Was my friend a narcissist? Or just emotionally immature/toxic?

[Merrill95]

I recently went No Contact after 2+ years of online friendship with a woman I'll call "Anne."  I'd appreciate some opinions on whether Anne was a narcissist, or emotionally immature, or just had a personality that was toxic to me.

Some background—I "met" Anne through a fan forum for a certain actor.  When we met, she was 36 years old, and I was 39.  Anne initiated the contact when she e-mailed me about a practical issue related to the forum.   Since she happened to mention she'd been an English major in college, and I'd just begun writing fiction (I'm a semi-pro writer and a teacher), I sent her a short story.  She said she loved it, so I sent her another, which she liked even more.  Before long, I had an appreciative audience for my work. 

Some more background—when I met Anne, she had recently terminated a pregnancy because of health problems the fetus/unborn baby faced.  I had a lot of sympathy with her on this because, though I don't have kids and am a Christian, I've always been pro-choice.  I'm an empath, and I confess I got a certain satisfaction from believing my contact with Anne made her feel better amid the emotional stress (she was also seeing a therapist) she was facing.  For the record, Anne is second-generation Asian-American, whereas I'm 3rd and 5th-generation Italian-American.  She's from the Northwest, and I'm from the Southeast.  She is politically Progressive, whereas I am very "centrist"; though left-leaning on many issues, I'm far from a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.  Not immediately realizing how "into" social-media political advocacy Anne was, I shared some details (for example, my extended family have been Republicans starting from the time my grandparents first arrived in this country in the 1930's, and I sat the last Presidential election out due to major objections I had to all the candidates) that I came to regret sharing.  I have a very reserved personality, whereas Anne described herself as "obnoxious, blunt, and outspoken," and as having "a potty mouth."  In the first year of our friendship, she'd occasionally send me a bluntly worded e-mail and then quickly apologize for its tone.

To make a long story short, pretty much starting with the MeToo movement and coming to a head with the Kavanaugh/Blasey-Ford hearing, Anne became less and less interested in reading my writing, and more and more intent on correcting any opinions I expressed that differed even SLIGHTLY from hers.  She believed Blasey-Ford unconditionally ("Believe Women!"); when I said I had a couple doubts and that we couldn't possibly know what the whole truth of the case actually was, Anne told me I'd "upset" her and said something about individuals being less important than the rights of women as a whole.  (Note I never said or thought that Blasey-Ford was DEFINITELY lying or that Kavanaugh is a nice man; I just said I didn't know.)  Later, she brought up the fact that I hadn't voted, and told me that "the non-voters" had likely helped elect our current President.

More and more after that, Anne started misquoting my e-mails, claiming I'd typed things I hadn't actually typed.  Whenever I'd explain my reasoning for opinions I held (which, again, didn't differ ALL THAT MUCH from hers), or call her on her rudeness, she'd give me an "I'm sorry, but what I'm saying is for your own good" sort of apology.  She also seemed to think emotions like sympathy or empathy could be parsed, turned on or off at will, or were the product of "the patriarchy" (meaning the world as seen by white men).  For instance, after Liam Neeson gave that interview where he confessed he once went around in the streets of Ireland looking for a black man to kill after someone black raped his friend, I remarked, "The aftermath of that interview must have been embarrassing for Neeson" and "Growing up in Northern Ireland, he was probably raised with a tribal mindset," Anne asked me why I don't save my sympathy for black people.  Note I NEVER said Neeson was right to do what he did or that having grown up in a violent country EXCUSES his action.  Sometimes, Anne would use phrases like "Impact is greater than intention" and "representation is important" (in other words, what a cynic would call "phrases from the SJW, or Social Justice Warrior, lexicon") when they had absolutely nothing to do with what she and I were talking about, and I often did feel like we were speaking two different languages.  I don't know if she was gas-lighting, deflecting, or actually had a problem with logic or with reading comprehension (which I thought was very unlikely, since she was a doctor and had once majored in English!).  Whenever I had ANY DEGREE of sympathy for "the wrong person" (typically a white man) in a  given situation, her response was basically, "You should transfer your sympathy to the marginalized group" or "Just be quiet and listen to the marginalized people."  Eventually, I began to half-believe that all non-white people I encountered day-to-day secretly resented me merely for being white (something I'd NEVER believed before, and I live in/grew up in a very diverse, urban area) and that I was a bad person for writing fiction rather than political commentaries.   

Other, random things—Anne didn't get along with her sister or with either of her parents.  Early on she would often tell me (quite politely) that I should correct certain details in my stories so that they were more in line with MeToo, etc.  I wrote this one story about a woman who was sexually harassed, and Anne warned me that describing this woman as pretty would convey the (false) idea that harassment is about physical attraction and not about power only.  I'm asexual, and despite Anne's advocacy for LGBT, she seemed just slightly weirded out when I told her this.  For a feminist she could be surprisingly catty about famous women's (and even our favorite actor's) looks and senses of fashion.  Her birthday gift to me, 7 months after we'd met, was VERY elaborate (I won't go into detail, but it was something food-related), which made me slightly uneasy, as we'd only just met.  For her birthday a month later, I sent her an opera DVD (she likes opera but is not the huge fan I am), which she thanked me for profusely but never watched. 

The turning point in our relationship came last month, when I won runner-up in a screenwriting contest I'd entered, and Anne became pregnant again.  We had another heated disagreement (in which, admittedly, I gave her a non-apology similar to the ones she'd given me), which ended with Anne calling me "out of touch" and saying she was tired and lacked "the emotional bandwidth" to deal with me anymore.  I wrote that we might as well stop corresponding, as neither of us was the same person we were in 2017.  I haven't heard from Anne since then.

In short, Anne was frequently nice, and seemed sincere in her activism, but as time went on, communicating with her became much more of an ordeal than a pleasure and definitely impacted my emotional health.  Since cutting contact with her, I feel less stressed.

Thank you for reading.

[SerenityCat]

Welcome!

Since cutting contact with her, I feel less stressed.

This is a great, inspiring sentence. You've cut off contact and you feel less stressed. Congrats!

I myself do not know how to analyze my own online friendships. Although I have recently learned how to get out of bad situations. I'm about five months out of problematic online interactions and feel much better as a result.

I spent some time trying to figure the other person out. Then I realized that I had to focus on myself.

Good luck on your own journey.

[newlife33]

I agree with the previous poster, if you feel less stressed after the relationship is over then it was probably a toxic situation. I've had friends that I've lost or who stopped contacting me for whatever reason and I was really depressed and sad about it and wanted to see them more. But when I ended things with toxic friends, there was always this relief or stress free feeling.

[TriedTooHard]

Hi, did you ever get to spend any time with Anne face to face?  I think its really hard to figure out unless there is time to get to know someone face to face.  I believe that online relationships can help enhance our lives but can't take the place of face to face relationships.  Anyone who's ever worked in a virtual office environment can relate.  We can be really productive in our work, and often times, expensive, time consuming, face to face meetings aren't necessary to get certain tasks done and meet certain goals.  However, we must also learn to compartmentalize our tasks with these people we work with virtually, and realize we'll never really get to know them in the same manner we know our face to face co-workers.  There are many different training courses about this.

This forum, along with its norms and rules, has really helped me translate these virtual office boundaries to non-work related online relationships.

There are certainly red flags here that you describe, including a lot of black and white thinking about politics, voting, ethnic backgrounds, and social backgrounds.  I think there are many different organizations out there that thrive off of us falling into this trap.  For example, they make us feel shame if we vote for someone for practical reasons, and then years later that candidate does something wrong, or something sinister comes out about this person.  It encourages us to sit on the sidelines and not vote, or not participate in other important aspects of life.  Donating to charity is another good example.  We might have a favorite charity for a while, and for whatever reason, change our minds and move onto another with our limited resources.  Long story short, its our business, and no one else's.  We don't need to justify our actions or reveal to others how we're thinking or what groups/candidates we're supporting at any given moment.

Another thing that's really hard to sort out is her relationship with her family.  There are many folks on this forum who have felt a lot of shame about not being able to get along with toxic family members.  They don't want to be judged, so they put up with a lot of abuse, when in reality, they should have limited or completely cut off their contact years ago.  Then there are others here who have been cut off for no good reason by personality disordered relatives.  It may be really hard to tell what category Anne falls into, without knowing her face to face.  Either way, it sounds as if you're better off for not having this relationship anymore. 

[Merrill95]

No, I never did spend any time with her face to face.  I do wonder if that would have made a difference.

Another thing I forgot to add is that, though she seemed to be against stereotyping, she insisted that all or most of the Asian-American women she knew acted just like her (i.e., what she called "blunt," or "inappropriate at times").  I didn't quite believe that, but was afraid that if I said something, she would think I was promoting the stereotype that Asian women are usually quiet.

To be honest, I didn't really want to talk about politics with her, but as it was a major interest of hers (particularly so after MeToo), she made that kind of hard.  I felt like everything between us changed after October 2017, when that movement essentially began.

[NotFooled]

I don't think she was necessarily PD just someone who was intense in her views and had a very different perspective.  Perhaps she was just wanting a friendship with a friend that was more like her.  I think the problem is she seemed to be a bit of a fixer/changer and was trying to make you into a different person, instead of excepting you for you. 

It's probably for the best she moved on.  I think we deserve friendship with people who appreciate us for who we are.

[Merrill95]

That was exactly it;  by the end, I felt like, in order to stay her friend, I would have to become a different person.  She kept insisting she didn't look down on me; but that didn't change the fact that I never really felt like her equal.  Moreover, while she expected me to take everything she told me as "constructive criticism," but then when I tried to give her some constructive criticism, she had a meltdown.  That's when I ended the friendship.

[all4peace]

Merrill95, welcome! I want to check in to be sure these aren't exact quotes, for the purpose of protecting your and your friend's confidentiality. I'm thankful you've gotten some good guidance already in this thread.

[Merrill95]

Merrill95, welcome! I want to check in to be sure these aren't exact quotes, for the purpose of protecting your and your friend's confidentiality. I'm thankful you've gotten some good guidance already in this thread.

Hi.  There are exact quotes in Reply #4, so if you could correct those...   Sorry about that. 

[Swarley]

I don't know if she's Narcissistic, some of the behaviors you describe might fit. I usually rely on the "3 E's":

Empathy impairment: does the person have difficulty understanding, relating to, and caring about the feelings of others? Are they dismissive of experiences and feelings that differ from their own?

Entitled: does this person expect special treatment and favors? Do they expect automatic compliance with their demands?

Exploitive: are they manipulative? Do they use other people to meet their needs (time, attention, favors, money, borrowing possessions, etc)?

Whether Narcissism or something else, your friend certainly sounds extremely controlling and not at all respectful of your point of view. That's not a relationship of equals, and it's draining and tiresome. If you're relieved it's over, then it's for the best.