This person keeps pushing me. Meaning she keeps trying to get inside my world and I just can't let her in. She described me as a journal with walls around it with a lock, then another lock and then said I was a damn fortress (who knows what that means)etc. She then walked over to me and I just became really like ah scared, but hid it. She mentioned about love crap (not about me), but I just said that I only say I love you to people who I actually love and walked away. She continued and then I think she noticed I was getting annoyed because she said, I am making it worse aren't I? I then walked away because she started getting me upset and then I said that it wasn't a very good time to talk about this. I am just stuck because I don't understand what she is looking for from me. I told her the basic stuff about me and apparently that isn't enough. I did tell her that she needs to stop trying to analyze everything I say and do, because I already had people like that in my life and it pissed me off-these were my words to her. She said, that she wasn't analyzing me. She is just making it difficult because I ask her to ask me questions if she wants to know, but she is like well I want you to tell me what you want to tell me. Stupid part about this is I think I like her and she is making it even more difficult because she wants to talk about deep crap... I am happy to listen to her when she needs a friend, but she wants to know me and well that is tough. Don't even think she likes me in that sense because she has a boyfriend so no luck....which I guess my counselor believes I am not happy about, but rather just happy I am safe because I know nothing can happen-its true. Anyways, I need help because I don't know what to do.
The issue you're talking about is vulnerability -- our willingness to be open and share our difficult stories with others. And one of the really important points about vulnerability is that, in the words of Brené Brown, who studies this, true vulnerability only happens when we share our stories with those who have earned the right to hear them. You are the sole determinant of who has earned the right to hear your story. Not your friend. Not anyone else. If your friend continues to pry and analyze without your consent or even acceptance of her doing so, then she has shitty boundaries. To use her metaphor, if you are indeed a journal that's locked up you get to determine when and for whom the journal is unlocked, and only for those who have earned the right to read it. Clearly she hasn't. The part she doesn't seem to get is that her disclosure of deep stuff to you doesn't automatically grant her permission to your stories. The problem is, people with shitty boundaries generally don't understand that they have shitty boundaries, have no concept of the fact that they're running roughshod over everyone else's boundaries, and usually get upset when someone attempts to assert their own reasonable boundaries. The best you can do is say something like "I'm sorry, I'm simply not comfortable sharing things with you right now, I'm not comfortable with your continually analyzing everything I'm saying or not saying, and your continual attempts to push my boundaries only make me push them up further. I need you to respect my boundaries if you want to have this friendship, and that means that I will share with you what I choose to, and when." Ordinarily I'd suggest something more delicate, but for people with no boundaries, subtlety absolutely doesn't work. Blatancy sometimes doesn't even work, but it has a much better chance than subtlety in this case.
