Hi, I'm a long time lurker on MN, I realise that on this board in particular people can very often be roasted and told to keep their noses out, focus on their own life etc etc so I'm a little dubious to post but her goes.....
I'm undecided whether to cut all contact with a good friend of mine who I've known since I was five (25 years!) due to her lies and manipulative ways regarding her break up with her partner, I'll start from the beginning. She has three children to her partner, they both work, her around 16 hours a week and he is self employed. Around two years ago they announced that they were separating and not long since after I had suspicions as to why they suddenly announced they were parting ways and I'm afraid my suspicions were justified.
She confided in a mutual friend of ours that she and her ex weren't indeed separated and that they had decided between them that he would move in with his uncle (single and no children so has a spare room) and that she will remain living in their rented house with their children.
Like I said I'm preparing myself to be told to mind my own business but I simply can't condone what my friend has done and continues to do. I realise that the pair of them are playing the system perfectly as due to the fact they "technically" do not live under the same roof my friend can now claim housing benefit, council tax benefit, child tax credits, income support, free school meals etc that they were not entitled to before due to her partners wages. This in itself is a bit shocking as they are exploiting the rules but I'm fully aware that in the eyes of government they are technically just within the rules so nothing can be done.
Generally I don't care what other people chose to do or not to do, it's their lives and i was the same with my friend up until recently but I decided to ask her if this was a set up between her and her ex, she sort of dodged the question but didn't deny it so for me that was enough.
My problem is not that I'm a bitter, jealous, interfering person (which I'm sure someone will accuse me of being so) my problem is that my friend these last six months or so has become literally obsessed with money and insists on sharing almost every purchase she makes. She turns up to my house and frequently will sit there rhyming off what she has bought for her three children, she insists on telling me that they have too many designer clothes she doesn't know what to do with them, and she in the past has gone on to quiz me about what my children wear now they are getting older and she wanted to know everything that I had bought them for Christmas and then went on to better me and list everything her three were given (the list was boarder line obsurd).
I know that friends do occasionally discuss money but when she is doing what she is doing and then has the audacity to sit there and talk none stop about the subject, well it has got to me. One minute she claims to me and the world (Facebook, Instagram) that she is a lonely, struggling single parent and the next she is shoving her huge purchases under my nose, telling me that she is getting an interior designer in to decorate her three bed council house that she has recently been given and that her and her ex are going to Mexico in April for ten days!
I simply cannot go along with her anymore and continue to sit there listening to what she has to say, one minute she makes me feel a little envious (who wouldn't love to have more money) and the next I feel like screaming at her and telling her to stop with all the shit! So would IBU to end the friendship out right or should I confront her first? Although I'm not sure what could be salvaged.