Exhausted by friend’s drama

[Whyhellothere123]

I have a friend who, for whatever reason, has had a lot of drama in her life. It’s all genuinely serious things, and not exaggerated - but it’s constant. Think things like, her dad getting cancer, her estranged mum dying, her husband being made redundant etc.

she is a very old friend who I would count as one of my best. We don’t live near each other and when we see each other it’s wonderful, but she’s pretty crap at regular contact. She has just received some more news that her daughter had an autoimmune disease. Which will affect her, although manageable, for the rest of her life.
I want to be there to help her - but I’m all honestly I feel totally exhausted and overwhelmed by it all. We haven’t really had much contact since her last “drama” so I feel like cos her life is quite chaotic anyway, there is no “normal friendship” in between these life dramas.

because we don’t talk regularly I find it so hard to suddenly have to make space in my brain to remember to check in on her all the time. I have 3 of my own kids and work full time so I feel like my brain is already at max capacity.

I feel terrible because I so want to be there for her when she needs me - but the sheer amount of drama she has I find exhausting. And because there isn’t general week to week chat in between these dramas it feels like our entire friendship is now based around the latest saga.

when we lived closer we could see each other more frequently so I felt like our friendship wasn’t defined by it. I’ve no doubt she’d be there if I had dramas - but I never seem to have anything which warrants the same (which I’m thankful for).

do I need to suck it up, make space in my brain for another drama and accept it’s the way ot is. Or is it ok to say actually I can’t only be there when something goes wrong, I want to have some normality in our friendship between.

o genuinely feel like my head might explode with the pressure to suddenly answer all these messages and say the right thing and check in etc

It’s messed up op.

You are overextending by sending gifts all of the time and taking phone calls in the middle of the night, and under extending by feeling so resentful, judgemental and far, far removed from the harsh realities of life when dealing with cancer, death etc.

Somewhere in the middle is the landing zone. Boundaries friendship that is warm, enduring and supportive.

Tell her your stuff, a good friend will always want to know how you are. Be honest in your communication. Acknowledge her stuff is ‘bigger’ but your life is important too.

I am not convinced you care enough op. I couldn’t resent a friend that has suffered so much and would never judge her. There is a lot of silent judgement in your posts, and I am certain it leaks into the friendship.

On the contrary OP I think you do care, that’s it’s very hard to ‘get it right’ when someone is in crisis for a long time and that boundaries are difficult for most of us.

Am sure a lot of the posters berating you may have found these things just as difficult.

I have a friend like this and it's all genuine stuff. I feel desperately sorry for her and can't quite believe that one friend could have so many awful events happen to them and their loved ones.

It's not 'drama' it's shit for her and she needs support, so, as her friend, that's what I do. You need to decide whether you want to be a supportive friend or not and if it's not, that's actually ok if you just don't feel too can do it.

As a person who spends their professional life listening to peoples lives, no one escapes this stuff. You might have a golden decade or two or longer if you are very fortunate, but eventually life events WILL come to your door, and when that day arrives a friend offering comfort and a hug will mean the world. When the bottom falls out of your world, it takes a certain type of person that can cope with it all without a murmur.

Op, you shouldn’t be upset or distressed with other peoples problems, you don’t need to be so emotionally involved to that degree, but deciding to end a friendship because your friends life is unbearably difficult seems especially harsh. Step back, do what you can and within the range of your own boundaries. Share more of your own life.

It’s perfectly normal to feel distress if your friend is going through something awful @Remembermynamealways - seems strange to state otherwise. And I don’t think the OP is suggesting dropping the friendship, on the contrary she has said she wants to open the option for an honest chat.

Ps what is important is having boundaries around how your loved one’s’ emotions make us feel and do - which is perhaps what you meant.

It sounds as if you have drifted apart over the years and only history holds you together. So she calls you out of habit, but you don't really feel very close to her any more. I would take a further step back from the friendship. It's very draining if all of your interaction is her calling you for support and nothing else.

I can see what you mean, OP

She contacts you when there is a great sadness/tragedy (drama) and you need (and want to) to step up and help

But there's no normal day to day chat. No normal daily friendship

So it always seems like the friendship is lurching from one of her sadnesses to another

This isn't normal for a friendship

Can you chat each day on WhatsApp (brief chats, not prolonged chats) so that you can bring the friendship back to a more normal level?

To all those who say I am not a good friend cos I don’t care - this is the exact opposite issue I have. I think I care too much that I take on the stress of these issues as if they’re my own and they take up SO much of my mental time and headspace worrying about her. But it’s been years and years and years where I’ve felt like i can’t moan about having a hard time with my job, or my daughter struggling with being bullied at school etc - really hard things for our family but because it’s never as bad as what she has going on I don’t even mention it as I’m sure she has no headspace for it.

and when I say we don’t have contact between these things - I mean she may take 10 days to rely to a message of mine regularly. 10 days for it to even show as read on WhatsApp. What if my message had been saying I was worried about something - it literally wouldn’t be read for 10 days. However because I don’t leave friends unread for 10 days I know as soon as there’s an issue with her and am there straight away for support.
For all those saying how terrible I am - if you’d had a friendship like that for literally years - is that ok? She hasn’t been the one I’ve turned to with any problems in recent years because I genuinely wouldn’t expect her to read my replies.

