Reinvention for attention

[Pepin]

Ugh, I have an upcoming invite that I accepted to meet with friends before the holidays.  We've been meeting several times a year for years....and I'm just irritated.  I don't even bother to initiate like I used to because it just isn't fun anymore.  Friend A is great and I love hanging out with her and I have known her much longer.  Friend B is newer and kind of was nudged in by friend A...although I now sense that friend A kind of regrets this and frankly, I do, too.

Every single time we meet, friend B has some sort of crisis to share.  Rather than catching up like normal people, she essentially shows up late and then bombards friend A and I with her crisis.  Every. Single. Time.  The crisis is always family or marriage related.

Friend B I have realized is also a chameleon of sorts.  She has had numerous jobs in differing fields over the years and now has another new one.  Rather than keep us up to date in the group text chat she wants to save it until she see us.  Every single job has been kept on the quiet until we meet and then she reveals what it is and how she got into it.  These jobs are all side gigs....distractions if you will, to give her something to do outside of her marriage and family.  It's taken me years to see that this is a pattern here - which I have eluded to above: attention.  Friend B is highly competitive and also from a dysfunctional upbringing. 

As you can imagine, I'm dreading this next meet up.  I feel like I just sit there nodding my head and saying uh huh while I slowly sip my coffee, hoping the next sip will send me into a medical crisis so I can have an excuse to leave.  Me, I am selective about any crisis' that I share because I would rather just talk about stuff.  Plus, much of my garbage would point fingers at DH and it isn't fair to paint him as that when both my friends think highly of him.  I've been very careful talking about him and CN MIL.  I'm also careful about my kids.  Their garbage isn't shared....nor is their academics. 

IDK where I'm going with this other than a vent....honestly, I wish I could find people more like myself.  I really don't have much in common with either of these friends...work, kids, marriage, travel, hobbies....even TV shows or music!  I'm like have you watched X and they are like what's that?  OMG, Google It.  Or, have you read X?  No, never heard of it.  Y'all remember that song from the 80s?  What song?  While I am happy Friend B has found something new to do, I know it's just another reinvention/call for attention.        

[Call Me Cordelia]

"Friend A is great and I love hanging out with her and I have known her much longer." So, how about in the future you just invite friend A to get together and do a thing? Without mentioning friend B? If she feels as you do, as you suspect, it should go pretty smoothly. And even if she doesn't, you are not obligated to include her every time.

[Pepin]

"Friend A is great and I love hanging out with her and I have known her much longer." So, how about in the future you just invite friend A to get together and do a thing? Without mentioning friend B? If she feels as you do, as you suspect, it should go pretty smoothly. And even if she doesn't, you are not obligated to include her every time.

I would except that I think Friend A would feel guilty...and also probably think less of me It's really me that has the problem, I guess.  I have met with Friend A a couple of times though when Friend B couldn't make it and it was great.  I felt so refreshed *like we should* when we interact with healthy people! 

[Catothecat]

Narcs really know how to ruin things, don't they?!

After I quit my last job, several former co-workers and I (all of whom, except for one, had also left) would get together periodically for dinner.  Unfortunately, one of those former co-workers was a raging narc, and would dominate every get-together with her constant blather about her life, her concerns, etc.  In other words, she took advantage of the rest of us during this get-together to make it All About Me.  Except for one woman in our group, I don't think she had any friends outside of these casual get-togethers.  She certainly never mentioned anyone and she was the type who would have if such people existed.

Every time I went I knew this would happen, because she was always there.  But I still went because I don't have such a great social life and I did enjoy seeing the others although I was never really friends with them.  They worked in a different office so I only saw them occasionally but now seeing them in this social setting made me wish I could get to know them better--which was impossible thanks to the narc's insistence of making herself the center of attention. 

These dinners finally ended when that one woman in the group, who'd been a close friend of the narc, finally had a falling out with her and was no longer speaking to her.  At our last get-together the narc explained that this woman wouldn't be attending because they'd had a disagreement and the feeling was such that this woman didn't want to be around the narc even with the rest of us present.  That was the last time we got together because, without anyone saying it, the rest of us knew the narc would be even more of an attention getting hog every time we got together so no one suggested any future dinners.

Okay long ramble, but I guess my point is, I wish I could've gotten to know the others better in order to find out if I might want to be friends with them on an individual basis.  But that was impossible during these dinners.  Opportunity lost, I now know.