New-ish friend calls every single day

[Wingingthis]

I recently (within this year) made a new friend at a local baby group. She is lovely, we get along well, our DD’s are the same age & she is very reliable, funny etc etc.
Slowly over time her contacting me has crept up & up. We’re now at the point where she calls me every day for at least 1.5 hours a time. I feel bad saying this as she is going through a bad time at the moment but there’s only so much I can hear the same stories and problems over & over. This has been going on for a couple of months now and during these conversations I can’t even get a word in. It’s starting to effect my day to day life as I am a solo parent so get most my cleaning/life admin/work related bits done in the evenings when my 2y/o is asleep but now I have 1-2 hours taken up each evening with her phone calls.

If I don’t answer she just makes me feel guilty. She texts and says please call me etc.

AIBU to just ignore her calls. I’ve tried saying I’m busy but she’ll just call me again later. I don’t want to hurt her as she’s a lovely girl but this is just a bit much!!

I've had this op but with my NDN!

She would call me and if I didn't immediately reply she would then text me asking if I was ignoring her etc or would come and look through the window

I pulled right back from her. I initially thought she was really nice but the intensity of it all just got to me. She loves a bit of gossip and would call me over any little thing.

She has found someone new now. Thank fuck. Some people don't do subtle. They are far too thick skinned. I ended up backing right off socially ( we used to have a drink sometimes ) and stopped telling her things as I just didn't trust her.

She still lives next door but the boundaries ( literal and metaphorical ) are firmly in place.
Good luck

You could sit her down for a proper conversation and say, ‘I’m really worried about you. You’re on the phone to me for an hour and a half every single night and we kept talking about the same problems over and over again. I know you’re going through a hard time, but I’m not a counsellor and I think you need more help than I can give you. I struggle with such long conversations and they’re taking up so much time in the evenings but nothing seems to be getting better for you. I can’t keep doing them. It would be worth going to your GP and asking for professional support.’

What *Lelly says above. ^^

It's ok to reflect back to her, she's missing that mirror right now of how bad things have gotten.

It's unreasonable for a friend to take 90 minutes of your quiet evening time each night and make it all about her, so don't feel bad, no matter how nice she is. It's far healthier for your future friendship to set your boundaries at a more reasonable level. If can be done with genuine concern, kindness but also firmness that you have little time each evening or day, you can chat/meet up every few days not every day. Cut short those long calls with a "I'm going to have to interrupt, I can't talk long"

Such good advice has already been given on here.

Great advice from Kelly- clear but compassionate

Some good assertive compassionate advice here. I had a friend like that, and it is to my regret that I didnt have the skills to handle it better than I did. I dropped hints, she turned it around as reasons that it was good that she did X, I moved to a place I had no signal at home (don't worry I was moving for a better reason 😉 ... the signal bit was a lie), I backed off, she doubled down... and finally when she fell out with me for a ridiculous reason I breathed a sigh of relief and didn't try to mend it with her. Daily calls with increasingly petty sob stories and not asking about my stuff (of which I had quite a spectacular amount of shitty things going on at the time) got too wearing.

My sister was like this....until she got a boyfriend! Now I'm assuming he has to listen to her one-sided hours long conversations!

Why don't you call her.
That way she will know she is valued as a friend.
At the start of the call, say, I only have 20 mins (or however much you are prepared to commit) then let her have free rein. If she Is going through a hard time she may need to rant a bit, and you are her friend after all)
3 mins before time is up, remind her, and do it again with a min to go.
Then overrun by 5 mins, so she knows you are willing to pull out all the stops.
Then tell her you really have to go and remind her you can talk again tomorrow (not part 2, later in the day)
Rinse and repeat

If you want to answer the calls set a cooker alarm for 20 minutes then you can say need to go something in the oven ( your evening!!) . She may wander why the sudden cooking/baking interest though!

Stop picking up the phone. She is not being a friend, she is offloading onto you. Just send a text a few hours later saying, " sorry, I'm spending less time on my phone so I can enjoy time with the baby." I had to ignore calls from a very clingy mum, I turned my settings to mute her calls for a week as she was driving me insane. She stopped calling after that. It was instant relief.

Tell her you have heard of this internet forum called Mumsnet where she could get some really good advice, she can ramble on all night and someone will usually respond 😬

I think I would count up the number of hours this week you have dedicated to her and tell her that it's not sustainable, you have things that you need to do for yourself but you are running out of time to do them which is then causing you to feel stressed.
She may not even realise just how much of your time she is monopolising. If she is a true friend then she will understand.

Chunkers - genius idea