Hi guys, any advice or insights are appreciated. Thanks in advance for reading if you make it to the end.
I (35F) have a longtime friend (45F) who shares every detail of her life with me for years.. daily messages about her thoughts, breakfast, errands, everything. She even says she doesn’t need therapy because she has me (yeah I know how that sounds lol). While I care about her, it’s a lot, and some days it feels overwhelming. I receive messages on and off for hours. At times, I enjoy reading her ramblings, until she starts talking about me.
She at times fixates on my life… my friends, my job, my family, but ESPECIALLY my relationship with my boyfriend (35M), who she’s never liked. We’ve been doing well after some work in couple’s therapy, but she constantly asks about him and gives unsolicited advice. Constantly. And these are long messages.
Three weeks ago, I tried to nicely set a boundary by telling her that the unsolicited advice makes me want to refrain from ever casually mentioning him. I told her that recently I’ve stopped mentioning him all together for this reason. She then accused me of lying about seeing him, saying I hide our time together. She routinely asks, “Did you see him today?” and if I say no, she assumes I’m lying. I don’t see him everyday. I don’t tell her every time I see him, because frankly, who cares if we went grocery shopping together? This is not information I’d feel the need to share with any other friend, so why would I share it with her? The relationship is stable, boring (not in a bad way), and nothing of note. After a brief talk, she apologized and said she would refrain from giving unsolicited advice.
A week ago, she stopped texting all together, and when I checked in, she said she figured I was with him and didn’t want to tell her. I told her I have spent time here and there with him but there was nothing of note to share, once again. She left me on read and I can tell from her change in behavior and tone that she’s bitter. It seems like she expects me to report every time I spend time with him and takes it personally if I don’t.
She’s been there for me in tough times, and I do value the friendship, but I struggle with telling it to her straight again without sounding like a jerk: Just because I don’t report every second of my life to you, doesn’t mean I’m lying or being sneaky. I’ve usually been the one to smooth things over, but I’m feeling burnt out. Should I reach out again, or let things go quiet for now?
EDIT: I really appreciate all the comments and insights I’ve been receiving, it’s definitely given me a lot to think about. Some people are encouraging me to cut her off completely, while others suggest having one final conversation if the friendship still holds value for me. It definitely does, but I’m extremely annoyed by the idea of being the one to extend the olive branch yet again!! And reading these comments through, it sounds like her issues run deeper than I thought and they’ll probably resurface again in the future.
I’m totally aware of how strange and uneven the dynamic has become, but it’s been validating to hear others call out just how ridiculous it is.
To answer a few recurring questions: No, my boyfriend is not abusive, and has never been. He’s actually a really kind person, gets along well with my family and other friends, and things between us have been great for a while now. That said, we did go through a rough patch where we argued a lot, mostly due to life stressors, personality differences, and logistical challenges..without sharing too many details. She saw how upset I was during that time, and I know it affected how she views him.
She’s made some pretty rude remarks about his appearance and education level, and has suggested I could do better. While she did apologize, it’s clear she has a habit of speaking without thinking, which she’s acknowledged. Not to excuse any of this, just adding context.
Over the years, I’ve found myself accepting these flaws in exchange for having a dependable friend who really does show up when it matters. So yeah it’s like at what point do you stop excusing a friend’s hurtful/immature behavior, even if they’ve been supportive during tough times?
And for those asking: She’s in a loveless marriage, and I’ve been supporting her through that. But no, she’s definitely not in love with me.
Comments
You set a boundary, she steamrolled over it. It’s long overdue to stop being “nice” and be direct. State your boundary again that you do not appreciate her being nosey and if she continues you will X. If she continues, follow through with X. Maybe one of those things is no longer being her therapist and suggesting she sees a professional regarding her odd obsession with you and her stonewalling.
This woman is not your mother or your keeper. Your relationship is none of her business and she needs to get a hobby that is not monitoring your life.
To be very blunt, do you actually want her back in your life? If you reach out, she very well may be. Personally this is way too much drama and I would be glad to let her stew in silence without me.
Oh man. I’ve had a friend like this for years.
Not so fixated on my romantic relationship.. but the same amount of rambling and expectations of our friendship.
She actually cut me out of her life. Ha! After years of supporting her TONS.
Let me guess, your friend is a bitter, formerly hot, single, narcissist? She can’t be happy for your good news?
Or- she has a crush on you. Unlikely but possible.
