Trying to understand a former toxic friendship

[RandomCube]

Hi,

This is probably going to be a little long, so sorry in advance. I'm going to lay out the main parts of the friendship first, then ask a few questions at the end.

I had a longtime friend who I knew since we were around 12 or 13. We were friends for a long time, but looking back, I don't think we were ever actually close in a real emotional way. We hung out, rode bikes, played games, watched movies, stuff like that. But we never really had deep conversations. I knew facts about him, but I don't think I ever really knew him.

At one point, he moved away for a few years because of a girl he met in another state. I didn't see him for maybe 4 or 5 years. Then he eventually came back to the same city and we reconnected.

Around that time, I was dating someone. One night I brought her over to meet him. We were hanging out and watching a movie. Halfway through, we ran out of food/drinks, so I went to a nearby store for maybe 10-15 minutes.

When I left, I left the two of them alone together. I didn't think anything of it at the time because he was my friend, and I had no reason to think he would do anything weird.

When I came back, the mood felt different, but I couldn't really put my finger on it. Later that night, when we were driving back home and I was taking her back to her house, she said something like, "Hey, your friend is really weird."

I asked her what she meant, and she told me that while I was gone, he had been hitting on her and made her uncomfortable.

I believed her, and I stopped talking to him after that.

A couple months later, my relationship with that girl fizzled out too. So at that point, I wasn't talking to him anymore, and I wasn't with her anymore either. Then several years went by. In total, I didn't talk to him for about 3 years.

Years later, he reached out again. At the time, I knew nothing about narcissism, hoovering, projection, flying monkeys, or any of that stuff. He basically said something like, "I've always shown you love, let's be friends again." and acted like we needed to reconnect.

I didn't even bring up the girlfriend situation. I think because that relationship had ended and a lot of time had passed, part of me started wondering if maybe I had misread things, or maybe she exaggerated, or maybe the situation was more complicated than I remembered. So I let it go and became friends with him again.

This is where things got weird.

At the time, I was working a really physical, labor-heavy job and I hated it. He had this basic office job where he typed on a computer, took some customer calls, and did regular office stuff. Compared to what I was doing, that sounded amazing.

So I asked him if he could help me get a job there too. It wasn't some weird "I want to become you" thing. I just wanted a better job that didn't destroy my body every day, and his job sounded way easier than mine. He said yes and helped me get hired.

I also needed a car. I had one type of car in mind, but he was really into cars and pushed me toward getting something similar to what he had. He even had me test drive his car before I bought mine. I trusted his opinion because he acted like he knew what he was talking about, so I took his advice.

Then my apartment situation changed. The building I lived in got sold and the rent went way up, so I needed to move. I asked him about his building, he gave me the landlord's info, and I ended up moving into the same building as him.

So at that point, yes, we worked at the same place, lived in the same building, and drove similar cars. From the outside, I can see how that might look weird. But from my side, I wasn't trying to copy him. He helped me get the job. He pushed me toward the car. He gave me the landlord's info.

More than anything, I think I was just trying to be close with my friend. I didn't have some malicious plan. I wasn't trying to become him or steal his identity or anything insane like that. I think I was doing what a lot of people do with close friends: you spend time with someone, you trust their opinion, you pick up some of their interests or habits, and you start to overlap a bit. I didn't realize any of it looked weird until he accused me of it later.

But as soon as I moved into the building, he started acting cold. One of the first things he texted me was something like, "I regret you ever moving here."

That really threw me off because I thought we were friends. If my good friend moved near me, I'd probably be happy about it. But he got distant and weird.

We lived about 50 feet away from each other for around 3 years. In that entire time, he never once invited me over, never asked to hang out, never asked to grab coffee, nothing. Meanwhile, I was still trying to be cool with him. I took him to a movie once and paid for his ticket. I took him out to lunch once. I was basically trying to repair a friendship that, looking back, he didn't seem to care about.

We still played video games sometimes through Discord, but we barely saw each other in person even though we lived in the same building.

Eventually, the company restructured and he got laid off, but I kept my job.

After that, one day he accused me of trying to steal his identity. He said something like, "You have the same car as me, you work at the same place, and now you live at the same place. It's like you're trying to become me."

At the time, I had no idea what to even say. It came so far out of left field that I genuinely wondered if he was having some kind of paranoid episode. I was just confused.

Later, he got a new job and moved to a different apartment complex. When he moved out, he didn't come say goodbye or hang out one last time or anything. He just left.

Then after he moved, he started texting me some really weird stuff. He said he could be a better version of me, that he was making more money than me now, that I was stuck at the old job and stuck at the old apartment complex, while he was moving up. He literally gave himself some cringe nickname about having money.

The funny part is, at the same time, he was still using one of my paid accounts/services because he didn't want to pay for his own. So after he sent all that bragging stuff, I told him he could pay for his own account now and cut him off. He got offended and acted like I should care because he was giving me some tiny benefit from it.

