Friend sucking the life out of me

[LittleMermaidRose]

I feel like I'm being a terrible person, but I really want to dump my friend of 23 years, I'm so sick of her.

She's suffered from depression for the last 5 years, which I've always tried my very best to support her through. Think, crying phonecalls in the middle of the night, having her stay for days, changing my plans to accommodate her. We meet up every week for coffee, text almost daily.

The problem is, she has become so self absorbed, rude and uncaring. She can't see anything beyond her own problems. All we do is talk about her and her problems. She never asks how I am, and even if I try to talk about myself the conversation gets shot down in flames.

It's becoming really draining, I don't think I can take much more. I try to offer her advice, sometimes I just sit and listen, but nothing seems to ever change or get better for her. She refuses to get professional help. I feel awful saying this but sometimes I think she enjoys being so miserable.

I don't think I'm her friend anymore, I think I'm just a sounding board. My partner got in a car accident last week - she hasn't once asked how he is. I told her I wouldn't be able to meet up with her for the next few weeks due to some health issues I've been having. She asked if I was ok, but then went on a big rant about how nobody wants to be around her, making me feel terrible! But what about me and how I'm feeling?

It's all so mentally exhausting. I don't want to lose her as a friend as we've been friends for so long. But it really is no friendship anymore, she's not the woman I used to know.
Am I an awful person for feeling like this?

Attracting them and keeping them are different things!

I attract stalker blokes. I do not keep them though. I am expert at spotting them and batting them away before it is entrenched behaviour. Attracting them is largely out of my control. Not keeping them can be within my control.

i’ve literally just ended a friendship over this.

i was being treated like a support worker in the end. we met in a support group for a mental health issue so she knew i had the same problems she did, but over time it just became suffocating and exhausting. every single communication was about something terrible that she needed me to fix.

when she started texting to say she was suicidal i started replying to say she needed to see her doctor, or call an ambulance if she felt unsafe (there was a BIG family dynamic of dramatic little overdoses, this happened at least once a week with one family member or another).

she ditched me, told me i was a shit friend and why wasn’t i helping her. i replied saying i was astonished that she felt that way and that my conscience was clear.

since this has happened i have been knocked flat, totally emotionally burnt out. i am NOT taking the train back to Crazytown.

OP, look after yourself first.

I too have an emotional vampire but can't disengage as she is my partner's favourite cousin.Her whole life has been a series of disasters but it is always someone else's fault. Most of it has been bad judgement on her part but although she always asks for advice she never, ever takes it. I dread her coming to stay as it is like Groundhog Day. Thank goodness we now live in another part of the country and I make my partner take the phone calls.

Back off and encourage her to get professional help.

I had depression last year. I chatted a bit to friends around me but as soon as I realised I wasn’t getting better I found a counsellor. I still touched on my state with them occasionally but I leant on them to have a bit of fun and help them occasionally so I didn’t have to think about my issues all the time. All my moaning was then directed at the counsellor and I eventually dig myself out.

No froend is a friend if the relationship is one sided. I have a few like that and I have to steel myself every time I visit.

She needs professional counselling/therapy. Tell her this and repeat. It's what I do when people use me in this way, and it is draining. I speak as someone who has had depression, and I deal with it by going to the doctors/cbt therapy and seeking out support groups. I do this to help myself, but also because I do not want to burden my friends and family with my mental health issues.

Distance yourself, become unavailable, limit communication to sign posting to support groups/doctors/therapy/counselling.

my depression makes me more inward my freinds would like me to talk but no one is the same I have distanced myself from vampires depression or not

I think being honest with her ie basically writing her the same as you wrote in your first post is much more effective. Don't pussyfoot around, you've had enough. She needs to be told straight instead of ignoring so she'll hopefully realise in time you ARE and have for a long time been a good friend. And she needs to be one to. (And the reason she is loosing friends is because she drains the life out of you!)

I’m wondering if we have the same friend! Well, ex friend in my case. The situation sounds exactly the same.

If I every tried to talk about my own problems, I’d be met with derision and “you have nothing to be sad about! You have a partner/supportive family, I don’t have those things!” As though having those things were the be all and end all of happiness, and skipping over the things she did have (for example, due to an inheritance she had complete financial security and comfort) as irrelevant. No one possibly had it as bad as her! It ended up rest affecting my health and I felt like I was more counsellor than friend, and meetings with her were extremely draining.

The friendship ended when I had a huge life upheaval which meant I simply couldn’t give her the attention I had in the past. It ended quite suddenly and spectacularly when I wasn’t at her beck and call any more.

