Feel like they enable me too much

[Earth Girl]

I love my family, but I realize now how much they enable me and I don't think it's helping me grow.

I'll try to make a long story short. A girl from college would invite me to outings. I thought she was nice, but I grew out of the friendship so I started telling her that I was busy. One day after telling her I was busy, she asked me if I wanted to hang out with her and her guy friend. I didn't know how to say no nicely so I went. I thought he was nice as well. The next day she asked a group of us if we wanted to see a movie with her and I told her I was busy. She then sent me a message saying that if I need her, she was there for me, but she was going to give me space as far as our friendship goes which was kind of her but I didn't know what she meant and I thought she thought I was annoyed at her or something and I didn't want her to think that so I told her I was just going through a hard time and maybe we could hang out when I was feeling a bit better (which was dumb of me). We continued to hang out for about a year I think and sometimes with her guy friend. I couldn't be myself much in this friendship so I realized that I was somehow going to have to end it. I thought it would hurt their feelings if I distanced myself from them again or if I told them I didn't want to be friends anymore so I ended up deleting them of Facebook (again, very dumb). 3 or 6 months later, I got a message from them asking me why I deleted them. I answered the girls one saying "Hi ..., I just deleted you because I didn't really feel a connection." She then asked if we were still friends and I said "not really I guess" (I didn't realize at the time how that might sound) and then she said "Thanks for using me. You crossed my kindness big time." A while later, I got a text from the guy about it and I told him that I just deleted him because I thought it would be rude to just delete her and he said "Look, I don't really want to get involved, but she's a great person so please help me understand why you didn't feel a connection there" (This is the part where I messed up even worse) I was annoyed at her for saying I was using her because that wasn't what I was trying to do and I didn't know why she would think that so I said "she is nice, I just felt like I couldn't open up to her much and she kind of bullied a girl in college about her weight." He said that he was sorry butdidn't want to be associated with someone who felt that way that way about her because she was very loyal to me

[Earth Girl]

so at least for now, it's goodbye. I can see now that he actually handled the situation really well, but at the time, based on some of the things he said (I wasn't able to write everything because not enough characters), I thought he was trying to talk down to me and I thought he was trying to say that I was lying and after this I said "I'm not lying, she really did this!" then waited a while to see if he would reply which he didn't so then I blocked him. So basically I handled the situation extremely poorly. I showed the conversations to my family. My Mum said "That's not using" and my Dad also said "How is that using?!" My younger sister said "she probably didn't really think it was using and just said it because she was hurt." My Mum said that the guy was getting involved when he asked why I didn't want to be friends anymore and that she didn't think he should have asked that. She also said that just because someone is nice, it doesn't mean you have to be friends with them. They all said that I didn't have to respond to him when he asked why (which I didn't even want to respond to). My parents both said I probably shouldn't have told him about the bullying and that it would have been better to leave it after he said goodbye. (which is true). My older sister though said she thought everything I said and did was okay and that the guy kind of egged me on and that if she was the girl, she wouldn't have responded with anger, but with sadness and asked if she had done something wrong.

The girl is now planning revenge on me with other people and they are saying it's going to be something like what I did but a million times worse. To a degree, I feel like I actually deserve a bit of karma for what I did, but I don't think I deserve something that is going to be MUCH worse. I don't know what to do about the revenge because we all finished school ages ago and I don't know if the CIT I went to years ago will be able to do anything about it because I'm not sure if the girl went there or not. I think she might have at one stage, but not recently probably.

I apologized to them last year through text, but they are still threatening me.

I told my parents about it again recently and they said that what I did was so minor that they probably stopped thinking about it ages ago. My Mum said that she knows people who have done worse and she said that something (that was really minor) that she did was worse in her opinion which makes it hard for me to agree with her judgment. My Dad also said what I did was minor we were doing what teenagers do and that we were young (we were in our mid 20s). He said the main thing is to try to learn from what I did.

I don't remember this, but apparently I use to do things like this a lot when I was in school so I don't think I was a nice person. I have grown a lot last year and more so this year even though it's only February so it would be painful to possible have my whole life fall apart. I know the things I did then were really bad even if my family doesn't think so, but I put so much work into getting better and I realize now that it's really bad to do things like this to people, especially since it would probably hurt them a lot more than I would have though. I didn't think about how it could have made her CRY or even could have caused her something like depression. Also, she's known this guy since they were little so he would mean a lot to her and she doesn't have any siblings like I do. I would also be really upset if someone did this to me, especially if I was really nice to them. I don't know if what I did would count as using, but it wasn't what I was trying to do.

[Earth Girl]

My psychologist told me that in responding to the guy that I could have said that I just felt like the girl and I didn't have enough in common to be friends in the long term, but based on what he said, it seemed to me like he was trying to say that I better have a really good reason for not wanting to be friends anymore and that something like that wasn't enough so I was mostly using the "she kind of bullied another girl" thing as "back up" as to why I felt like I couldn't be friends with her anymore. Also, if I told him that I felt like we didn't have enough in common or something like that, I am pretty sure he would have tried to encourage us to stay friends which I think would have been really messy so I am really not sure what the best response to his answer would have been. I think it would have been best to not say anything and that's what I would have preferred to have done.

[smallwolf]

Hey there. I read the story you made in the 3 posts and I can't see where you did anything wrong.  There are things you can do to make it easier on yourself re them contacting you - unless you cannot avoid each other.  I can leave that to another post if you are interested. 

It sounds like she liked you more than you liked her. It sounds it is hard for you to say no or maybe telling it how it is in case you upset them. Is this correct?

I have a story about my son and former gf -she felt used but for a number of reasons could  not end it earlier.  Maybe that is the outake from this? Dunno. 

At worst it is perhaps a mistake and something to learn from. And in no way does it deserve revenge.

Be kind to yourself.  No karma is needed here.