TL;DR - An ex-friend who externalizes negative feelings a) ended our friendship and b) since then, keeps haranguing a mutual friend to try to get our mutual friend to turn on me.  Should I confront the ex-friend, or will this make it worse?  I

I was friends with this woman for years, though especially early on, it was mostly because she kept sending “cries for help” in my direction.  When I barely knew her, she would start sending me vaguely suicidal messages on a regular basis.  I talked to her husband about it occasionaly when it was bad, asking him if he could get her to a therapist and/or psychiatrist (he tried at first, but eventually gave up).  And I started having dinner with her every couple of weeks.  

I did this with her for years, at first just because it seemed to calm down her suicidal messaging, but eventually I did grow very fond of her and came to enjoy her as a person.  

However, at first, these dinners were just painful to me because she would spend them venting and raging at everyone.  She hated everyone at every job she ever had (and she had a lot of different temp jobs), hated all of her in-laws, and over the course of a couple years, decided she hated all of the mutual friends I met her through.  I thought this was all very extreme.  I’d lost touch with the people I met her through years ago, but she could be in the situation of having not spoken to these people for literally 5 or 6 years and then start sending me texts or show up at dinner venting about how enraged she was at them.  

I could never figure out WHY, based on the things she told me.  I finally decided she felt bad around them, and that caused her to be furious at them, but I could never connect it to anything these people were saying or doing.  As far as I could tell or saw, they were slightly awkward nerdy peopel who were trying to befriend her in mostly non-offensive ways.  Also, it didn’t seem to matter that she literally hadn’t spoken to them in years, she would still be just as furious as if they’d upset her yesterday.  Now I’m imagining having this woman raging about me behind my back to people I know for the next decade, and that makes me very uncomfortable.

After a while, I started consciously trying to divert the topic when my ex-friend woudl start sounding off.  I wanted to be her friend, not her therapist, so I was willing to listen to some venting, but not an evening’s worth.  I thought this was working for the last couple of years or so.  We seemed to have dinners where my ex-friend was much less upset throughout the evening, and we had more fun conversations, rather than just her venting. 


This woman presents as extremely stoic in public.  You would never imagine that she is internally a) very uncomfortable around people, constantly feeling judged and upset and b) extremely angry at the people around her, because she just presents a flat, stoic effect in groups.  I only got to know what was going on in her mind through her texts and our private dinners. 

In any case, after maybe 6 or 7 years of friendship, and several years of having dinner every two weeks for years, this ex-friend started texting me in a rage one morning at about 6 am.  This was after we’d had dinner a few days before hand, which I’d THOUGHT we’d both enjoyed.  She told me I never support her and her issues with her mother in law.  I found this very unfair, considering how many tons of hours over several years I’d spend commiserating with her about that very issue.  Also, she (again) seemed to be in a rage about her mother in law based on one thing the woman said many years ago, as usual - nothing new was triggering this.

She then spent a week raging at me off and on through text.  I finally contacted her husband again, saying hey, don’t know what’s going on with her but I really think she needs help.  And I told her, as well (as I had many times) that I really thought she should see a therapist or a pychiatrist or find some help.  And I told her it wans’t fair to vent all her anger at me, because I am a friend, not a therapist.

Well, she decided she didn’t want to be friends anymore.  This shouldn’t have surprised me, considering that she’d done this to literally every person, other than her husband, that she knew.  But we’d been friends SO long at this point that it did surprise me, and it saddened me, as well, since I’d become very fond of her by then.  

That was 8 months ago, and since then she has been regularly messaging my mutual friend (who she knows through me, and who moved out of state a while ago) trying to get this woman to hate me, too.

That DOESN’T surprise me, because she did that to me with so many people.  It was very clear to me early on that her attitude was - if I am mad at this person, you must be, too, or I will be mad at you.  And based on how she was with her other ex-friends, I expect that she will continue to message our mutual friend wiht messages of hate for me for the next decade, which makes me very uncomfortable.

I don’t care how unsupportive or whatever she thought I was, I never did and never would do anything so awful to her as to try to turn her friends against her.  It makes me mad that she feels like other people are all awful, awful human beings, but none of the peopel she is so upset with have ever done anything that extreme to her.   If anything, I think most of these people never even knew she was angry at them and were just confused when she ghosted on them.  

 I think she is truly blind to how awfully she treats peopel due to her severe anger/rage issues.  

Anyway, I don’t think this will just go away.  Our mutual friend has told me she’s on the verge of asking her to stop, that it’s really annoying having this woman randomly message her with hate towards me, but basically hasn’t because she knows this woman has mental health issues.  I’m very uncomfortable with this woman trying to turn my friend on me behind my back, but know that I can’t stop it.  Should I address it with her?  What should I say?    

I’ve long since given up on ever reviving the friendship.  Nobody has ever treated me as badly as she has, and I know it’s due to her own mental health issues, but the level of toxicity is not fair to me.  But I do feel like I should say something to her about her behavior.  Ignoring it seems odd (and futile given her long emotional memory), but I’m worried that saying anything to her will just trigger her rage again, anyway.


Absolutely lost as to what to do.  Should I message her?  What should I say?  Should I include her husband in the conversation?  I do worry about her, because her husband is the one consistent good thing she has in her life (and she needs him, since she can’t get a job she doesn’t despise or that pays anything), but I know she’s vented a lot of anger at him over the years, and I don’t know how solid their relationship truly is?  I would love to get him involved if I thought he could help, but if he’s already exhausted by her issues, I don’t want to exacerbate things.  Ignore it or confront it?  