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Fusevy PlusAnnouncement: the audience for these has changed, so I’m going to do them once every three or four months instead of monthly. So please come to this November one if you’re interested, there won’t be another until probably February.
2nd November, 1pm, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX.
We will be on Level 2 (the upper levels are closed to non-ticket-holders), but I don’t know exactly where on the floor. It will depend on where we can find a table. I have shoulder length brown hair, and will have my plush Chthulu which looks like this:
https://images.fun.com.au/products/53367/1-1/cthulhu-12-plush.jpg
Please bring your masks/exemption lanyards, and obey any rules posted in the venue.
The venue has lifts to all floors and accessible toilets. The accessibility map is here:
https://bynder.southbankcentre.co.uk/m/7dc306803bc2d7cf/original/21539-24-Access-Updated-Access-Map_Proof-2.pdf
The food market outside (side away from the river) is pretty good for all sorts of requirements, and you can also bring food from home, or there are lots of cafes on the riverfront.
Other things to bear in mind:
1. Please make sure you respect people’s personal space and their choices about distancing.
2. We have all had a terrible time for the last four years. Sharing your struggles is okay and is part of what the group is for, but we need to be careful not to overwhelm each other or have the conversation be entirely negative. Where I usually draw the line here is that personal struggles are fine to talk about but political rants are discouraged, but I may have to move this line on the day when I see how things go. Don’t worry, I will tell you!
3. Probably lots of us have forgotten how to be around people (most likely me as well), so here is permission to walk away if you need space. Also a reminder that we will all react differently, so be careful to give others space if they need.
Please RSVP if you’re coming so I know whether or not we have enough people. If there’s no uptake I will cancel a couple of days before.
kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com
Fusevy PlusHello!
Kind of awkward question. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this because it’s centered around my friend group. I’m 25 years old, and happily single. I’m not going to go too in depth, but I’m just not looking for a romantic relationship right now due to various factors. But my friends who know this, keep trying to set me up with guys that I have no romantic interest in whatsoever. Oftentimes these are guys I am solely friends with, and I’m not looking for anything more than that.
I start feeling incredibly awkward around these guys because I know that my friends are trying to set me up with them (i.e: When I’m hanging with my friend group they’ll ask me what I think about this guy, if he’s single, etc). Its really weird to me that they’re almost forcing me to be in a relationship when I have verbally expressed that I am not interested. I’m kind of at a lost and I think most of this is due to societal norms forcing romantic relationships. Advice?
My first suggestion is to remind yourself that nobody can force you to actually date any of these people. You can say “no thanks” and “I’m not interested” forever and never go on a single date with any of them. The beauty of having a strong internal boundary is that you get to win this argument forever.
My second suggestion is to have an honest-to-god argument about this. The quickest way to do that is to interrupt the next session of “What do you think of Paulathan? Is he not man-shaped? Howabout Jeffopher? Are his burly forearms not pleasing? And Zebedekiel? Do his crops not flourish?” matchmaking with a question of your own: “I’ve told you I’m not interested in dating anyone right now, but you insist on pushing every one of my male friends at me anyway. Why?”
Then wait. Do not fill the silence. Let it get real awkward and do not let it go until they tell you why. Let them have a taste of their own relentlessness for a change. From their justifications, you will be able to tease out whether it’s that they don’t believe you about what you want or that they don’t care about what you want for reasons of their own.(Hint: Both are bad.)
I predict that during whatever follows you will hear something like “We just want you to be happy” and “We just think you and [Insert Man Here] would be really good together” at least once. Bonus points for “We just want to help.”
A potential answer to “We just want you to be happy” is “Great! Being pressured to date people or constantly speculate about which one of my friends you feel I should date is making me annoyed and unhappy. What would make me happy is for you to believe the words I say about what I want for my own life and drop the topic of my love life unless I bring it up.”
A potential answer to “We just think you and ________ would be really good together” is “That might almost be compelling if you didn’t do the same thing with literally every man I’m friends with. Anyway, please stop. I like all my friends, or else we wouldn’t be friends. Friendships aren’t placeholders or dry runs for romantic relationships. My life is not fanfiction, and it’s creepy to continuously ‘ship me with every dude we know.”
