To have told NDN that dh won’t be helping her anymore?

She may well have gone about setting those boundaries incorrectly, but ultimately she can make those boundaries clear now.

“If you continue to provide help to the woman next door behind my back, our relationship is over”.

and

“I feel that I have helped you enough and you need to stand on your own too feet. Please don’t ask for any further favours”.

I am responding to the people who think she is being mean to a poor helpless woman.

Boundaries work for the person setting them, you cant control people by setting boundaries for them the husband is not a pet

Telling other people what to do with their time is not setting boundaries. Boundaries are things you decide that you will or will not do.
OP can set a boundary that she will not be with him if he continues to help another person out. But she cannot decide he won’t help this woman out.

This. It’s not actually your place to unilaterally decide what he does with his time.

Moaning about you to him is not on, obviously. But if carrying a pram up and down some steps and occasionally getting some shopping in is disrupting your day so much that you're threatening divorce, you have bigger problems.

I genuinely don’t understand why people have an issue with the op setting boundaries, not just with her husband, but with the neighbour. Boundaries are healthy.

I have a relative with ‘Super Hero Complex’. They help out just about everyone, all of the time. They love to be needed. But occasional help always eventually turns into a long term commitment. They were helping one older man with shopping, getting his takeaways, a bit of company here and there and it escalated to him wanting his haemorrhoids checked and phone calls demanding his grandchild be babysat.

I don’t commit to help anyone. If I see an old lady struggling to carry shopping of course I’d help there and then, or someone getting onto a bus with a pram, no problem. I’m a help as you go type person…but no way on this planet would I be doing what op’s husband is doing. It’s absolutely mental, especially as now it’s affecting his own relationship.

My concern would be that he continues to help this woman when you’re not there. Because that would speak volumes about his motives. And yes, the neighbour did need to be reminded that her neighbours are not her personal assistants, because it is cheeky.

Yes, everything else could be explained away - with difficulty and an awful lot of unnecessary leeway perhaps. But that was calculated.

I think she has dirtied her bib now.

Messaging your husband was crossing the line, she bit the hand that helped her. Stupid move on her part if she is that isolated. Don’t trust her.

Hello neighbour of OP..

I think we may have found the CF neighbour 😂 (Quirky that is, not you!)

She is far too dependent on your husband. I would not mind helping occasionally but not every day.

I know it's ridiculous, friends my arse.....

What are you on about?! They’re not friends. She just lives next door!

I do not understand why women leap in to belittle women for being quite fairly upset about issues, or try to minimise the reality of it. Well, I do understand that it is internalised misogyny and man pandering, but I can't imagine the mindset.

Anyway, you summed it up well.

Yes you have missed something and it's not just about the pram, she wants to be driven to and from appointments, her food deliveries to be collected from the ground floor by them, she makes daily requests for help, she's got the DHs mobile number and then complains to him that OP is being 'mean' to her when the OP quite rightly tried to put boundries in place, this situation is driving a wedge between them so I think any normal person would have major issues with this....

They're not friends, she's a single woman who's playing the damsel in distress, who moved in 11 weeks ago and instantly started asking them both for cheeky fucker favours.

But you already know this.

Your feelings don't matter on the subject, nor do mine, but OPs do. She's his wife, he absolutely should not have gone behind her back to listen to NDN whining and weeping about his wife nipping her CF demands in the bud.

And you're supposed to "work" from home, not fanny around helping untie Penelope Pitstop from the train tracks every time she asks.

What I don't understand is why someone would try to end a friendship? It is platonic, they like each other and he likes helping her with chores. It's probably a break from WFH all the time. It doesn't mean she is going to 'turn his head'.

Oh, he's neither blind nor stupid. He's just pretending to be so he can keep doing what he wants to do, which is play white knight to a young, pretty weeping woman who lives right next door.

I always assume men know precisely what they are doing, because they're incredibly good at managing to make their feelings known, managing relationships and understanding situations when it suits them.

She's a young pretty woman who went behind OPs back to complain about OP when she did not get her way. She has only known them 11 weeks, is not their friend is just a NDN and has made repeated and daily demands for assistance including demanding lifts and texting OPs husband in retaliation for being told no.

Stop pretending not to get it.

@TheQuirkyMaker , you've not heard about men having their head turned by playing knight in white armour to a damsel on distress then.

Maybe he just likes her and she him. Platonic relationships do exist. They may have found they have a lot in common and want to spend some free time together.

I think it has gone beyond that now. She is interrupting their relationship by wanting OP’s husband to be at her beck and call. Then to go behind OP’s back to complain about her to her husband, she is purposely trying to drive a wedge between them. Whether the motive is to keep him running around for her all day every day or whether she has more ulterior motives isn’t known yet. The husband is blind and stupid for failing to see the potential harm this could do to his marriage. It’s not a neighbour asking for a bit of help every now and then. If she couldn’t manage living there as a single mother she shouldn’t have moved into that flat.

Yes, I mean it wouldn't matter if he was just asleep, it's still a massive overstep - but absolutely this. People are expected to WORK from home not fanny around doing chores for other people.

Yep, you're crazy (your words not mine). Or - more likely - pretending not to get it.

Also pretending not to see the CF repeated demand for a lift and the CF messaging the husband to whine and demand sympathy because OP quite rightly politely told her they're not her sherpas. Massive overstep.

Also that she claims to have been crying all day because two virtual strangers who have only known her 11 weeks are not prepared to do her parental chores for her every single day of their lives.

Knocking and messaging two people who just happen to be your neighbours to ask for them to do your chores for you is already an overstep. Might be ok if it was a one off, or once or twice and because you hadn't sorted yourself out yet.

Doing it every single day is cheeky as fuck. People have an absolute right to sit at home naked, asleep, or involved in anything they like without having to worry about when the next knock or message from next door's cheeky fucker will come.

NDN is a CF. She might have mental health issues but they can't fix that and its not their job or their place to try.

It is absolutely wrong to expect your random neighbours to do any parental chore for you every single day. Yep. It is.

If you want to be a sainted marty and claim this situation wouldn't bother you at all, no worries. OP is rightfully irritated by it and has nipped it in the bud, just like the majority of us would.

@imisscashmere , OP's husband is working from home.
I work from home and a daily request from a next door neighbour to carry a pram downstairs and then carry it upstairs when she came back would be too much. I'd not appreciate being texted or have the door knocked because I'd be at work.