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What to do when your friend takes advantage of you?
Hello,
I'm totally new here but saw this post on over-competitve friends and thought i should get some opinions. (The place looks so good though i might spend a lot of chat time in here.)
OK. I have this one very long term friend who I have always implicitly trusted. I took up writing again after a ten year break, she is a singer/songwriter and shortly after my return to writing, she took it up also. I always assumed it was just a natural progression for her and we spent many years having fantastic conversations about it and going to seperate classes, meeting up for coffee etc etc.
I got into study writing at a Masters level about 3 years ago - have recently come back from a year long deferral while i had my baby - to find that she too has applied to this same course, and got in. Not only got in but one upped me by skipping to an even higher level than i started at and going full bore in subjects so she will get to the end years before me. I told her i loved being the first one to post my responses in, so all of a sudden, she is the first to do this every week. She inadvertently steals the ideas i have planned for essays so that i have to invent new ones. she is enthusiastic, bright and usurping me in every way. i am terrified she will get the results that knock mine lower and dismiss me from getting that tutoring position i dream about and then get it herself.
you dont have to tell me i'm competitive, i already know this, but not with friends. So i dont understand why she would set up camp on my stomping ground. Surely she is as ambitious as me, thats why she is studying at this level, so why go into an environment where she inevitably ends up being in competition with her best friend? i would never have done that to her but found a different separate place of study. in fact usually with my partner who also writes, we negotiate space, who is sending off to where for publication and went to different unis so that our relationship and careers are not conflicting. How would she like it if i joined her editing group and hen set my sights on that job she was after? i am baffled and very hurt and am trying to deal with it maturely but this dream is my life and i feel betrayed by her willingness to put her own ambitions in direct competition with my own.
I sent her a letter eventually telling her this but as politely and graciously as i could. Am i crazy here? would anyone else feel threatened and hurt by a friend doing something like this? i have had a pretty hard life and worked extremely hard to be here and this is the one place in the world i excel, she knows this more than anyone. why would she do this?
i know you cant actually answer that. but i need to advice...what would u do?
cheers Googy Legs
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