This friend sounds exhausting. She’s an oversharer and in exchange thinks she’s entitled to all of your business, but that isn’t how it works. You always get to choose what you share. It seems like she’s exhibiting some jealous behaviors too, maybe because your BF draws your attention off her? This friendship seems unbalanced, and would probably benefit from some healthy boundaries. You’ve tried to set one and she hasn’t responded well.
This sounds exhausting. Unless you really feel the friendship brings value to your life, I’d cut her loose.
Why doesn’t she like him? And be honest….
Ummm no. Lol this is weird. If a friend made me feel like I had to answer to her like this or continued to call me a liar over and over I would end the friendship. I don’t want a friendship like that.
And it’s just…odd, for the lack of a better word. I have never had a friend treat me like this and it isn’t something I would tolerate. I am not going to report to my friend every time I hang out with my bf. Being 10 years older than you doesn’t make her your mother. And you already have one of those you don’t need another.
The silent treatment for not behaving how she wants you too is also controlling and manipulative.
It sounds like she’s not actually a friend to you. She’s certainly not treating you like a friend. It can be hard to see that when you remember how she was a friend in the past. But stop and really think about it—is she a friend to you?
Some people are like that. Once you open up a bit they take over your life thinking they can butt in. While my case is not necessarily the same but I noticed a few people with this potential.
Like recently I mentioned something to someone about me cycling and then I got seriously shocked how word traveled so fast and I received multiple messages from people who know each other giving me unsolicited lectures from A to Z about what I should do and what I shouldn’t do.
One of them even phrased her advice as
“I don’t want you to go out today”
Excuse me?
I don’t mind receiving this type of advice from someone I consider very close to me. In fact I feel sometimes I’m the type of person who’s very hesitant so I need someone to give me a little push, but I was completely surprised how fast things escalated and I know people like this take over your life.
The thing is, they mean well. Their intention is to care for you. It just doesn’t register how bothersome it feels to be on the receiving end.
I personally ghosted several people in the past who I felt were crossing the line of invading my life like this. One of them tried to set me up with guys without telling me or lying about it. The other one had jealous issues with me. I felt like I couldn’t tell her anything because she would always compare her life to mine. I never felt safe to express anything.
If she’s a reasonable person I would discuss it with her and let her know. Something like,
“I really value your presence in my life. You were always there for me during tough times and I want you to know how much you mean to me. Having said that, I feel I want space to navigate this relationship I have with my boyfriend. It’s something I feel I need without external influence. A part of me that wants to be a tiny bit selfish and keep some things to myself. It was important for me to mention this so you don’t take it personally”
I had a friend exactly like this! We were also about 10 years apart. One thing that I realized is that she always had good intentions and didn’t want me to make mistakes, but part of living life is making mistakes. She also didn’t have a lot of hobbies other than her kids and husband. I tried to set boundaries and she took it as if I was being rude or entitled. In contrast, friends who are my same age and experiencing life similarly to me were supportive and fun to continue investing my time in. At the end of the day, I decided that I needed a friend and not a mom. She also had poor boundaries with others and it was exhausting to hear about situation after situation where she was overextended or over sharing with others. I couldn’t give her the level of support she wanted. It hurt to lose the friendship and I wish her nothing but the best, but I needed the distance and space to grow.
Unfortunately I have had friendships like this before. It wasn’t until I saw another friend of mine going through the same thing that I realised how truly horrible and wrong it was.
Your friend is really bad at boundaries, and it sounds like you have let her step over yours an aweful lot. Right now, it might feel like a bad thing that she is stepping back, because she’s doing it to manipulate you into making you feel bad, but in reality it’s a good thing for both of you.
It is normal for friends to talk once or twice a week, but a constant narration of her daily life is just too much for one person to cope with. The fact she’s so focused on the relationship with your man and the fact she thinks you are lying to her is really a red flag.
My friend and i speak about a woman we used to know that treated her like a partner and tried to monopolise her time. We think she had some form of personality disorder, like BPD. But ultimately we are not professionals and we just had to break it off. she isolated my friend from so many people and gave her anxiety whenever she was having fun or doing things without her, including a funeral!!
Please watch out for yourself, and try to continue keeping calm and keeping boundaries. Best would be to call an end to your friendship, but you might not be ready for that yet even if its heading that way.
Even if she doesn’t have a disorder, using techniques for setting boundaries with people who have BPD would be useful for anyone as they can be applied to any people.
