@jrn
Well, you can't afford to be honest with your parents, can you? They're not really on your side; they're on the side of the imaginery child they really wish they had. So their just trying to figure out the most effective way to control you, to get you to pantomime this character they dream of as accurately as possible.
Maybe this episode with this toxic companion of hers has served as a bit of a wake-up to her regarding relationship dynamics in terms of how we treat people in our lives, relative to the imaginary characters we want them to be, or presume them to be?
I know that in my early adulthood I got a pretty rude shock finding out that friends of mine we're the characters I'd always wanted/presumed them to be. I dearly loved those imaginary characters, but the real people were absolutely horrible.
The ordeal gave me a lot of insight into how we delude ourselves into seeing what we want to see when we look at someone, and then allowing our love for that mirage to delude us into thinking that we love the person, because we presume them to be one and the same.
It helped me a great deal to understand the behavior of my parents, who always claimed that they loved me, but never failed to lash out at me when I faltered in play-acting this imaginery character of theirs who definitely wasn't me. They've just never been willing to admit to themselves that the imaginery character and me are two very differant people.
Maybe your daughter's ordeal with this toxic figure has offered her similar enlightenment? Maybe learning that she wasn't seeing what was really there when she looked at this person has given her some understanding that you probably don't see what's really there when you look at her?