Over time, I started realizing how mean and weirdly competitive he was. We had a group chat with some mutual friends, and he would constantly clown on me or say things to get under my skin. He would also argue with me about everything. It didn't matter what the topic was. Video games, cartoons, random opinions, anything. Sometimes I would even agree with him just to test it, and he would still find a way to argue.

This happened at work too. Other coworkers noticed and would ask me why I was always arguing with him. I'd basically say, "I don't know, he just wants to argue about everything."

One of the last times I hung out with him one-on-one, he drove me somewhere, and it was one of the most awkward car rides I've ever had. The conversation was surface-level and normal on paper, just random small talk, but the tension was insane. It felt like you could cut it with a knife. I remember sitting there thinking, "This guy actually hates me." It wasn't even something specific he said. It was just the feeling underneath everything.

Toward the end, whenever he reached out to me, I started getting this pit in my stomach. Like my body knew before my brain did. I would feel anxious and uncomfortable just seeing his name pop up. I didn't know anything about narcissism yet, but I knew something was wrong. My intuition was basically screaming at me that this person was not my friend anymore.

Eventually, I was just done. I didn't have some big final argument with him. I just reached a point where I realized this friendship made me feel awful, confused, tense, and constantly on edge. So I removed him from Facebook, Instagram, Discord, Steam, everything. I cut contact completely.

After that, I started researching narcissism because I was trying to understand what the hell had happened. I watched a lot of videos about narcissism and covert narcissism, and a lot of it sounded familiar. I'm not saying he is officially a narcissist, because I obviously can't diagnose him, but a lot of the behavior lined up: jealousy, projection, weird competition, insults disguised as jokes, constantly arguing, acting superior, and then trying to pull me back in when I left.

I also went back through old text messages with fresh eyes, and it was kind of disturbing. I noticed how mean he actually was to me and how much I would tiptoe around his moods. I hadn't really seen it clearly while I was in it.

About 6 months after I cut him off, I reconnected with one of his exes, who was also an old friend of mine from high school. By that point, they had broken up and she was in a completely different relationship.

While talking, she asked me if I was still mad at her.

I had no idea what she meant.

She told me that my former friend had told her I wanted to block her, and that she should block me first because I was supposedly angry at her. None of that ever happened. I was completely confused, and we both realized he had basically made up a story to keep us from talking.

She also said she always had a feeling that he was jealous of me in different ways.

She also told me a little about their relationship. She said it had been really toxic. Not physically abusive from what she described overall, but emotionally toxic. She described him as emotionally distant, but also said he would cry a lot during the relationship, which shocked me because I could never picture that side of him.

She also said there was one fight where he threw a 2-liter bottle of soda at the back of her head. She said things got bad enough during the harder parts of the relationship that she had to be admitted, which made me realize this may have been a lot more serious than just him being cold or mean.

She also warned me that he was very vindictive and told me not to ever repeat any of this back to him, because she was worried he would come after her in some way if he found out she talked to me about it.

That stuck with me, because it made the whole situation feel even more serious. It wasn't just me thinking he was mean or competitive. Someone who dated him was basically telling me the relationship was toxic and that he could be vindictive.

Then, a couple of months later, I got a group text. It was me, a mutual friend, and my former friend all in the same group chat.

The mutual friend asked if I wanted to hang out. I ignored it. A few hours later, the mutual friend texted again, this time addressing me directly by name and asking if I wanted to hang out.

My former friend was in the group chat the whole time, but he never said anything. Not one word. It was only the mutual friend talking to me.

That made it feel like my former friend was using the mutual friend to see if I would respond, without having to directly reach out himself.

I ignored both messages, and that was the last time I heard from him.

The thing I still struggle with is the "you're trying to become me" accusation.

Because yes, from the outside, I can understand how it may have looked like I was copying parts of his life. Same workplace, same building, similar car, overlapping interests, all of that. But I was never consciously trying to become him. I wasn't trying to compete with him or replace him or take anything from him. I was literally just trying to be close with someone I thought was my friend.

And yeah, I probably did pick up traits from him. I think I do that with people I'm close to. If I spend a lot of time around someone, I might pick up some of their humor, interests, speech patterns, or habits. But I always thought that was just kind of normal. Friends influence each other.

I should also mention that he copied things from me too. For example, he picked up some of my music tastes and other things, and sometimes it felt like he was trying to outdo me in those things. That's part of why the accusation confused me so much. It felt like he was accusing me of something he also did.

I also realized later that he would sometimes bring up the fact that he helped me get the job, almost like I owed him for it. And when he insulted me or clowned on me, it often seemed worse when other people were around. It felt like he was trying to make me look small in front of people, but if I reacted, it could be played off like a joke.

So I guess what I'm asking is:

Am I the narcissist here?

Was he the narcissist?

Was I unknowingly copying him and making him uncomfortable?

Is it possible he saw me as a rival while I thought we were just close friends?

Or am I missing something obvious about my own behavior here?

Thank you.

