Reply to I told my friend about the business I’m starting and she crapped all over it

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This might make sense with an mlm, but in that field I wonder if your friend is reacting from insecurities[/quote]

Op here. It’s not an MLM. It’s in the tech/AI/cybersecurity space which is where DH, brother, and I all work. And we are spending no more than a few thousand dollars on it, and no one is quitting their job.[/quote]

Why do you care so much about your friend's opinion on this if it's just small potatoes?[/quote]

Op here. She did more than give her opinion. She went on a diatribe listing all the reasons why it won’t work and detailing everything she thinks I’m doing wrong.

I’m hurt by it. I’m not sure there needs to be some big deep reason. But I feel like I opened up about something that matters to me and shared with her and then she crapped all over it before I had even finished explaining barely anything about it.[/quote]

OP, you see and talk to her many times a week, I think I read.

She struck a nerve.  That is why you are blowing this up.    
She felt close enough to be brutally honest with you.  Many others likely do not.

Go into this knowing your $5k (and more as a last ditch attempt to keep it afloat) will likely disappear.  
If it takes off for all of you, awesome!   
[/quote]

I hate when ppl say they are "just being honest" or "telling it like it is" as if their OPINION means they can be rude, negative and condescending. OP didn't ask her for an opinion and if I had a "friend" who wanted to just dump on me and criticize a project I'm pursuing out of "honesty" and no actual helpful advice and information then I'd reevaluate that friendship.

A lot of you get off thinking that being a true friend means ripping into said friend whenever you want out of the guise of "concern" and you're not fooling anyone. You're mean and insecure - and it shows.[/quote]

[I just wrote the below and then realized it's super long -- normally I delete a post when I realize it got to long, or edit it down, but actually I think this might be relevant to OP's problem and worth reading. But apologies for the novel!]

Agreed. I dropped a longtime friend who was like this (we were friends for about 8 years) after years of feeling frustrated by the dynamic and trying to talk to her about it. Her response whenever I said anything at all that she disagree with was to attack it or unfurl a 3-point explanation as to why I was wrong, or why I was making a mistake. And this was very much her explanation -- I'm just being honest, I'm a straight-shooter, if you want someone to sugar coat things, go find someone else.

I became really defensive over the course of our friendship because I felt like I always had to justify anything about my life she didn't agree with. And most of it was stuff that did not impact her in any way at all. She criticized where I chose to live, how I managed my own money (I stopped discussing anything even tangentially related to money after a few years because she was so over-critical about that subject), my skincare, my haircut, you name it. I mean, sometimes she also praised these things. But the point was she thought it was her place to say. Like she was entitled to approve or disapprove of my life.

I tried to explain to her on several occasions why this dynamic was unhealthy, but she viewed me as "hypersensitive" and said I just needed to learn to like it. I never did, and finally I just faded out of the friendship.

Looking back, I feel like it was almost an abusive dynamic. Not in a super serious way, but I think I had a lot of people pleaser tendencies and that she was a control freak and that we were drawn to each other because I saw in her someone I could "earn" approval from, and she liked being the person who got to approve/disapprove. But after a couple years I realized that having to earn the approval of your friend is weird and really unequal (I certainly never made her earn my friendship or approval, I was always supportive of her and kept any negative opinions to myself). It's crazy how long it took me to finally give up on the friendship. I wish I'd done it sooner because I wasted a lot of energy trying to convince her that I could make decisions about my own life without her input.[/quote]

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