My sad friend is ruining my hobby and I feel an absolute bitch!

[Firefly45]

I have a hobby..let's say it's fishing.

I go with a friend once a week fishing and we chat on text through the week. I used to love fishing with her because it was a few hours escape where we had deep conversations about life, space, society and I felt like it was an escape from real life.
(I am in a caring profession and spend all day with vulnerable people listening to problems. I also have other friends and family who I support).

For the last 8mths my friend is having terrible problems at home in her family. It's awful. So sorry for her. It's ongoing and I don't know what she is going to do. I do genuinely feel for her so much.

My problem is that she unloads to me while we are finishing. Every session we spend talking about her situation at home. I think I'm only outlet for her to talk to. We also talk about it all week on text.

I've started dreading going fishing. I come back not relaxed just exhausted and sad. I used to love that fishing session.

I feel so bad tho. She's a good friend and having an awful time but I don't think it's going to resolve anytime soon.

I'm at the point now of wanting to make an excuse not to go fishing.

She's been a wonderful friend to me but I need my hobby for my own peace and relaxation.

Don't know what to do?

Why can't you be honest and say,

Brenda, I love our hobby and it's meant to be a lovely escape from the some of the crap that goes on in our lives, let's try and enjoy it a bit more and talk about something different for a change. We used to have such a laugh and I miss those times!

.........

She may feel the same and just fell into the habit of whinging to you every week!

I am not sure who you are blaming your comments at lol

IMO A person can pour their heart out to a counsellor who has a certificate, but who has never been in their situation and hopefully never will be - but peer groups are much better to get actual knowledge and coping mechanisms for many different issues

Counsellors just sit there with a blank expression and cannot offer advise - but charge £50 an hour- I think human beings more than this one dimentional approach to often multifacted problems

Counselling is so out of date

This - I think it may be a habit now too

I disagree. I have a different experience, that's all.

I like this approach!
Also I know this may not be possible - and you’re not her therapist - but (within the 30 mins) could you also try to move her on eg ‘Susan, I’m so sorry about all this, but can we be forward facing and see if there are even small things you could do to try to improve/progress/plan a way through (so she has something to focus on).’ I know when I’ve been at my most desperate, and I sure have, sometimes a ray of hope has given me energy and helped me out of the quicksand or at least given me a lift. Good luck and thanks for caring. But do look after yourself and enjoy your 🎣 😉

My friend did this. Mammoth, draining phone calls. I was waking with anxiety if she was phoning that day. It was nearly impossible to end the call. Once, all I said throughout the last hour of a three hour call was, 'I have to go now'. An hour.....

She also burnt out a professional therapist. There was a problem for every solution, circular arguments and no resolution for anything. I couldn't take it anymore.

Poor woman. If only she knew what a burden her problems were for you to have to listen to

But other people's problems can become a burden, they can affect the mental health of the constantly dumped on, the OP's friend needs to find another outlet for them.

I really want to hear advice for OP on the texting aspect. She says they talk about it all week on text too, and the friend often texts "I'll tell you more at fishing", so cutting off fishing as a outlet for venting will likely mean the friend amps up venting by text! I think @ByGreatDenimCat may be right - OP might've had enough and scheduling separate talking time will just offload the dread to that.

It's easy enough in-person to subtly change the topic, or say that fishing time is an escape from everyday problems, but what do you do with a rampant texter? At least with visits you can control their access to you, but they can text you all day every day morning noon and night with overflowing negativity, rants, and their problems, and real-time blow-by-blow developments. It gets to a point where you dread looking at their texts and replying becomes a chore. You get trapped between resentment, guilt, and obligation. It can start to feel like you have no room to deal with the issues in your own life because you're exhausted from trying to help your friend cope all the time as their on-call pocket therapist.

So how do you deal with the text bombardment? I'm telling you, putting them on ignore and leaving them on unread for a few days isn't a solution. You just get a pile-up that will ruin your downtime that you need to destress from your own life whenever you do reply. You can't just say, "you're too negative and miserable all the time and I want you to stop texting me so much and stop oversharing. Let's stick to talking about fishing." But it makes you feel horrible for thinking it.

Agree with this.

Did you miss this bit from the OP:

(I am in a caring profession and spend all day with vulnerable people listening to problems. I also have other friends and family who I support).

People don't have an unlimited pool of internal resources to support others. Women especially are encouraged to have absolutely no boundaries here.

All of that said: @Firefly45 are you 100% certain that you haven't had to rely on her in the same sort of way? Relationships aren't transactional but I think people do have blind spots in which they don't appreciate how much they've relied on others and then when they are called upon for the same level of support the penny drops it can be exhausting for the other person.

Is that worth reflecting on here?

There's been good advice on this thread for how to encourage some space together w/o this focus.

