This is interesting. I have experienced of a huge shock that resulted in the loss of all of my local friends, my only support group, and my children’s friends - all because of one dysfunctional woman. Two years ago, I moved to this small town along with thousands of others, during the real estate boom. I went to the library one day and noticed a flyer promoting a parenting group. I replied to it and found an immediate connection with the group’s founder. We had so much in common. Both are transplants raised in the big city. Same age. Same number and gender of children. We were both quick witted and loved to debate. It was something that I had missed for many years. I joined her group and became a leader. We expanded it to over a dozen families and met weekly. I hosted events at my home almost monthly. It was wonderful for me. Probably the greatest blessing of all was that I was able to be myself with this person. I started to see cracks and effectively dismissed them. She was hilarious, but mean-spirited and liked to gossip. She was brilliant at behaving as though she liked someone, and then would insult them and tell me their private confessions when we were alone. I concluded only that we were therefore close, that I was trusted, and that it was her and I first, then everyone else. When we were together, it was so very entertaining and easy. We had some tensions as we both have strong personalities. Her way of dealing with them was to ignore me. I generally gave her the space that she wanted and things would calm to a point when we could discuss it. I always felt that we became stronger after such experiences. After a year passed and we had settled into a pattern of affirming one another regularly that we would always work out our problems and that not being friends was unacceptable, I slipped up. I made a comment on a community bulletin board referencing some awful behaviors that she had witnessed from a group of friends with whom she met with regularly to drink. Her allegations were severe. They were child abusers. They had their small children serving alcohol at the parties. They engage in fist fights in front of the kids. I didn’t name anyone specifically in my post. The topic was to list things that you hated. She became very incensed. She accused me of betraying her. I was angry because she called these drunken child abusers her friends and had all but stopped doing things with me. And now she was worried about them not liking her? None of this was making sense. This woman was supposedly a former severely abused child and she didn’t stand up to these people? She called them “friends”. The oddest thing of all was that not a single person who supposedly was doing these heinous things, responded as though they had been revealed. If these abusers didn’t respond to what I had written, did it really happen? I then noticed that throughout our friendship, women had come into the group, became close to this woman, and then all of a sudden fell from grace amidst a torrent of accusations. She would wonder aloud why she didn’t “see” that this person was so dysfunctional. After all, she’s a mental health professional. I began to question her honesty and her stability. I saw the first glimpse of what she had in store for me during that confrontation. She accused me of being a bad parent to bad children. In fact, she vilified my kids, who were only 6 and 8 and who loved her. She analyzed me as being in denial and wrote terrible things to me. I was shocked that she had been holding this in for so long. After all, we were supposed to be open and honest with each other! But I comforted myself with the belief that the relationship could be salvaged. I considered this a catharsis and that every friendship operates under a veil that covers the things that we dislike about each other - and that the veil had slipped. I put emotional distance between us until we could discuss things openly. Another woman came into the group and she and I began to enjoy one another. My friend told me how immature this woman was, how she lied and how annoying her company felt. In less than a few months, my friend’s facade crumbled and she publicly humiliated this new support group member at a party. Not a single other person cared what was going on under their noses. I was disgusted. The woman left, crying, and I left with her. I couldn’t be a part of this any longer. Then the stories came out because this new woman’s trust had been shattered. The controls had slipped off. Apparently, while insulting this woman to me, my friend was divulging all manner of information, true and manufactured, about me and my family. My kids were animals. I was a slob, negligent, and I allowed my children to abuse one another. Her complaints went all the way back to our first meeting. I knew that these things had come from this friend because it was what she had said about so many others who had arrived for support, and been shunned, lied about and sent packing when she turned against them. It was a script. I was friends with a sociopath. A self-absorbed ego maniac who used people and then discarded them. . A mental health expert who had convinced herself of her own sanity. I forwarded to her e-mails of assurances of friendship and honesty that she had sent to me. I told her that people who are capable of writing such things and meaning them, don’t behave as she did. She blamed me for believing lies. But this new woman had no way of knowing many of these things because they were private and had happened long before she arrived to the group. I contacted two of the women whom she had done this to previously and received a great deal of support and confirmation. They knew that I would figure it out eventually and they were waiting.

Their stories were so similar to mine. I was shamed. I formally left the group because I seemed to be the only one who knew her for what she really was. Those who I thought were friends, who I had invited into my home and cooked and cared for, were never heard from again. She circulated rumors about me to anyone who would listen and claims that I have harassed her and that she had to get a restraining order against me. The amount of malice and cruelty in her is indescribable. And yet she is fully vindicated in her own mind. I have nearly healed in the six months since the fallout. I see her for what she is and pity her. Reflecting upon things that she told me about her life prior to moving to our town, I see that this is a pattern for her. I am but one in a wake of unmet expectations that trail behind her. She cannot seem to have healthy and peaceful relationships, despite the fact that she teaches people how to achieve them! I have committed to changing my behavior. I gossiped and I believed gossip. I ignored warning signs. I didn’t protect myself by listening to my instincts. My husband and my mother had told me how she was but I defended her. Essentially, an event like this is my own doing. I publicly (in my blog) and privately apologized to those who had been through this before with her while I was around. I am confident that this was a life-changing experience for me and that I have seen things about myself that were ugly and that needed to be eliminated. I have been told by people that she was jealous of me. I was not initially convinced of that because she seemed to have so much more than I do. But in hindsight I see that for all of my imperfections, I have a clarity, an honesty with others, and an ability to stand up for myself that she lacks. And now I have growth. So she has been an amazing lesson for me that I will forever benefit from.

LW - Arizona.

The End