[GoodPesto]

Hi RandomCube,

welcome to the forum, may it be of benefit on your journey.
From what I understood from your experience with your former friend, I'd answer your questions like this.

1) It is common ground within the narratives around narcissism that the fact you are asking this questions is basically already giving you the the answer since people who suffer from NPD do not tend to question theirselves this way. What might happen and might have happened is that you get/got "the fleas" (see glossary) being around a npd-person.
2) This question is almost unanswerable without knowing the person but I understand your wish to put a name on what you've been through. Checking out the 100-traits-section of the forum may give you an idea if you were with a substantially disorderd person or if he had "just" a bad character.
3) The way you describe what happened it sounded to me like you were after improving your life (work), happy to follow a pal's advice (car) and being helped out when you had to move. If there was subconsciously something else going on is hard to tell but with some inner work you could come close to an answer if you wanted to.
It might have made him uncomfortable but you sound like you would have cared if you had known a boundary and like you did not get a chance to know it until it was too late. For some people it's not easy to set boundaries and it could have been that your former friend was torn between feeling obligated to help out a friend and feeling this is getting too close. I could imagine a former self to be too shy to tell a friend "you know I appreciate our friendship so much, and I am happy we are working together but if you also become my neighbour, I am afraid it would feel too tight for me".
4) I think it is possible. For some people it's a valid strategy to get close to people who they fear could be or appear better (more successful, more attractive, etc.) than themselves and try to win their trust to feel more in control. The first part of your friendship sounds like he wanted to beat you in "getting this girl", and the whole part about showing off after he had changed jobs and apartments looks like their was some competition going on you might not have been aware of for the most time.
It could also be that it was a bit twisted and that his accusation of you copying him was a projection and that he was happy to help you be more like him. In the sense that you becoming more like would mean that his - and not your - workplace, car and apartment building is worth striving for, which could help him feel superior.
If you are not the competitive type and don't think or feel along those lines, it could be that you were living in a different reality named "friendship without second thoughts".
5) Nothing coming to mind.

I am sorry you had to experience this. It must have hurt. I hope your confusion will lift soon. Best wishes

[Catothecat]

Sounds like he didn't really know what kind of friendship he wanted from you so was engaging in behaviors he came to regret but, in order to feel better about himself, found a way to blame on you. Asking a friend for help and advice is what friends do.  Giving help and advice is also what friends do.  From what you write, you were playing by the basic rules of friendship, but he was doing something else. 

The desire to understand what happened is natural and like GoodPesto said, a good indication that no, you're not the narcissist here.  You're looking for answers which is something a narcissist doesn't do with genuine, sincere intentions.  They look for "answers" that suit their needs, not the truth. 

If you look at his behaviors individually, I suspect they're behaviors--both good and bad--that most of us have experienced with our friends.  It's the aggregate that makes it toxic.  This isn't a person just doing something here and then doing something there.  This is a person who seems to have an agenda and you will probably never know what that is.  He probably doesn't know, either. 

Regard it as a learning experience.  It hurts when someone you thought was a friend behaves in such a way, but he's put you in a no-win situation with regards to any relationship you might have with him.  If you kept in touch with him, he would just do something else toxic because that seems part of his pattern.  I think you made the best decision in deciding to disconnect from him. 

[Adria]

RandomCube,

From what I can tell by your post, you are not the narc. Your friend is. 

I had the same type of situation. I worked at a place. Moved away. Friend started wanting to visit. Then dh and I were talking about moving back so he could be back in the office and I could be too.  Friend started acting all excited about us moving back, we could share an office together. Was on the phone with me when I was buying a whole new office wardrobe, and couldn't wait until we could hang out all the time. 

Moved back. She said, "Don't decorate your house without me.  At the time dh was very ill, so thought I could use the help and was grateful for the gesture. I drove hours to help her put her new house together.  She spouted off all these plans, etc. to no avail.  All of a sudden she told me I could only work from home. She was not my boss, but sounded like she went to him. She told me they didn't want the visibility, which meant she wanted to be queen bee. I bowed out because I had worked with her before, she wasn't great.  Next, the phone games and mind games started.

Because I had previous experience with her as a boss and the tricks she played. I ghosted fast.  Then she showed up on my doorstep apologizing. Gave her a second chance because on the visits she came to when we had moved away, she seemed like a much better friend than boss.  Soon after her apology, the games started again. Ghosted her for the last time.

I questioned, like you, if she is a narc.  And, after thinking about the times, she mentioned about making a great new friend and then discarding them, I thought I was next on her chopping block.  I'm pretty sure, she is a narc. Especially after reading about your friend. Same M-O. 

I would never think that you are the narc, as narc's usually don't ever have any thoughts of introspection on their own behavior.  You got sucked in, as did I, and the only thing I feel we are guilty of is wanting to enjoy a new friendship.  I have learned to watch for the signs, and get out quicker before they can do too much damage, and leave with my peace.  These are lessons we can't learn unless we have walked through them. Wish you the best.