People say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and, when we first met, I guess that felt true. You’d been a friend of my uni mate since you guys were at school together, and when you came round for mid-week dinner and wine we really hit it off. You were so inquisitive and enthusiastic and even though, looking back, you were probably being a bit sycophantic I’m embarrassed to admit all the compliments you were giving me pretty intoxicating. We trawled through my wardrobe to find you a coat to borrow for the evening and you said I had amazing style.
You looked through my bookcase and said I had some of the most interesting looking books you’d ever seen. You even complimented me on the shoddy interior-decorating job I’d done on my bedroom. Looking back, that should have been the first indication that something wasn’t quite right – who in their right mind would compliment someone for the way they’d use their skylight as a makeshift clothes horse?! – but nearly a bottle of wine all I cared about was how bloody brilliant you were making me feel.
You didn’t know me that well – how were you to know that I’m not the kind of person that thinks it’s ok when friends buy the same shit as me?
I popped round to your house the next week to grab my jacket it started to dawn on me that things were a little bit off. You’d started to use your skylight as a makeshift clothes horse but that wasn’t that weird - it is an ingenious, modern space saving solution, after all. But what bothered me was the fact you were wearing the dress you’d seen me in - and complimented - the weekend before. I’d bought it in Germany, but told you that it was probably possible to hunt it down online. Well hunt it down you had and now you had an identikit model of my one-in-a-million dress that I loved by virtue of the fact that no one else I knew had it. I was peeved, but not enough to put the breaks on our new friendship. You didn’t know me that well – how were you to know that I’m not the kind of person that thinks it’s ok when friends buy the same shit as me? Anyway, I really needed to be less uptight.
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A few months later, certain things started to really rub me up the wrong way. You were demanding more and more of my time and would text me two or three times a day. We were spending more and more time together and whenever we were out people would comment on how we looked like sisters and were ‘so close’ we were starting to ‘morph’ into the same person. Not through any of my doing, I’d want to shout back - you’d had your hair cut like mine, wore you makeup in exactly the same way and I couldn't buy anything without you making the exact same purchase a couple of days later.
You adopted my (sometimes completely pig-headed and often wrong) stances on love, life and politics without a moments thought.
In the back of my head I knew it was childish of me to care, but it bothered me that people thought that going around with a little ‘twin’ of myself was a conscious decision on my part. And it wasn’t just the clothes - you’d go on and on about all the music, writers or even television programmes you were suddenly ‘obsessed’ with – none of which you'd heard of before we met. You adopted my (sometimes completely pig-headed and often wrong) stances on love, life and politics without a moments thought.
I know it’s natural for friends to take on each other’s interests and points of view, but there was something hungry in the way you were adopting this new persona that left me feeling unnerved. It was like you were completely shedding your own skin and stepping into mine, which was strange because I had no idea what was so appealing about my life in the first place. Knowing that you were likely to copy almost every move I made put me under a weird amount of pressure because I was suddenly responsible for your life as well as my own - I wanted you to flourish in your own right, not just mimic every step I made, good or bad.
READ MORE: The Ethics Of Dumping A Friend Who Gets Boring Overnight
It was the beginning of the end once you started messaging my friends – most of whom you barely knew – asking them to meet up. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care at all – I love it when my friends all get on– but you were texting them three of four times a day and people were beginning to complain like they felt hassled. Then I bumped into my ex boyfriend (who I spoke to you about all the time) said he’d seen you at a nightclub and said you'd definitely been trying it on with him. Suddenly I realised that there was no part of my life that was off limits to you. I knew it was hard and I felt bad because we had had some good times in the few months we’d been friends, but I made a conscious decision to cut you out. I was getting nothing out of this friendship any more and it felt like you were just sucking me dry.
It’s been just over a month of ignoring most of your calls and texts and you seem to have finally got the message. I bumped into you at a mutual friend's house, and things were a bit awkward at first, but we managed to have a good chat and shared some laughs. I almost began to regret my snap decision to cut you out, until I realised that you had almost exactly the same hair, makeup and clothes as the girl sitting next to you...
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.