The way it got twisted from simply not sharing a basic life activity to lying and the excess contact has me real concerned about the overall dynamic here. She sounds like she wants to monopolize your time and attention and can’t stand “sharing” you, and she doesn’t sound emotionally stable. I would NOT apologize as you haven’t done anything wrong. Now she’s icing you out to pull you back in and get some show of emotion from you. A very weird push and pull here. Friendships are a two way street and shouldn’t leave you feeling burnt out or overwhelmed. Let her be. Maybe she apologizes, maybe she doesn’t. Prioritize yourself and maintain your boundaries.
I had a friend that was kind of like this. She wanted to talk or spend all of our time together. We worked together there were days that she wanted to talk on the way to work, all day at work, the drive home and then spend the rest of the day together. She would text me and if I didn’t answer immediately she would call me. It was exhausting. I was also seeing someone during this time and she created problems in our relationship so I also stopped talking about it and she would get upset when I wouldn’t answer her questions. She also helped me through some tough times and I appreciate that, but she also added a lot more drama and made my other relationships difficult. Slight bit of context that might be important my friend ended up being in love with me, so not exactly the same (but I found that out later).. I was sad to lose that friendship, but I have a lot more peace in my life now. I would leave it alone for now and reach out in a week if you decide to.
She sounds like she’s unnaturally trying to bottle in some unhealthy behavior, and it’s trickling out to you anyway, just in more passive ways.
How is this woman so enmeshed in your life?
She’s 45 acting like she’s a 16 year old.
Increase the delays in replies to her. Just increase how long it takes to reply to her to introduce boundaries (you don’t always have to state boundaries you can just enforce them).
If she can’t hack it well, she’s someone you can’t have in your life.
I would cut this loose. She sounds super controlling to a fault. You have a right to not disclose anything you don’t want to. And if she immediately assumes ill intent because you’re a more private person than she is, that’s a her issue.
I had someone in my life like this. She would tell me Ev. Ery. Thing. Which, you know–fine. Whatever. No biggie. But it quickly became exhausting and A Lot. She would ALSO hold me to the same standard of communication and openness. While this isn’t necessarily bad on its own, it did end up making me extremely uncomfortable because I had only known her for a few months. It got to a point where I no longer wanted to share ANYTHING with her for fear of judgment/scrutiny/criticism/accusations of being dishonest or incomplete with my communications.
Do you feel immense relief at the thought of letting her go? It’s a likely sign you should.
It sounds like she uses you like an unpaid therapist (which you know already) but has an unspoken expectation you do the same, lest she sees the friendship as one-sided. It’s incredibly manipulative and, ironically, very one-sided – just not the way she’s thinking it is. She’s made it clear she’s not going to respect any boundaries you set as far as unsolicited advice and I’m taking a guess here that if you explained the amount of over-sharing she does is overwhelming and excessive, she’d play offended and blow it up as if you attacked her. Truthfully, it IS excessive, and she’s counting on you wanting to avoid such confrontation so that she doesn’t have to stop using you the way she does. This person sounds absolutely exhausting. I’ve known a few people with similar behaviors and trying to establish boundaries went nowhere – I eventually had to completely ghost one of them to get free of the situation, after trying to talk it out and her fabricating an elaborate woe-is-me story for anyone who would listen about how I’m such a monster … I regret nothing. If you have to do anything similar eventually because of this person, I doubt anyone would blame you who knows her.
It’s called enmeshment and codependency.
This is wildly unhealthy. Cut this weirdo out
Cut her loose. It sounds like she may have been meant for a season in your life and now it’s time to let her go
Why does she have a problem if you spend time with your boyfriend? That’s what we do with boyfriends. Does she have a crush on you?
Or is this a situation where you were best friends, you got a boyfriend and deprioritized her?
I can provide insight because I’ve been your friend, and you.
If you value the friendship and everything you’ve been through together, then you’ll need to have another tough-love, honest-but-gentle conversation with her.
Call her up for coffee/ dinner/ drinks, whatever. Tell her you wanna talk about something a lil serious. Tell her you feel like you both haven’t been communicating as well as you could be and that things might be getting mixed up. Mention you’ve noticed a major change in how she texts you, and you want to know if everything is ok. Tell her again, that you don’t want to talk about your boyfriend anymore with her because you know it upsets her. Then you have to be honest with her here: tell her how much it upsets you when she makes negative comments about your BF, and that you don’t want any advice about the relationship. Tell her it will be healthier for both of you if the BF just stays out of the conversation. And ask her why she thinks you’re lying to her about your BF. You’ll have to be as blunt (but gentle) here. At this point, she SHOULD understand this is serious for you. And then she’s also going to explain her side of things at this point, so you know where she’s coming from. You need to listen to her here too.
