Decluttering Negative "friendships"

by wendy
(Fife Scotland)

Hi everyone,
First of all its nice to see a positive, informative website. It has taken me up into my 30's to ditch various negative people who quite frankly have held me back and filled my head with doubt among other things in life.
Mostly there was a pattern to these "freindships". People whom I felt sorry for one reason or another.Maybe even people with qualities I had in myself at one time.Ive now realised there are some people who appear to enjoy depending on others or playing the "why me?" card.I realised they were having a nagative effect on my mood. If I appeared to have things better than them they were never happy for me whether it was money, a house, clothes or healthy body weight,a happy marriage, my own fashion identity.They only seemed happy if in their eyes I failed in something or they had something better.
For example, I used to work as a staff nurse in a nursing home.I quickly became friends with a carer who seemed nice and was about my age but whom I realised only wanted to befriend a staff nurse so she could borrow money that she never paid back, try and get out of doing some pieces of work etc. As soon as I left she latched on to the next new nurse. I later became in touch with her (silly me) and she just went on about her own problems and wasn't interested when I became ill and when my Dad was in hospital, but as soon as I deleted her from my phone and facebook she was asking why? So I told her. She didn't like it but too bad. Another girl I knew was the year below me at school who had no friends, I liked her but on leaving school she started turning bitter, making a pop about my weight, my other friends , music tastes etc (just jealousy really)always banged on about the same problem every week etc but did nothing about them. After her leaving 14 messages on my phone in the space of 2 hours I eventually told her I didnt want to be her friend anymore , she got abusive and the police told her not to contact me again. Another girl hung out with me (my brother knew her husband from school) she was great until I moved into a nicer house (without damp)and she basically stopped taking my calls. I never grudged her having a nice house when I lived in poor housing). Now here is another girl who was my first school friend. We got on so well and I informed her that for a few weeks I would be taking my Mum for radiotherapy treatment for cancer, so if she didnt hear from me it was that I was busy going back and forth from Fife to Edinburgh everyday.She accepted it and said she would keep in touch as did I. A few days into my Mums treatment she bitched about me not contacting her for a few days, I told her I had been busy with Mum as she had taken ill with treatment, she then accused me of lying ,being defensive/paranoid whwn I asked her why , and when I told her I was none of these things she then accused me of being drunk and not wanting to work for a living and that her life was worse than mine.. So I ditched her and Im now doing things I want to do without being put down , criticised, or moaned at, resented etc as Ive now realised these people are a waste of my energy and time.I had to do it for the sake of my own sanity .Life is beginning to treat me well, Im no longer having panic attacks, worrying what others think of me and no more guilt trips. Ive lost 3 stone and starting new hobbies and learning a language :-) xxxx