“We just want to help” = “Is that so? I don’t recall asking for help, and I do recall multiple conversations where I’ve told you I’m not interested in dating right now and to leave me alone about it. If you want to help me, then STOP. Stop trying to push me at my friends. Stop commenting on and speculating about my romantic life. Stop treating me like a project. In fact, raise your pinky, look me in the eye, and promise me that you will stop trying to ‘help’ me with anything unless I ask you for help. Which means, unless you hear the words ‘Friendname, I would love your help with sorting out my dating life,’ this topic is off limits. Forever. Understood?”
My third suggestion is that 100% okay if you raise your voice and display visible anger during this argument, especially if they keep trying to argue with you once you’ve spelled out your boundary. This is not a new problem and they already know that you don’t like it. Once it gets like that, it’s no longer a communication problem, it’s a consent problem, and you don’t owe people politeness or gentle persuasion about matters of your consent. I keep saying this, because it keeps being true: Chronically pushy people are making a bet that pressuring you is the easiest and cheapest path to getting what they want. Society enforces a lot of rules about politeness and decorum and who is allowed to lose their shit and who is expected to let the shit roll downhill onto them that stacks the deck profoundly in the favor of coercion. You can’t control people’s initial mistaken assumptions, but you absolutely can make them lose that bet. You can stop awkwardly laughing and minimizing what’s happening, stop smoothing stuff over, stop letting people get away with “just joking,” and stop being the reasonable one who tries to be the bigger person. If these people have never seen what it’s like when you are furious at them, maybe it’s time they did. “YEP, I AM 100% UNREASONABLE ABOUT THIS. KNOCK. IT. OFF.”
After the initial argument where you have it all out, my fourth suggestion is to be boring, consistent, and frankly, dismissive. First strike: “What do I think of Saxmillian? For you? Sure, go for it! For me? I thought we agreed you would stop being weird about this.” Second strike: “Fucking yikes.” Third strike: GO HOME. No more explaining, arguing, justifying. The more you try to negotiate, the more you indicate that the topic is up for negotiation.
PSA: People who are willing to override your consent to pressure you into being involved with a man (any man) will be equally dismissive about your consent in other matters. At best, these “friends” will bore the shit out of you. At worst, they will put you in situations that are actively unsafe.
If they are single and obsessed with being partnered, these are the friends who will do stuff like leave you at the bar with randoms you don’t know so they can go off with some guy, even though they were supposed to be your ride home. They will cancel plans with you last minute because a dude who ghosted them last month suddenly popped up again. They will turn fun 1:1 plans with you into you watching them be on a date with whatever dude they brought along last minute, or worse, it will be an awkward double-date when the dude brings along a friend “for you.” If dudes are not present by some miracle, trust that you will spend the time listening to them moon over or complain about dudes.They will disappear whenever they are happily coupled and reappear whenever they need you to comfort them through their latest breakup.
If you do start dating someone down the road and experience problems, these are the friends who will encourage you to ignore and to persist in the relationship at all costs despite your unhappiness because they care more about being right (or the concept of love) than they do about what you want. “Relationships take work!” “Nobody’s perfect!” “Everybody settles a little bit!” “Do you want to be alone forever?” Bonus: You can look forward to whatever shithead they are partnered with ruining every fun occasion for the rest of time as they minimize and excuse his bad behavior and the behavior of whatever shithead friends he brings to the relationship.These friends will minimize and justify a constant barrage of misogyny, racism, atrocious political views, casual bullying, and other glaring signs that someone is a bad person because “it’s just a joke” and “love conquers all.”
The last time I was friends with a person who saw me and my singleness as a project she needed to remedy, I was 19 years old. We were on a co-ed camping trip with friends where we were the only girls and I was supposed to be sharing a tent with her, but she decided to hook up with one of the four dudes in the group. In our tent. Which contained my sleeping bag and all my stuff. Without warning me.
