I really do feel that pressures on her that are really outside of my control were being transferred/redirected at me. Frankly, I find it odd that this is such a difficult concept for many here to understand.
I was thinking about this and I understand it just fine. I very, very much understand pressures that you cannot control being transferred over to you in a negative way. I can relate because I had the SAME experience in my marriage except the situation was not with friends. It was a different situation but the concept was the same. So, I could share it with you but it would deviate from "your" topic even though the fundamentals are the same or just keep my mouth shut.
A few years ago my H's mother got very sick very fast. It was literally out of the clear blue. Her heart began to fail, her kidneys began to lose function and she hardly had enough energy to move. She went from being a health, very active late 50 something woman to being a very, very ill woman. She saw every kind of dr. you can think of, had every diagnostic test you could think of and even travelled out of state to visit a highly regarded hospital. It was very scary. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma although, for lack of a better word, it was an "iffy" diagnosis. My H totally shut down. I had NO clue what he was thinking or feeling. He shut me out, he shut his mom out and became a total nightmare to live with. He would go off the deep end for me leaving a light on or buying the wrong kind of french fries.
I had no clue what to do. I tried to talk to him, comfort him, support him and everything in between. Nothing worked and it made it all worse. His mom was going through hell with her health and she was sad her son had shut her out and made me the "go between". I felt like I was living with a walking time bomb (my H). So, while the "outside pressure" was not a friend in my case it was something I could not control just like you said BUT it was being directed to me in a very negative way.
It turned out my MIL had a *very* rare genetic kidney disease and once she began the proper course of treatment her health did improve at a slow and steady pace. Slowly my H began to return to "normal". I tried EVERYTHING as I mentioned above and eventually just "did nothing". By that I mean I just sort of went with the flow as best as I could and did my best to make my H's life as easy as possible. Now maybe that was the wrong way to handle it but I had tried everything I could think of and it was sort of my "last resort". It was a few YEARS later that my H came to me and really started talking about how he was feeling during that time and how he knows he was horrible to me.
So it's not the same as your situation but I can relate to bearing the brunt of "something" when that "something" is nothing you did but have to deal with.
