to want to end or at the very least cool this friendship?

[Alliwantisaroomsomewhere]

I have a very, very dear friend who is living, in my opinion, a very worrying life. He is in the process of ending his relationship with his partner because he is bored, he says. He has a job that pays very well, but is constantly broke. He drinks inordinate amounts of booze and does coke - how often, I am not sure.

DS, DH and I stayed at his over the weekend recently. One night that we were there, he went out at about 2am - I don't know what time he got back but he was at home when I woke up at 8ish. He chats constantly online to other people no doubt looking for the same thing and now twice (that I know of), has gone off late at night to go to these people or person in their homes. On one of the occasions, his partner was still living with him. He has never met them before other than online so I can only assume it is for coke and sex or coke or sex.

It is becoming clear to me that his drinking and drugs are out of control. He has already landed up in hospital because of it but this has not dissuaded him.

He knows how I feel about his drugging. What concerns me most is that despite me asking him not to go out that night when we were staying with him because DS was with us, he went ahead anyway. He sometimes comes to stay at ours and I am now worried he will continue this kind of behaviour when at ours.

AIBU in telling him that I want to cool the friendship til he gets sorted? Am I being a prude? I think it is a case of live and let live, but not in my house and not when me and my family are around.

AIBU???

He is one of my very dearest friends but I cannot do this anymore.

I think the only way people get help is when their addictions cause changes in their lives they don't like. Your cooling the friendship, and telling him why, may be one of the things that affects him enough to try to change.

I would not have coke around DD so I understand your issues with this. If he is an addict, then yes, he may well use drugs in your house.

I'd do it. If he wants to drag himself down then so be it, tell him you will be there when he has got it out of his system, and if he doesn't get it out of his system then he is not really a friend you want anyway. Addicts only think of themselves so you need to be the one to put you and your family first.

You're not in the least unreasonable. In fact, you're far more tolerant than I am. There's no way he'd come into my house or near my DC at all.

Your priority is your son, your home, your family and yourself - his priority is coke.

well, i'm sorry he's in such a mess.
but...
you can't allow him to impinge on your life or to be in contact with your children. it's making you uncomfortable.

sack him.

That's really sad, think backing off would be best, and explaining why.

YANBU. You can't stop him or reason with him, so it's best to distance yourself so that you do not make his problems your problem.

Thanks, everyone. It is sad, Dozer, because we consider ourselves best friends. But I really have had enough. I heard DS refer to him today as his friend, "and he's an adult", he told his friend today. If only he knew!

It is unlikely that I will see him face to face to tell him and I know I will get flustered on the phone, so I will probably email him, tell him it is on its way and then say he must call me to talk about it if he wants to. I can only begin to imagine the names he will call me....

If he dares to call you names for not supporting his decision to take illegal substances and for not wanting that/his influence in your home or around your son then he's no friend at all and you have even more reason to distance yourself. And you have every reason to be raging and to tell him how cuntish his behaviour is.

You are right, GrahamTribe. Why am I even hesitating?

He says he has no friends and that he is worried that he is letting down his father who is coming to stay with him in Sept, by ending his relationship and moving to a smaller flat. Over the weekend I said to him that his dad would just want him to be happy and not to worry about his father etc etc. Later I got to thinking that he IS fucking everything up. He IS letting his aging father down. He is selfish and is being a right fucking arsehole.

AllIwant, perhaps you withdrawing from the friendship might prompt him to seek help/change his lifestyle, perhaps it won't. But you are right to remove yourself and your family from it, it's really not appropriate.

What does your partner/husband think?

Mumsy, DH is 100% with me on this.

Then I think you have your answer.

It will be hard, and he won't be grateful and will say he's been abandoned. But he's made all these choices, about drugs and casual sex and it's made him someone others don't want to be around. And he's leaving his girlfriend, not the other way around.

I don't see how you can continue to stay at his and have him over, and coke makes people really unpredictable and quite nasty, so be prepared for that and stand united with your husband. You can always say, I don't know about the future, but I can't be around you right now.

It's worse than him leaving a girlfriend. He is in a civil partnership and won't have money to dissolve that properly. So he has fucked up his lovely partner's life, too.

YANBU and have been very tolerant whether he sees it that way or not! I liked that you included, "till he gets sorted". It might take a while if he is addicted, but hopefully he'll understand you're rejecting his lifestyle, not him and be able to find a way back to the friendship as it was. What a hard decision to take. I would want to try for face-to-face myself but better to get it done sooner if possible.

Gentleness, he will definitely take it personally and will hate me for it. Face to face would be best, but we are too far away from each other. I could not bring him to mine and then tell him what I want to. Also, going to him is too expensive and too difficult.

Poor you - so tough. Are you the sort or is it the sort of friendship that can take a bit of soppiness - I love you and all that. I'm not that sort myself but I'd want him to know there was a way back so I think I'd force it out somehow. It sounds like the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for you to not hate him yourself! For what he's doing I mean.

Hope you find a way to tell him that doesn't sink the friendship for good - sounds like he'll need you in the future WHEN he's safe for your family again.

We do soppy very well . So, yes, that will be a good way to deal with it.

Thanks so much for all the support. I wondered if i was being prudish and self indulgent.

Well, the email has been sent. I came back to this thread to read it all again for some support! He has said that I am right on some points and wrong on others. So I said he should keep my number to use again when he was clean if he liked - and his reply was "Or when you get off your high horse."

I ended it there, and he said that he wanted to reply to my email, but I will not be sending another one regardless of what he says.

Thanks for the support . I feel so sad, but I know I have done the right thing.

You really have. Well done!

Well done!