I thought it was a last minute oversight fueled by alcohol until one of the guys approached me by the campfire and sheepishly told me my friend had told him I liked him and arranged for me to stay in his tent earlier in the day because she wanted to be a good wing-woman. In fact, she’d moved my sleeping bag and backpack to his tent already. The only reason that this isn’t a much worse story is that he and the other guys along on the trip weren’t creeps. He’d realized I was picking up on none of his “signals” throughout the day (to be fair, I might have failed at flirting even harder if I had been interested) and figured that my friend was either badly mistaken or up to something and he should assume nothing without actually talking to me. It’s hard to have a “I mean, I totally would…but only if you also totally would” conversation when you’re also dying of embarrassment, so props to him and to being 19 and living in hope. I was too mad at her at that point to even contemplate his offer, and the second I indicated that he backed off completely
He and another guy ended up pushing down the back seat in his hatchback to make a little nest for me where I could sleep comfortably alone, and he gave me the keys so I could lock the doors from the inside. Then they both walked me to and from the campground latrines and tucked me in with a bottle of water and somebody’s extra pillow.
She and I never really had it out about that weekend and how her obsession with pairing off put me in danger. I wasn’t good at confrontation back then, especially not when it meant interrupting her raves about Mr. Wonderful and their new relationship. I hung back, felt angry, and I looked at our whole friendship in a new light. I noticed how the only thing she ever wanted to talk about was men, and how boring and repetitive it was. I noticed that whenever I walked with her to class or ate lunch with her, any time a guy came near us, she would turn her attention to them and become almost different person with big eyes and a higher voice and a tinkling laugh and a sudden performative ignorance of anything serious, even if we’d been talking about world events just seconds before. It was like I wasn’t even there anymore. I started timing how long it took for her to say anything to me or even look at me once a man was around. And then I started drifting away during those episodes and seeing if she noticed. She never did, and I eventually drifted into different friendships. I hope she got what she wanted. I got what I needed, which was a lifelong allergy to friendships with people who treat me like an accessory or a convenient vessel for their own hopes and dreams.
This is why my fifth and final suggestion is to clock which friends believe you enough to change their behavior, as well as any friends who never made this a problem in the first place, and prioritize hanging out with people who do not center romantic relationships in general and romantic relationships with men in particular. If that means seeking out new friendships, do it. You will be both safer and happier in the long run.
Fusevy PlusIt’s been a while since we last had a Boston meetup!
When: Sunday, October 27th, 2024 at 1pm
Where: Cambridge Common, in Cambridge, MA, near the Civil War Monument
Closest T stop is Harvard Square on the Red Line. Cambridge Common is a 5-10 minute walk.
The Civil War Monument is the big statue in the center of Cambridge Common, with lots of benches around (but no tables).
Accessibility notes: The park has good pathways to the area where we’re meeting, but no bathrooms in the park. Best nearby public restrooms are in the MBTA station.
I’ll have with me a Catbus plushie (from My Neighbor Totoro), and I’ll probably be working on a crochet blanket.
If the weather forecast wildly changes and we have to move indoors, weather location is the Harvard Art Museum Cafe, in the central atrium of 32 Quincy Street.
Feel free to bring any crafts, games, puzzles, etc to work on or share. I’ll also have some art supplies and paper to share.
If you have questions, comments, or are trying to find us, you can reach me at bostonCAmeetup AT gmail DOT com. If you can’t come but would like me to organize another meetup in the future, please let me know!
Fusevy PlusHi!
I’m in my 40s and have a tight-knit friend group of about 20 years (all she/her). Some of us in the group are closer than others, but we have all gone on vacations together, been in each others’ weddings, lived together in various configurations, etc. In short, a very sibling/family type of friend group.
There is one friend in the group, B, that I haven’t been enjoying my time with lately and I noticed I was gritting my teeth through our group hangouts, wishing for them to end. For my own happiness, I’ve been pulling away from the all-group socializing and making an effort to do more one-on-one with the friends in that group that I do enjoy. It’s been working well–for me.
B has never commented directly and possibly hasn’t even noticed that I’ve been fairly absent in the past year or so. Other friends, though, have–particularly one I’ll call C. C has launched a bit of a campaign to get me to relax my boundaries around time with B, and it’s making me want to avoid her as well! Other people in the group (D-H) respect my boundaries and like the effort to see each other less frequently but more intimately.
I would really like to have, say, Friend E and Friend G over or go out with them, but C gets extremely upset when I “exclude” B. I’ve tried to explain that I’m not asking anyone else to do anything, these are my boundaries for myself, etc., but it hasn’t been effective.
Maybe I am actually being a jerk though? There’s somehow a “line” in my head where one-on-one time with friends D-H is fine, but as soon as two or more are involved, automatically it should be open to the whole group. Do you have any insight for me on why I have this “line” in my head–is it because it does actually cross into exclusion/cruelty?
Thanks!
The Whole Group or Bust
Dear The Whole Group Or Bust:
Assuming that you are not hostile to B. when you do opt into group events, and you do not lobby to have people who genuinely enjoy her company exclude her from all-group events or from smaller events they host, and you keep invitations that don’t include everyone out of the #everyone group chat, you are not being cruel. You’re not even being rude. You simply realized you were enjoying big group events relatively less, so you created smaller spin-offs that you enjoy more.
Odds are that you feel slightly guilty because you have a mild Geek Social Fallacies hangover and because C. is an active GSF#1 and #4 carrier who is trying to make you feel guilty and unwittingly confirming exactly why the decision to prioritize time with the friends you most enjoy was a good one. If C. would prefer to only attend things that also include B., she’s free to arrange her own outings. If she keeps pressuring you, she’s gonna find herself on the list of people you only see occasionally, and it won’t be a mystery how she ended up there.
Since it seems like C. is trying to address this directly with you (vs. spinning B. up or doing passive-aggressive group shenanigans), if you want to try one more time to have a reasonable conversation with her, maybe try something like this:
- Pull her aside for a private chat.
- Tell her you’ve noticed the pattern of her becoming upset when you miss group events and any other specific pressure tactics.
- Ask her if you’re reading the situation correctly and what she hopes to get out of it.
- Listen to what she says. This is hopefully the last time you’re ever gonna discuss this with her, and you are gonna have the final say eventually, so don’t be afraid to let her talk and get it out of her system.
- When she stops talking, do not try to argue her points logically. You do not want to get sucked into justifying your decisions or re-litigating your conflict with B. with the person you’re about to ask to stay the heck out of it.
- Instead, thank her for honesty, and then be honest about what you intend to do and what you want C. to do from now on. Sample talking points you can adapt for your own purposes:
“Thanks for being honest and for confirming that what I sensed might be happening is what’s actually happening. Let me be honest with you in turn: I neither need nor want your assistance with conflict resolution or changing how I socialize. Please stop pressuring me to hang out more often, and please stop commenting on my relationships with other friends within the group.”
Pause for her to respond. Maybe she’ll pleasantly surprise you and be cool! If she is not cool, listen, don’t argue, then continue with what you need her to know.
“The problems you are trying to solve aren’t problems for me. I know that you mean well and just want everyone to get along, but after 20 years, I don’t need all my friends to share the same tastes or priorities all the time, make only decisions that I agree with, or be the exact same amount of friends with each other that they are with me. Plus, I *like* being able to switch between seeing everyone now and then and arranging lots of small, casual hangouts with whomever I’m most in the mood to see that day. Since I’ve been doing things this way, I am much happier and my schedule feels much more manageable.”
Let her sit with that for a second. When you’re ready, continue, and bring it back to what you’d actually like her to do from now on.
“Going forward, if you find it too upsetting to attend events that aren’t open to everyone, just say the word! I won’t be upset if you’d prefer to stay home, just like I won’t be mad if the events you host reflect your priorities about who you invite. But I’m going to keep doing what works for me, whether or not you or anyone else agrees. And if you keep pushing me or inserting yourself into a conflict that isn’t about you, then you and I are going to have a conflict of our very own. I’d to avoid that if possible, which is why I would like this to be the last discussion we have about how I run my social calendar or my relationships with people who are not you. Can I count on you to respect that from now on?”
Then she’ll say some stuff. It might not be great stuff, especially if her concern about excluding B. is really borne out of fear of being rejected herself. Internal monologue: “If LW can just stop being friends with B., doesn’t that means she could just stop being friends with me one day? Oh shit, I better fix things with B. before that happens!” People who decide that your boundaries with other people are invalid because you might need to set the same boundaries with them if they treat you the same way the other people did (or create entirely new problems) are not my people, so I can’t explain why they build these impossible logic traps for themselves. I just observe them doing it and hope that somebody intervenes before they bring about the exact thing they feared most.