I'm sorry you've had to deal with this OP

I don't think it's necessarily the case that people are encouraged to reach out and then are ghosted, per se, friends should reach out and friends should be there to talk to but not all the time or every week. I get that what you were going through wouldn't just go away but you have to surely not offload on your friends constantly and expect them not to want to talk about their next cruise or holiday as well. Surely a balance is what's required.

None of us are emotional support animals for other humans. I think a lot of people would benefit from therapy because it's with a trained listener and it preserves friendships. There's a time for reaching out to friends but it needs the self-awareness to understand that people have a limit to the emotional load they can carry.

I would message and say something like- really looking forward to fishing I’ve had such a week of people offloading on me and I just need to clear my head- do you mind if we keep the conversation light- I just have no brain power left! Then go armed with a few easy conversation starters.

see how it goes and if she still does it you may need to be firmer -“ I really enjoy fishing but I’m so exhausted with work I’m afraid I just don’t have capacity for heavy chat just now”

if it still happens then you may need to reevaluate meeting regularly-as using you as an unpaid therapist without respecting boundaries isn’t fair.

I AM a sad friend who has issues with a SEND teen. I also have sad friends with ditto.

It's miserable if all you hear is about their problems. I actually asked for an announcement to be made at my hobby that no one asks about SEND Teen so I could just focus on my hobby and relax. My friend is great but I'd love to be able to spend time with her and chat about other stuff... As a result I'm mindful of trying to not be the sad friend and talk about other things.

Are you able to try and steer the conversation away from Teen? Even using the excuse that it seems to be upsetting them? Or make the suggestion that they use hobby to forget about Teen for a bit?

It is a lonely place to be but she needs to seek support from Professionals rather than relying on the patience of friends.

Let her unload during the workweek as you have been but make a deal with her that hobby time is off limits and is for relaxation only. She could probably use the break as well and just needs a push. Good luck!

I had a very similar situation just with telephone calls. We had been as close as sisters when our relationships broke down. Over the years our relationship became very one sided. I have to admit that life was kinder to me. My friend would have a few drinks and settle down to off load on me. I would dread the phone ringing. Several nights a week for a monologue of hours. I tried to get her trained up on the email with the help of her daughter but she wouldn’t use it. I resorted to pretending to be out sometimes. She wouldn’t use it and sometimes talk to my husband for hours and our evening was ruined/TV programme missed anyway. Towards the end she wouldn’t use sometimes trick me into staying on the phone for another hour by saving the most tragic information for the end . Eventually I had to end the friendship. She simply wasn’t interested in my life only her problems and financial issues. I gave practical help and advice but in the end she wore me out and this relationship broke down. A big loss but I couldn’t do it. Sometimes you simply outgrow your best friend. Sad.

She's an emotional vampire who is sewing the op drop by drop every week.

If you want to keep the friendship you could try honesty. Explain "as friend knows, you have a demanding career that involves dealing with and listening to people's difficult problems all day every day and that whilst you can be there for a friend suffering a temporary and not to serious blip in their life, you really don't have the capacity for supporting anything more than that. You need your downtime outside of work to be light and relaxing, so please could you both chat about something else in future?" Then ignore any texts in the subject, only responding to ones that are about ordinary things. If she starts up again, you'll have to find a new hobby group and leave this one to her. BUT, if you do take this approach, you can't do the whole "but how are you really, no really what's up?" etc whenever she looks filled with abject misery but says she's "fine".

To be honest, if this friend was in the very top ‘tier’ of my favourite and most loved people I would continue to listen and support and find something else to do to help myself relax. That’s what real friends are for.
However, if he or she wasn’t in my very favourite group then I’d maybe phase out the fishing. We can’t always be there for everyone.

Is there something else you could do with this friend, instead of fishing? Something where you both switch off and talking or at least, intense talk, isn't possible? Yoga? Theatre? Movie? Quiz night at pub? Craft class? Book club? Maybe a change of venue with her, and you enjoy the fishing alone or with others. Makes the deep stuff less prominent.

I think you should be honest. It's not a bad thing you're saying.

What's the hobby? Cos if it's a hobby you can only do with her then maybe expecting her to provide the other half of this hobby when she's having this sort of traumatic time in her life is maybe asking a bit too much. I feel like maybe if I really needed someone to do a hobby and they were the only person I could do it with if like that's their only value to you then maybe the standard of friendship is maybe not quite as high as your posts suggests. I mean I could be getting the complete wrong end of the stick here like but who knows...

I think maybe I got the wrong end of the stick are you calling it fishing because if you say what it is then she might see it and realise you mean her......?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 right. So ignore previous post.......

Your support of your friend ,just might be saving her from going crazy, listen to her rantings, then change the subject, if she doesn't listen, say to her that you need to speak about stuff in your life too(even if it's only fishing,the weather etc).