to find my friend a drain?

[pastelballoons]

I don't have children. I would like love them but am not in a relationship. Personally, I'm not sure I'm ever going to be in a position to have any but never say never and so on.

I have been friends with my friend for a long time, dating back to primary school years. Obviously (as you would expect) things have changed a lot in that time.

Friend had a baby in October 2015 and took a year off for maternity leave. Since she has been back she has been finding things really hard. I sympathise, so much but in all honesty I'm starting to feel drained of compassion.

Throughout the pregnancy, she found sickness and getter bigger hard, understandable, and then when her DS was young there were challenges you'd expect with breastfeeding and crying and I did gently ask at one point if she might have depression.

The thing is, she's always been very 'glass half empty' but at this stage I am scared to chat about anything as I just get a flurry of complaints about how awful work is and there's only so many times you can say the same thing without feeling like it's meaningless. I get phone calls on her journey home most days and sometimes I do feel like screaming -'why ME?' Why doesn't she ring her mum or sister or another friend or husband? The truth is I don't think I exist as a person myself to her. I've had a number of serious issues myself this year but they've all been sidelined.

I feel like shit. But I'm sick to death of her moaning!!

I had a friend who drained me emotionally. I understand. Don't answer the phone! Pick and choose when you do.

I have a friend like this, constantly moaning about her job, which she's had for over 10 years now. All I can do is advise her to leave and find something else, but she won't because her job is actually very cushy and she knows it. I let her bang on about it for a couple of minutes and then I change the subject, sometimes quite abruptly! She normally gets the hint but it is her favourite subject, sad.

I feel for you, the advice does feel meaningless after a while. Can you try to change the subject to something lighter when she starts moaning? Ask her if she's seen a certain film yet? Or what books she's reading, where she's going on holiday in the summer? If she insists on banging on about her problems you will have to cut her short and tell her you have things to do, she'll get the hint eventually!

I had a friend who, at one time, was also a bit like this. She would phone up to 4 times a day and then not really talk, it was exhausting trying to just find random shit to talk about that often in a day, especially when the conversation was mostly one sided.

I persevered though because she was, and still is, a really good friend.

I later found out that my friend was severely depressed. She phoned me because all of our other friends had basically given up and stopped talking to her. Eventually she did get a bit better and the phone calls slowed down. Not suggesting that your friend is definately depressed but maybe she just needs a bit of hand holding at the moment and it will pass.