If it goes that way, don’t argue if you can help it. Try to cut the conversation short and give C. some space. What she does after the conversation will show you if she heard you and respects you enough to take you at your words. I hope she will be cool! If she isn’t, you know what to do.
Overall, I’d rate my script wording here at “medium spicy.” You may wish to soften things, or not, according to your style and how accurately that describes your annoyance levels. You’re on the verge of slow-fading C., so my sense was that reassuring her that you aren’t mad would be a lie that serves no one. C. is currently betting that pressuring you is somehow easier than dealing with B.’s whole deal or learning to accept the situation. In my experience with chronic boundary-pushers and self-appointed peacemakers, sometimes they need a little glimpse of the tiger before you show them the door with the lady.
Fusevy PlusDear Captain Awkward,
I have a friend that I know I need to talk to, and I would like your advice on a script for what to say.
My friend “Jane” is nice and fun to hang out with, and we’ve known each other since childhood. I wouldn’t consider us “best friends” but we are close, and since COVID we’ve gotten closer as I moved from my college town back to our home city.
Over the last few years, I have noticed a “frog in boiling water” situation in which Jane has been making more and more conversations revolve around her ruminating about a situation over the course of months, for hours at a time when we hang out. This started during the pandemic but has quietly escalated to the point that almost every time I see her in person, she’s got new thoughts on whatever Topic of the Year it is. Sometimes it’s depression; sometimes it’s grad school stress; she has a tendency to blunder into situationships, so sometimes, it’s “but what does he meaaaaan when he says he liked hanging out with me?” And reinterpreting these “signs” over and over, without me even asking, or sending me dozens of unsolicited messages overnight with a new “revelation” about what he “really must mean”. Lately, she’s even stopped asking me how I am until a solid 15 or 30 minutes into a ruminative monologue! I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve been avoiding responding to her, which I find only makes her even more persistent about sharing her anxious thoughts.
I realize I should have put a stop to this long ago, but probably like a lot of readers, I have a whole childhood history around being made to listen to adults’ complaints and caretake their emotions, so I struggle with snapping out of that people-pleasing mindframe. I realize that’s not an excuse, but it does make me feel like I’m being a bad friend and denying her emotional support if I ask her to stop talking about something that’s clearly bothering her. I’ve tried every non-confrontational approach I can think of: I’ve actively listened, validated her emotions, asked her if she wanted advice or just wanted to vent so as not to burden her with unhelpful advice, pointing out patterns in her ruminations, asking her “what if” she tried X or Y, even told her that I don’t know if listening is helping and maybe she needs to talk to a therapist. But she insists that she doesn’t need a therapist, and she insists that she “just wants to vent”, even when I point out that she’s been venting about the same topic for weeks.
I know it’s time for direct confrontation, but I admit that I struggle with not wanting to make her feel like her problems aren’t valid (I was invalidated a lot as a child and feel very sensitive about potentially doing the same thing to other people). What’s a nice way to tell Jane that I don’t really care about her problems and I need her to stop talking about them?
Sincerely,
Frog in Boiling Water
Dear Frog,
I have been all the people in your letter, both a Jane sunk in my own tedious misery who needed someone to stop me and the Frog saying, “I know that [job][partner][family] is horrible and I will do whatever I can to support you, but since I’m not actually [getting paid to work there][dating #thatfuckingguy][descended from those people] there are limits about how much detail I can absorb and how much I am willing to let them occupy every conversation, social occasion, and waking moment.”
You keep using the word “nice” and I can’t really help you there. Nice isn’t kind, and nice isn’t working. To change this situation, you are going to have to be incredibly direct. “Jane, I cannot be your venting friend[right now][today][anymore].” From experience, I can tell you that whether the friendship ultimately survives is going to depend more on what Jane does after she hears it than the specific words you used to say it. And whether the boundary sticks is gonna depend more on your actions than either her reactions or your words.
Your question came in a shape that anyone who has spent more than an hour on this website will recognize. Let’s break it down to its most basic form:
“Dear Captain Awkward, a person is repeatedly crossing my boundaries in a way that makes me feel [angry][annoyed][overwhelmed][triggered by reminders of past events][bored][avoidant][checked out][exasperated][other feelings that add up to ‘bad’]. How do I convince them to stop doing the stuff that makes me feel bad without making them feel bad?”
