Confronting people and thus losing them as friends

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Than you don't need these people either!! If they are into picking sides and they picked her's without hearing your side of the story than you should not care what they think of you. But I think that even such people would eventually see her for what she really is.

This reminded me of a colleague who was in my team, without any experience, who was not in any way superior to me but yet she thought she can give me orders how to do my job. When I told her that she should stop doing that, quite nicely, she bursted into tears (a terrible performance) and run right into bosses office to cry to him. I was literally put on to pillar of shame and everybody hated me for how I could make such sweet little flower (a true snake) to cry. Luckily, the whole company was a total mess and after three months all of us got fired ! To my relief. I was about to resign the job anyway.

I agree with you about the people in her life completely taking her side without listening to my side of the story. Right before I confronted this past frenemy, her BFF and I discussed why it was not a good idea. During the conversation, she told me to reach out to her. I also agree that a time is coming when she won't be able to get away with it anymore.


Besides that, it sounds like your colleague went on that smear campaign against you because you would not let her control you, and nor did she get her way.

Or, they might be friends, but are having problems of their own which we can't do anything about. This is very painful.

I recently had to make the decision to let go of a friend. We had reconnected after 25 years by coincidence. He was one of the people most instrumental in helping me to get sober. I loved him very much and was overjoyed to see him and talk to him again.

It turned out that in the intervening years he'd got mixed up in far-right politics and conspiracy theories. He started sending me stuff about the 'plandemic', and videos by Brian Rose (look him up). Finally I'd had enough and told him to stop. He replied with the standard canards about 'doing your own research', 'free speech', etc. This is the last conversation we had:

Me: Look. The stuff you're sending hurts people. I don't have friends who hurt people. I can't have people like that in my life. So, if you don't stop sending it, we can't be friends.
Him: You're like one of those people who declared fatwa on Salman Rushdie and hadn't even read the book.

It breaks my heart. Like I said, he was very special to me. There is absolutely nothing I can do for him, except pray for him to my God. I am completely powerless. That's how it is sometimes.

As an autistic person my head will start racing about what I must have done wrong for him to behave like this, was it because of my poor social skills, did I deal with it in the right way, etc. The truth is, in this situation, I was absolutely right.