew), and when i turned her down, accused me of making her question whether or not she even likes girls (which... not my problem). she told me i had intimacy issues and that i needed to get help... and i'm ashamed to say i believed her.

the point here is that the person put me in the position (whether intentionally or not) where i was cornered and forced to be emotionally vulnerable with someone as a means of being reciprocal or supportive. do not fall for this. if someone you don't know well starts opening up to you about something that makes you uncomfortable, my advice is to try to have a generically supportive reply on hand to give them, and to try not to get too close to them.

i was sexually harassed and asked out by two of my female friends IRL. one of them told me about her sexual assault history the FIRST TIME we ever hung out together. i wasn't sure what to say in response, so i said some vague stuff about my own sexual assault. she talked about how she viewed women more sexually and men more romantically, and then proceeded to ask me on a date a few weeks later. when i said no, she kept trying to get me alone anyway.

by this, i don't mean: "hey we have the same interests! let's bond over this thing we like! oh and when you're feeling sad, know that i'm here for you!" with specific details about what's up in your life trickling down naturally. i mean stuff like, "we've never had a serious conversation before and barely know each other, but now you're telling me the entire history of your toxic relationship with an ex with the aim of making me pity you."

PHEW. second: while it's common for depressed bastards like ourselves to open up to people we meet about emotional things pretty quickly, there's a certain kind of manipulative person who will spill all their personal baggage with you very quickly, as a means of getting you to feel sorry for them. this is a super subtle difference, but it's something my therapist pointed out about all of my toxic friends.

the bottom line is, if you find yourself wondering if you're doing something to attract toxic people, remember that it is not your fault. you aren't "doing" anything to get these people to notice you; they're just trained to find qualities in people that make them easy victims, and unfortunately, you have them.

toxic people can see this and will take advantage of it. they look for the people who integrate quickly or easily into social situations and they befriend them. alternatively, they look for people who seem shy and eager to make friends, befriending those people because they assume they'll jump at the chance to form a new bond.

first: it's extremely common for people who've had one toxic friend to have half a dozen more. as a result, it's extremely common for people who've repeatedly formed toxic relationships to feel like it's their fault. it's absolutely, emphatically not. often people who are targeted by toxic friends are extroverts or just people with high empathy; they make themselves available to chat because they're interested in learning about other people.