Friend Angried by my Concern: Should I have kept quiet?

[countrygirl]

Hello!

I am having a confluence of friend issues.   Wonder if it's the change of season? 

Here's the latest.  My oppositional friend recently bought a horse sight unseen.  Although I know people do this, you are really taking a chance, because horse dealers make used car dealers look like angels.   

This horse has all sorts of behavioral problems, both when you work with it on the ground and when you ride it.  My friend paid a vet to do a prepurchase exam, and various physical issues showed up, but my friend got the horse anyway. She had me look at the vet report, and I underlined some of the vet's findings, but she dismissed me. I mention this because I think some of the issues could be attributed to pain, although not all.

This morning, she talked about sending the horse back; the person from whom she bought it had claimed she would take it back. (My friend thinks this means she will buy it back.  I think it means she will just take it back. And then maybe sell it again...)  Prior to this,I'd been biting my tongue, because my friend IS so oppositional, and I don't need to deal with that.  At the same time, I've been afraid that she would get hurt.  She is an older woman, and her balance is not great--not because of her age, although I don't think your balance improves with age!

At any rate, I said I thought she should consider sending the horse back, that I was afraid she was going to get hurt.  I said all she had told me about the horse was not good, and that I thought the spinning was due to an issue which had turned up during the X-rays she'd had done.  So,guess what?  She argued with me.  Quelle surprise!

I told her I hated to say anything, but that if she got hurt and I hadn't said anything, I would have trouble forgiving myself.  Note that my other friends had advised me NOT to say anything, that it wouldn't influence my friend, etc.  So, I am definitely responsible for this tension, but I think I did the right thing. ALTHOUGH, since she IS oppositional, maybe this will just cause her to try longer with this horse. 

I couldn't agree with her about this, which was a tactic I still mean to try. But not in this case.

[Catothecat]

I think you did the right thing, countrygirl.  You expressed your honest concern, for her benefit.  If you'd wanted to benefit yourself, you wouldn't have said anything, knowing how she'd likely take it. It would have kept the peace.  But being honest with a friend is what real friends do. They don't just "go along to get along." 

When a friend talks like this with me, I don't just assume they're talking to hear themselves talk.  I assume they're doing it for some sort of input on my part, even if they're blowing off steam and all I say is yep, that's awful, oh good grief, etc.  So if a friend had presented this situation to me, I'd have felt I was being prompted to give an opinion.  Of course, in people with oppositional defiance disorder, it can be a guessing game. 

I have an old friend with this disorder.  I haven't seen him in years and basically only interact with him on facebook, and that very seldom because he's habitually making outrageous or silly statements looking for a dust-up.  It gives him satisfaction to start and then continue stupid, meaningless debates, most of which he has no real interest in to begin with!  It's just him stirring things up.  I learned long ago that he was dedicating his life to opposing his parents, so treated anyone who might come off as having "authority" as someone he should defy (and giving an opinion can be, to him, making yourself into an authority no matter your intention, no matter if it's just having a conversation like you would with anyone!). 

As I said, it can be a guessing game what is going on and what their reaction will be.  For example, this friend routinely posts stuff about how he hates cats.  He really loves cats but since he has dogs, won't let any in the house.  Most everyone ignores those posts because by now we've all learned what he's really doing, but a few years ago a couple other friends got into FB arguments with him so he resorted to insults and demeaning language towards them.  I immediately unfriended him and then, next time I saw him in person, told him to his face how out of line he was and why I unfriended him.  Naturally he played innocent and claimed they were insulting HIM (those were messaged exchanges, not on FB, so I have no idea what really transpired).  I re-friended him but after that decided to keep my distance.  It was a shame because he could be very entertaining and fun to be around when he wasn't leaning into his disorder.  But I'm at the "done with it" stage when it comes to these types of relationships. 

[countrygirl]

Hi Catothecat!