She’s going silent on you now because of a mixture of sadness, guilt and insecurity from her own Abandonment/ Anxious-attachment issues. She’s pulling back because she knows she’s doing something wrong to you and she can’t help it, and she’s embarrassed about it….. but at the same time she’s also feeling “well you know what.. fine, you chose HIM, so now you can’t have ME”. It’s an unconscious form of emotional manipulation that people with anxious attachment issues have. There’s also the possibility she’s annoyed about the BF situation and she’s pulling back from you for her own reasons about it.
I know all this because I’ve been your friend. It takes a loooot of therapy to fix Anxious-Attachment issues, it’s something that just rears its ugly head in some relationships. It sounds like she’s co-dependent on you and your life choices for some reason, and I would reflect on why that is. Anxiously-Attached people do not work with Avoidantly-Attached people, they both bring out the worst in one another unintentionally. You can read “Attached” by Amir Levine if you’re interested in this.
In my case, I unintentionally find these super fun, cool, pretty, ALWAYS ALOOF (aka avoidant but I didn’t realize it at the time) friends. I saw things about them that I wished for with myself. We became best best friends, sharing details of our day, all day, every day. Over years tho, I become anxiously attached and co-dependent on certain friends that turn out to be avoidant people.. but you don’t see it at first.
My last best friend and I.. I got so dependent on her and her daily life because I kept seeing her make these awful life decisions and I kept trying to fix/ save her. Her boyfriend(s) were always bad and soo messy, and I didn’t like them. Every single day our convos would revolve around her boyfriends and the newest drama. I chose to have some sit down heart-to-hearts with her, and told her how I felt about everything. It felt good that we both could be honest with one another, and air how we felt. I had to set boundaries with my friend that we can’t talk about her boyfriend problems anymore. I’ll be honest, watching her make questionable life choices made it very hard to trust her, and I constantly felt like she was lying to me, and not telling me the truth. She even admitted she stopped telling me things because she knew it bothered me.
Things eventually got too dramatic with her, and my Anxious Attachment was ruining my life and making me sick. I hated who I was when I acted like your friend, I knew it wasn’t the “real me”. But by that point, the friendship was frayed and it ended.
I think it also matters the WHY she doesn’t like your boyfriend…
She does not like how your boyfriend is a distraction from her. She wants you to herself.
i had a friend like this and had to step back.
A few things could be going on here.
About the boyfriend…
Your friend might be over involved in your business – but if your boyfriend is a problem (or could reasonably be deemed a problem by an outsider), that really changes how I’d interpret this story.
OP, this woman does not like you. I’m telling you right now, she is jealous, or bitter, or for some reason or another just does not like you. She is a classic hater.
You didn’t mention her relationship status, but I assume she is single. Not that there is anything wrong with being single, but usually when a single person is particularly critical of people with boyfriends/husbands, it’s a huge red flag.
This isn’t really a friendship. I wouldn’t entertain this behavior from someone in my life. Protect your peace!
Yikes, that line about therapy makes me think she doesn’t know what therapy actually is and is also using you for talk therapy where you don’t actually help her and just agree and validate her.
Friendships can be tricky. Since this is from your perspective, if we assume there’s no hidden reasons (ie the boyfriend has been abusive or just a bad boyfriend in the past, you similarly leaned on your friend and so now it’s her taking her turn, etc) is she also single or maybe she doesn’t have other friends that she’s as close with?
I’ve had similar adult friendships. One friend had the tendency to act like she should be my top priority and had the nerve to be shocked when I said my at the time boyfriend I was living with (now husband) was one of my best friends. I didn’t have a bridal party but she spoke of how she’d make a speech at my wedding (when I told her we weren’t have speeches except for family maybe). I’m an engaged friend, responsive and love to have close friendships rather than acquaintances but that’s how I am with many friends. She, on the other hand, had no other close friendships nor had ever been in a relationship and didn’t see how that was her doing, since she didn’t make the effort for either but would complain about both as if it just happened to her rather than was her choices. Ultimately, I was tired of her treating me as disposable as well as expecting 24:7 access. I had another close friend who freaked out on my bachelorette. Neither had a problem with my now-husband specifically, but I think they both had a meltdown over the idea that they weren’t my top priority best friend, officially. The kicker of course is that my best friend is my best friend from college, no competition.