Fed-up, I decide to end the friendship if Tracy does not stop bullying me

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on August 4, 2010September 23, 2021

The night of April 30, 2008, some hours after the incidents in the above section, and into the following day, I wrote this list in an e-mail to Richard which I never sent:

–last straw
–tired of getting rudeness in return for all my attempts at generosity and niceness
–you don’t treat friends this way; abusive
–don’t have to put up with this–will not be spoken to this way
–don’t want to deal with her anymore
–feel like for the last few months have been treated like “the other woman”–treated like dirt–more tears shed over this the last few months than for anything for the last year all together
—don’t want to be enabler and lose all self-esteem and get damaged psyche
–tried to ignore and move on for sake of our friendship [with Richard]–very dear to me–but Jeff and I both are fed up
–mean to me almost since the beginning–didn’t seem to appreciate what we were doing, how much work I had to put into keeping the household running, how much money we had to spend to pay for groceries [about $340-$450/week in today’s dollars], how I had to give up some of the things I did for my health–lots of milk, healthier meals–in order to stretch the food budget, and exercise because of the little kids running around [didn’t want to hurt the little ones with the spokes of my exercise bike]
—I feel like maybe I should never open my house up to strangers again, if this is how I get repaid for it–with suspicion and rudeness
–don’t like being treated as guilty until proven innocent; lived here for a month and a half–what else does she need to know–she’s gotten to know me a lot better than most people do–but has suspicion and mistrust that is not warranted and is not good for her–every other wife/girlfriend who has met me is fine with me, even after a short meeting–I just don’t go after husbands
–apparently suspicious because I don’t talk directly to her? well, I have in the past–don’t trust her, not “safe”–maybe I don’t talk directly to her and don’t want to be around her NOT because I’m out to get her husband, but because I don’t like how she treats people [I was scared of her]
—I felt bulldozed–seemed to be all what somebody else wants, but none of what I wanted

The below quote sounds like Tracy–and also explains why I preferred to go through Richard when I had problems with her:

Confronting an abusive woman about her behavior only makes her nastier and you’re then subjected to a narcissistic rage episode and/or histrionic drama queen performance.
She’ll just blame you for everything or deny what she did anyway, so why bother saying anything? –Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, Signs your narcissistic or borderline wife/girlfriend is traumatizing you

Also, this comment from a Shrink4Men reader, “Mr. E”:

Another possible addition [to the Shrink4Men quiz, “Is she a crazy b**ch]:
Do mutual friends/roommates confront you when they’re upset with her?
I can recall several instances where a friend / roommate has come to me about her behavior (frequently with some hostility). I always figured this was because I was an easy target, and felt weak.
I definitely think poor boundaries on my part encouraged this behavior (I should have stopped them and told them to talk to her, not me), but I think the root problem is that they were afraid to confront her directly.
When I foolishly bring up whatever the friend/roomie complained about to her, I get interrogated and eventually raged at when I freeze up and stop talking. She’ll also hold a grudge against the person in question for ages.
The good news is, I’ve finally figured this out, and have started telling people to just talk to her. Curiously enough, they never do…
I’d love to know if this is a common experience.

The following evening, May 1, I wrote an e-mail which I don’t believe was sent to Richard, though I probably conveyed at least some of the message to him in other ways:

–When you say you want me to call, or you want to call, or you want to get together and do something, I put priority on that, rearrange my schedule, make myself available, and work as hard as I can to be ready in time. If I can’t do it for some reason, I say so right away, or call as soon as I find out (as long as it’s a reasonable hour).
When you say you’ll call and don’t, or you want to get together but don’t show up, don’t let me know what’s going on, I try to call and can’t connect with you and nobody answers either phone, my messages aren’t returned, you call/I call at the last minute and you say something else has come up, I feel like you don’t value my friendship.
I have had other people do this to me, sometimes for years. When this happens to Jeff, he assumes the person is sending a message that they don’t want to be friends anymore; he stops calling.
I know that sometimes people are just being flighty, but I get tired of it, and eventually scale back the friendship. This is why I start getting worried.
–When someone doesn’t answer the phone, it’s normal and expected to call back later, especially if there is no answering machine. It gives the person a chance to get home, get done in the bathroom, or whatever else they were doing that made them unable to answer the phone.
I personally detest answering machines when dealing with friends, because I know firsthand that they are even less reliable than e-mail: they can malfunction, be ignored, be erased accidentally, run out of tape….
At least if your e-mail doesn’t get through, the Mailer Demon bounces it back, and message trackers can tell you if a Personal Message was read. I’d much rather connect with my friend personally than talk to a machine, because I know my message got through.
So being chewed out for doing a perfectly normal and reasonable behavior–I do not appreciate being talked to in that manner.
If Tracy keeps treating me this way, I will consider it to mean that she just does not want to be pleasant with me or even consider the option that I am no threat to her.
I do not wish to deal with jealous spouses or abusive behavior towards me.
If it keeps happening, I will start considering all of my options, even though the last thing I want to do is end my friendship with you or [my son’s] friendship with the girls.

So here is proof that from the very beginning, I considered Tracy not only to be abusive to Richard and the girls (since I used those very words in e-mails to my mom in 2007), but to be abusive to me as well. (There are more e-mails like this to come, speaking also of her bullying me.)

Despite the DARVO e-mail she sent me in 2012, this was not some crazy idea that came to my addled brain in 2012 to justify the breakup and make me feel better. Nor was it taken from my imagination to write some blog full of lies to defame her character.

No, this was my feeling from the very beginning–showing that my mental state has been fine all along, and evidence that I have told no lies, because it is all my legitimate opinion since 2007, and my e-mails record the details of what happened.

No, Tracy just refuses to admit that she’s abusive, and would rather put the responsibility of it on other people–and tell everyone her target is crazy. That’s what abusers do. I just saw yet another example of it on Dr. Phil at the gym yesterday:

“My father is here to tell me what I remember, what I can say, what I can talk about,” she says.
“I have come to know that, in cases of abuse, when abuse has happened, very rarely does the abuser admit to that, and there’s nothing productive for me to be here with my father because I will not go back to that girl, to be silent, to be in my corner and to recant what I’ve said.” –Rebecca Musser, Dr. Phil episode, Facing Off with my Polygamous FLDS Father

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. We share a house