Biggest pet peeve.

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Guilt-trippers.

Especially if they were once my closest friends, or someone I expected to become super close with.

There’s something so very wrong with someone laying down expectation after expectation, emotionally manipulating you into feeling obligated to do something for them. Especially when that emotional card is, time after time, the phrase “but friends are supposed to be ___ and do ___, but whatever you want to do, whatever’s best for you”.

That is acceptable guilt tripping. It’s normal and everyone does it.

However, in addition to that, if you add the phrase “but I still think friends are like __” in various passive aggressive manners including subtweeting, repeating your circumstance to every other friend you have for validation of your circumstance, etc. or adding the phrase “yeah but I’m just doing this for you”, and then all of the above ?

No.

If you harbour resentment towards me, say it. Don’t hide it under “well I feel sad but whatever I don’t matter” to guilt trip someone who you know for a fact has complex unresolved problems with regards to guilt ?

No.

Just no.

Truth is you don’t care. Of all other ways to express your problem to me, you choose the easy but destructive way out because you don’t give two fucks about me, that’s why you use this tactic. You used me to fill the pit in your heart so you felt less lonely, and you made sure that happened by coercing me into doing it.

It’s one thing to neglect a friendship because overwhelming life stress. It’s another to destroy a friendship by directly affecting another’s health for personal gain.

So don’t you dare go out and publish tweets like “if they were such good friends they would have stayed regardless”. Because if you were a good friend and cared, you would have known that I was in the hospital, not avoiding you. Truth is, no one outside of my family knows. Yet all the same, no one else blamed me for disappearing without explanation, they integrated me back into their circles in no time, and invited me to dinners all the same, knowing that I’d probably refuse. That’s why I would do whatever to make it possible to go out for ramen with them and not you. Because with them it’s a pleasant surprise and for you it’s an expected obligation.