I don't like the way you keep saying "drama".

Can you stop for just a second and think about the effect that all of these scenarios are having on your friend? If this was me I would be an absolute nervous wreck.

I also can't understand how this is so exhausting for you when she doesn't live near and you rarely see her?

I'm really struggling to be on your side tbh, sorry.

I’ve already apologised for the use of the word drama. Read previous answers.

I don’t see her no but when she’s having a crisis I can wake up to dozens of messsages, which come throughout the day, and late night calls and messages. This is daily over the course of a week or two, then it drops off to virtually no contact - and not even reading my messages for a week or more. Until the next crisis when the flurry of messages and calls begins again.

can you not understand how that can be exhausting?

I totally understand, op. This is exactly what my former friend did to me, repeatedly, over the years, When she wasn't in crisis mode, I wouldn't hear from her. Not a peep, and not a single inquiry about how I was doing, even when she heard from my mother, (they ran into each other), about a difficult thing I was going through.

When her husband left her, I had weeks of near constant messages and calls. She'd call in the middle of the night to offload and cry, then get angry with me when I said I needed to sleep and would talk to her later in the day.

She was completely exhausting and I decided that I had enough.

I understand OP, it must be exhausting, doesn't make you a bad ftiend. If your friend I'd reading this I hope she's got in touch with you

I think you sound like a very good friend and have got unfairly criticized by posters who need to go and shine their halo. Why should everything being on you to always her her?

She sounds very selfish. Not to ever ask how you are, only to contact you when she is in crisis etc. Why do you need to know her husband had a car accident or her daughter has an illness? You dont. If you meet up for lunch/coffee and chat about family, of course these things come out then. But to contact you JUST to tell you these things? Odd

She just sees you as a pair of ears. I actually think she is not being a good friend to you at all. She has no interest in you.

Step away.

It’s hard to say.

If she is dealing with multiple crises then she won’t have time to read or reply to non urgent messages. If you need urgent support or help it would be best to call her, otherwise accept it will take longer for her to respond to other messages.

I feel it’s not your friendship that necessarily needs to change or even can change given your friends issues but your reaction to them.

Yes it is sad to hear of friends problems and distress but you do need to protect yourself op, if you were able to lightly support her without it really affecting your feelings/day etc this would be better. Yes it’s sad, but it’s life and keep it front and centre in your mind that these are her problems not yours. It’s not your misery to carry.

No doubt she sends multiple messages when she is being able to, explaining her situation. You only need to reply once to say you are thinking of her.

If this friendship has become too exhausting, you have every right to step away if you want to.

You don’t have to continue any relationship that feels uncomfortable, what you appear to be seeking on here is reassurance that others would be fed up with her too, and walk away so you don’t need to feel bad about ending your friendship with her.

But this is not your friends fault, and her life is what it is, she can’t change it, so you can’t blame her/and her misfortune for the end of your friendship as well. She can only be truthful about her reality, if that’s too much for you then drop the friendship and find other more fortunate carefree, less tiring friends.

You don’t need our permission to end any relationship, but don’t be surprised in a few years time when your life is full of fake, superficial one dimensional friends that drop you the minute your life hits the buffers..that was your entirely your choice.

Your friend sounds like me in terms of life relentlessly chucking things her way. In just a few years I’ve experienced the loss of a parent, a sibling, been diagnosed with a life changing autoimmune condition and just recently, suffered a pretty devastating miscarriage. That’s amongst other things like recurrent mental breakdowns of another sibling and redundancy. Your messages articulate exactly why I have not really ever leaned on my friends for support- I’m actually embarrassed about how much has gone wrong in my life and I worry I’ll be considered “too much” or even bad luck.

Instead I am the ‘go to’ friend for support and I try to focus my energies on helping other people, I guess in a way it is partly selfish because it takes my mind off my own problems. I also spend quite a bit on therapy so I have an outlet to discuss my issues without feeling judged.

You have been pretty slated on here and maybe the way you have described things is not the best (which you’ve owned) but there needs to be give and take in all relationships- it sounds like your friend is very much ‘take’. In her defence, it is probably very hard to focus on anything other than what is going on in her life. The fact that she tells you so much should in a way be flattering even though it feels like you’re being dumped on- maybe she has nowhere else to offload or vent but is comfortable enough with you to be vulnerable. Either way, it’s clearly not working for you and it seems maybe you both need to step back from the friendship at least temporarily but an honest conversation needs to be had at some point about what you each want from your relationship. I wish you both the best.