Thanks for your prompt and informative reply.  I had not realized that these oppositional types have their own disorder: "Oppositional Defiance Disorder." Makes sense, though.

I agree that when someone keeps telling you something they are looking for your input.  Weird that your friend, or perhaps former friend, posted about hating cats when he really liked them (just couldn't have them because of his dogs). It's good that you spoke to him about his behavior to others--who were merely replying to what HE had said.   

Interesting that he was in a state of chronic defiance because of his parents.  My friend's husband has told her that she is cowed by authority.  (Guess I chose "cowed" because of all of the animals involved!) by authority because of her domineering father.  I have noticed that this is how she deals with professional horse people:  She starts out almost worshipping them; then quickly disagrees with them, but instead of discussing things in a mature manner, she flies off the handle, thus creating sometimes insurmountable (insurMOUNTable because of horses, I'm sure) bad feelings. She was recently thrown out of a stable because of this behavior, and it wasn't the first time.

This is also how she has behaved with me.  At any rate, I did what I think was the right thing in cautioning her. In light of what you said about your friend's need to turn others into an authority figure so that he could then defy them, I can see that this is what my friend does with me. And then she tries to knock me off the authority pedestal so that she can be the authority figure. People are just too complex, aren't we?

Thank you so much for your post. I now have more insight into why my friend behaves as she does.  I am going to create more distance. I don't have the energy to deal with her! 

[countrygirl]

Hi,

This is a P.S. to my reply to Catothecat yesterday about my oppositional friend.   After learning from Catothecat that there is a disorder called Oppositional Personality Disorder, I read about the disorder.  It fits this friend to a T!

In the past, she has even argued with me about people with whom I'm close but she's never met!  Yet of course she knows them better than I do.  Well, I now view this as her seeing me as an authority figure on these people, so of course she has to knock me down, in order to feel better about herself.  Unbelievable.  Except now I know that it is common behavior for people with this disorder.

She once told me that a friend of mine had moved to a community for a particular reason, when that had absolutely nothing to do with why he moved!  I told her this, but she never accepted it and has, over a couple of years, continued to bring it up and try to prove that she is right. 

I either have to use the technique of agreeing with her--just to see how quickly she will then abandon what she's been saying and then agree with what I originally said.  Then I can have the pleasure of telling her again that I agree with what she's now saying, and that it is the point I was originally making!   Or I need to distance myself more.   

[Catothecat]

Glad to have helped, countrygirl!

I see such behavior as the person needing to assert their adulthood.  This is how they do it.  They're kind of like a child who says, you're not the boss of me! They reflexively view interactions as a parent-child dynamic, where they want to be the parent but subconsciously believe they're the child.  A lot of us become rebellious and contrarian when we're adolescents (I know I certainly was) because we're trying to find out who we are, but we outgrow the behaviors.  Perhaps those with oppositional disorder never do.  It certainly seems that way since the people I've known with the disorder also seem to be somewhat immature. 

I guess how you deal with this person depends on how much energy you want to put into keeping the interactions from going off the rails.  I know with this particular friend of mine, there came a point where I could no longer do that.  It was always inevitable that he would start a disagreement over something, either with me or with someone else, and it was becoming too unpleasant.  I finally came to realize I could no longer deal with him (and this was before I knew he had this particular disorder) after he told me he was going to attend a social event I and some other friends were also attending (it was being held by an organization we all belonged to).  After the other friends dropped out, I decided not to go because the thought of being around him the entire time was intolerable.  I felt bad about not going, but I felt worse over feeling I had to make that choice.  For me, it just wasn't worth it. 

And oh, here's one of the most memorable incidents I had with him.  We had travelled up to Canada and were at border crossing back into the US when he decided to start his contrarian act with the border guard.  Another friend who was with us hissed for him to "don't do it, stop!" but he couldn't resist and we ended up getting pulled over.  At the time I had no idea what was going on with him, but naturally now I do.  All I knew then was that I was never again going to travel with him!