Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Desperate to drop this 'friend'- but how?

9 replies

RhythmStix · 28/12/2017 10:12

Background: my DC are both at secondary school now and I no longer have anything to do with the primary school they attended. When my younger one was still there though, I used to chat to a mum there who latched onto me. At first it was ok - more for a mutual chit-chat about trivial stuff than anything else. I certainly did not consider her a friend or someone with whom I had much in common.

Two years on and she texts me and calls me, pushing and pushing to meet up for coffee. she doesn't work and I work p/t so she wants to meet in the exact same place, exact same time every few weeks. My issue with this person is that she is really really negative and very difficult to be with. When we are together, she does nothing but complain and moan. Not in a 'normal' way, but in a very intense and obsessive way. The last time we met up in November, she ranted non stop for over an hour - about her dh, her dc's teachers, her MIL, her Bil, the school.....waving her arms and her voice getting louder and louder until people in the cafe started looking over and wondering what was going on. Meanwhile I am sitting there like an idiot, nodding and making the odd sympathetic noise. It really was unbearable.

We have nothing on common and I honestly cannot bear being in her presence- it's draining and entirely negative. I get nothing out of it at all. She never asks me anythign about my own life and clearly isn't interested. I am not very good ( terrible) at being forthright though, so my question is wwyd? should I just sit there and endure every few weeks, or do I say something? and what/how?

OP posts:
just5morepeas · 28/12/2017 10:17

Can you just keep giving excuses why you can't meet until she finally gets the message? Stop replying to texts as soon, don't answer phone?

GinandGingerBeer · 28/12/2017 10:42

Send her a text saying 'this is my new number' with a random number and then block her.
Simple.

Rainbowmother · 28/12/2017 10:49

You sound like me! My question recently was also quite similar. I cringe at dealing with things like this.

Can you start by not answering all her texts / calls? Take a long time to get back to her? Be very hard to get hold of. An excuse without details until hopefully she can't be bothered? If you temporarily blocked her, are you likely to run into her?

You're her free counsellor at the moment and she probably looks forward to it. Other people probably don't allow her to go on and on.

I had a male friend like this once who would be in constant contact ranting and raving when things went badly with his OH. Would never ask me anything. Then he would ignore me when things were good for him and we would go months without contact. I was too tired to bother trying.

One time I moved to a different country in the time he was ignoring me and I thoroughly enjoyed casually telling him in the middle of his next rant.

Therapists are expensive and there's a reason most sessions are an hour long. Don't indulge her as she will never run out of things to complain about.

RhythmStix · 28/12/2017 11:01

Thanks posters. I do take a long time to get back to her but I feel I ought to say something. I think she ought to be made to understand what she is like. Other people I know have cut her off/distanced themselves from her for the same reasons. In a way I feel sorry for her as she is clearly extremely unhappy. She is obsessive though, and almost stalker-ish.
She says really mad things about her dc's teachers- for example she is convinced that her younger dd's class teacher has a vendetta against her ds and has deliberately made him sit in a draught so that he gets ill, stuff like that. She claims all kinds of targeting of her ds has been going on- I think it's in her head.

OP posts:
TammySwansonTwo · 28/12/2017 11:13

Yes: definitely tell her what a negative draining unbearable person she is. That will work out brilliantly.

Maybe she's lonely. Maybe she's depressed. Maybe she's ill. Maybe her life is really shit right now and she thought she was talking to someone who cared.

RhythmStix · 28/12/2017 11:24

She is probably all of those things TammySwansonTwo, but she is also entirely selfish, self centred and completely uninterested in me. She doesn't care about me at all- if she did, surely she would show a glimmer of interest in my life, my problems, my bereavements and so on? I feel like I am nothing more than a sounding board for her moans.

OP posts:
Rainbowmother · 28/12/2017 11:31

That's exactly what you are rhythm.. so start withdrawing your services

seven201 · 28/12/2017 12:00

"Hi doom and gloom friend. I'm sorry but I won't be meeting up for coffee. If I'm honest I feel that our meets ups are just for you to moan. You don't take an interest in my life and I come away feeling drained. I'm sure that is hard to hear and I could have kept making excuses, but I thought maybe you should know so you can learn from it. All the best"

ShiftyMcGifty · 28/12/2017 12:08

“ I could meet you for a quick 15 minute coffee - but only if you can for once have a 2 way conversation with me, instead of treating me like an unpaid therapist, unloading your problems at me for an hour. Like you have all of last year.”

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread