Best friend smothering me and begging me for matching tattoos and permanent jewellery, how to say no??
My best friend of almost 20 years is incredibly clingy and seems to have gotten worse since I got married and had a baby. She keeps begging and begging me to get a matching tattoos which personally I would never do, l wouldn’t even get a matching tattoo with my husband but despite me saying no she constantly begs and sends me tattoo ideas and doesn’t drop the idea
Now she’s going on about getting permanent jewellery which is welded to your wrist... I’ve never heard anything like it and I don’t understand why she’s obsessed with something so permanent to represent our friendship when we’ve been friends for so long! Sometimes it feels like she’s almost trying to compete with my husband, like she also asks me all the time to book holidays away just us two and doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not willing to leave my baby to go away with her??
Like I love this girl to bits but she’s constantly on at me at the moment and doesn’t understand that she isn’t my priority in life now that I have a family. Problem is I’m a people pleaser and her feelings are easily hurt so I just don’t know how to politely tell her to back off but I feel like she’s smothering me and not taking no for an answer. Even my husband agrees that she is being really intense all of a sudden
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I'm guilty of being the "too much" friend, haha! I'm working on it because I realized it's a trauma response. I had early abandonment from my mom, and we moved a ton when I was a kid so I kept having important friendships that would end and leave me feeling alone and unresolved.
I suggest just staying really honest with your friend about how you feel. Yeah, she's probably going to get her feelings hurt, but honesty and transparency are important in more intimate friendships like this. Validating that she's important to you and reassuring her that she's still your bestie and that you aren't going anywhere might calm that needy part some, but also be really clear about your boundaries. If you can't spend a holiday together, or don't want tattoos, make that really clear. You could offer an alternative bonding time or activity, which could help her from going into a fear spiral that you're rejecting her when you aren't.
I know some besties who actually went to therapy together, silly but works for them!
thank you so much for the other perspective!
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