This framing sets the problem up as a persuasion problem. Your boundaries only get to matter after you successfully convince the other people in the conflict that they do, and in the meantime they get to keep doing all the stuff that makes you feel bad until you a) persuade them to stop b) without making them feel even a little bit bad.
Two immediate, glaring problems with this approach:
1) You can’t control how other people will react or how they will feel.
2) It puts all the power and agency in the hands of the person you’re trying to persuade. What happens if they remain unpersuaded, as Jane clearly has?
You: Maybe this problem would be better for therapy.
Jane: That’s okay, I don’t need therapy, I just need venting.
You: I’m not sure all this venting is working to solve the problem.
Jane: Vents more and harder.
When you were small, you were coerced into being an emotional dumping ground for adults who did not care about your consent. It wasn’t happening because you weren’t saying “uh, that seems like a grown-up problem, I’m gonna go ride bikes now” loudly or clearly or politely enough, it was about knowing that even if you did, at best they wouldn’t notice and at worst they might physically prevent you from leaving, punish you for trying, keep right on doing the thing, and scapegoat you for making them feel bad about any of it. “Fawn” and “freeze” start as trauma responses. When you’re dependent on someone who demands to be tiptoed around and fawned over, they become survival skills. Scratch a recovering people-pleaser who has a hard time saying no as an adult and chances are you’ll uncover a history of exposure to people who were so terrible at taking no for an answer *that it rewired their entire brain.*
Once you’re away from a coercive environment, the habits and skills that helped you survive it stop working. People who have no interest in coercing you don’t want you to tiptoe around them, put your feelings last, preemptively manage their moods, or do anything you don’t freely and enthusiastically want to do. They don’t want you to try to read their minds or treat them like they are the worst person you’ve ever met. They don’t want to be the unwitting antagonists in dramas that take place only inside your head. The only people who would ever demand that from you or punish you for not prioritizing them above yourself are people you need to avoid like the plague.
Undoing the damage and unlearning habits that no longer serve you can be the project of a lifetime. Therapy can help, working on assertiveness skills and distress tolerance can help, making a habit of surrounding yourself with safe people and limiting your exposure to unsafe people can help. Where I can maybe help today is by replacing the project of persuading Jane with the project of reclaiming your own consent. Practically, that means we’re gonna stop trying to build your boundaries out of stuff you don’t control, like how Jane feels or what Jane finds persuasive. Instead, we’re gonna build them out of your feelings, your needs, the choices you make and actions you take to limit your exposure to stuff you don’t like and replace it with stuff you do. Some of those actions may involve conversations with Jane, but not all.
Consent is why every single post here about imbalanced relationships starts with the exact same question: What do you actually want? Forget what other people want, or what they assume, or what things used to be like, or what everybody promised each other it would be like. From this moment forward, in a perfect world where you get everything you want, what would a balanced, comfortable, enjoyable friendship free of avoidance, anxiety, and dread look like for you? What can you do to build toward that?
What makes Jane fun to hang out with? What would your ideal “Day with Jane” look like? What would you do? Where would you go? What would you talk about? How long would it last?
How often would you hang out or communicate, and what are your preferred environments or communication methods? If nightly texting is a problem, and it sounds like it is, could you replace texting with a weekly phone call or a monthly hangout to catch up in person? We’re looking for consistent and sustainable way more than we’re looking for perfect, so when in doubt, round down.
How much time would you spend listening to her vent? “Zero venting” is an acceptable answer, and it sounds like the honest answer, so let’s set the default at zero for now.
Instead of listening to her vent, what are five ways you’d rather spend your time together? In your shoes I’d be thinking about hobby or activity-based hangouts, like going for a bike ride, seeing a movie in the theater, or taking a class in something you’ve both always wanted to try. These all have a defined start and end time, something concrete or hands-on to focus on that isn’t “sharing deep confidences,” and take place at a location you can leave vs. potentially having to yeet a sobbing person off your sofa at 2 am.
What are five topics you’d rather talk about than grad school drama or disappointing dudes? Think: Hobby or media interests you have in common. Stuff that’s going on in your life. Stuff that makes Jane light up when she talks. The office politics and interpersonal dramas of grad school are boring to you, but what’s she studying in grad school? What is she nerdy about? What are you nerdy about?
While we’re at it, who are five people in your life who don’t treat you this way? Who are people who make it safe to set boundaries with them?
Once you’ve made your lists, take action to invite her into the kind of friendship you want and remove yourself from the parts you don’t want.
You can invite her to accompany you to do cool stuff you think she’d enjoy.
You can ask her about stuff you are genuinely interested in hearing about.
You can tell her outright when you do not have venting capacity. You can be explicit about how you are changing the subject now. “Okay, my turn to talk!”
If she starts venting anyway, you can quietly set a limit for how long you will engage and whether you remain in the conversation. If she runs over time, what will you do about it? (Get off the phone, change the subject, leave the room?)
You can say, “If I don’t text you back, it’s ’cause I’m not available. Please stop with the serial overnight texts.” You can say, “I don’t have a lot of capacity for back-and-forth texting right now. Want to set up a monthly in-person hang where we can catch up?” You can also mute notifications whenever you want to.
You can simply be less available overall, and only get in touch with her when you know you have capacity for dealing with a certain amount of venting.
None of these things require persuading Jane about anything before they happen. They do require setting limits with yourself about your own capacity and interest, and sticking to those limits, which is where you need practice. If at any point it becomes too much work, you get to stop.
Speaking of work, before you do a bunch of it about someone who does not seem to be doing even close to equivalent work about you, I think that by far the kindest and most effective starting point is also the simplest. “Jane, I’m not up for venting right now. Can we talk about something else or should we try again another time?”
Longer, more heart-to-heart version:
“Jane, you know how sometimes when you vent, I suggest therapy? And you tell me you don’t want to go to therapy? Right, so, I need to be more clear. You don’t ever have to go to therapy if you don’t want to, but also, that doesn’t make me your therapist. I need a break from being your Venting Friend.
I know you’re really going through it right now, and I do sympathize, but lately, it has become an automatic habit that takes up most if not all of the time we spend together. And when you talk for half an hour straight without a line-break or a question, or send me walls, plural of texts all night when I’m asleep, that’s a monologue, not a conversation.
Howabout this for a reset: If I want to know about grad school stuff or dating stuff, I will ask. If I don’t ask, or if I change the subject after a few minutes, then we either need to talk about different stuff or we need to wind down the conversation and come back another day.”
As always, suggested “scripts” are sample talking points that are not meant to be delivered verbatim or all at once without pauses for the other person to talk like you’re Hamlet brandishing a verbal sledgehammer at the Fourth Wall. I definitely did not design these specific scripts in terms of what I think Jane will find persuasive or nice, but they are what I think she needs to know in order to stop being a shitty friend to you.
If you felt like you could say any of that, you would have done it by now. If she were capable of stopping on her own, she would have stopped by now. Hence a whole process for reshaping how you think about the friendship and the problem to help you psych yourself up for what needs to happen.
The fact remains that how Jane reacts to having boundaries set with her will tell you everything you need to know, and you can’t really know until you stop hinting and start telling. She is either not understanding or deliberately ignoring your many hints, which means you are going to have to switch to a combination of more explict communication (“That’s all the grad school I can absorb today””Is it my turn to talk? Great!”) and making yourself less available when you know you don’t have it in you.
If she doubles down on manipulation because you set a boundary with her, it’s not a sign that you did boundaries wrong, but it is a sign that Jane might not a safe person for you. If Jane is a safe person, even if she is taken aback and has a not-great reaction at first, you gotta trust that she will come back, apologize, and –most importantly!– she will adapt her behavior to new information. Setting limits with her is not mean, uncaring, selfish, etc. or any of the things you fear. It is an act of kindness and an act of trust to give a friend the chance to course-correct and show up for you. If you didn’t want to be friends, you wouldn’t even try. If she does not want to be friends with you on those terms, that’s her choice.
You are currently on the verge of blowing up the friendship without ever giving either of you a real choice about whether it could be different, so I think it’s probably worth at least one attempt.