For your own sanity, step away from the friendship. This person will drain you completely.

Oops - the title misled me there...

... Sorry I'll get my coat.

Like others, I ended a friendship over this. My ex-friend had been depressed for several years and treated my like a counsellor. She had tried ADs but stopped them, and briefly tried counselling then stopped. all my pleas to her to get professional help were met with "I don't need professional help for this because..." It was utterly draining and I had to step away to save my own sanity. I am pretty sure she thought I was a terrible friend for abandoning here, but I had tried, really tried, to help and to get her to get help for years, and I just couldn't do it anymore.

Honestly, it sounds as if you have done all you can, and if she refuses professional help, it isn't likely to get better. There comes a point when you need to look after your own mental health and either end, or take a break from the friendship.

I had a friend like this. She could be great fun but when she was on a downer no one was more hard done by.
She was so self centred that she even resented me having cancer as it took the spotlight away from her and her problems. We are no longer in contact.

It could be dementia. My MIL is very like this, doesn't appear interested in anything outside her own bubble. She's lost quite a few friends & carers who cant cope with it. She'd phone them at 11:30pm to ask if they'd go to the shops & get her cat food, and other unreasonable things. If its dementia, not much you can do but it changes how you deal with it. Yanbu to need a break.

YANBU at all! Your friend obviously needs help (not yours, I hasten to add) either a physician for mental health or just someone strong enough to tell her to wake up to herself.

I'm afraid I'm the friend who has SO much on her plate and is constantly whingeing and down with her lot ... but actually, despite everything - I'm the chipper one!! Friends flock to me with their tales of woe and I have a few who are so bloody self-obsessed that they rarely give my ongoing situation a second thought.

In fact I found myself in a situation a few years ago, when a self-obsessed friend was so wound up in her own world that, despite regular contact and several visits she had absolutely no idea that I was seriously ill, or that my son had life-threatening issues! Ironic really that it was me who was strong enough to drop her and move on to make my life far more positive without her and despite my lot!!

I've had 2 breakdowns in last 10 years. Both left my friends very shocked as no outward signs given by me. These were my issues and I couldn't burden friends with them.
I remember talking to my therapist after my first breakdown and telling them how my sister was only interested in herself. She had a breakdown previously and therapist explained that some people get stuck in a selfish cycle of behaviour. They are told in therapy that their recovery is THE most important thing. A large proportion of people get better and live their lives with more purpose. However a % of people will remain in the "me me me" cycle.
You're not a bad person and you do need to extricate yourself before your MH deteriorates xx

@monkeyonthetable

The easiest way to kill these friendships is to mirror her behaviour. Become incredibly emotionally demanding. As soon as you see her, dive in and say you need support, you have so many problems right now. Just monologue at her and if she tries t talk, turn her complaint back to All About You, then say you have to run, late for an appointment. Do that three times in a row, she'll never call you again. I'd place money on it.

😄Fantastic idea lol

As a mentor health nurse , this sounds more like a personality trait issue , rather than depression.

I didn't realise that my friend was like this until one day I had a crisis and there literally wasn't space in our conversations for me to "have a turn."

I have learned the phrase "emotional toilet" on this thread and reader, I was one.

I tried talking about me but she would blink at me with a combination of confusion and annoyance and bring the conversation straight back to herself the second I paused for breath.

I never officially cut ties but I stopped doing the thing we used to do together and didn't have a phone for a month which helped.

I'm going to remember the thing about "enabling people to not get help"

You sound so stressed and you will become depressed yourself shortly if you aren't already because this friend has taken full advantage of your care and sympathy and the angry rant was to redirect your focus onto her and away from you and your partner. She believes you somehow are responsible for her emotional well-being and should be putting her first above everyone and is even subjecting you to crying and drama in the middle of the night. You have nothing to feel bad about and if she is a true friend she will listen when you try to tell her how you feel and of she doesn't and says again nobody cares about her then you need to say it back to her and it will either shock her onto seeing sense or she will tell you how you are a terrible friend and never there for her and you will then know that the friendship is gone sadly. Please look after yourself and your partner as you have been a true friend and if she can't see that then you have no choice to halt the friendship because you will end up so unhappy xx

I had a friend like this for 26 years. Family and friends hinted for years that she was a taker and not a giver and they couldn’t understand why we were still friends.

The one time I needed her when something awful happened, she couldn’t have been more dismissive. It was the wake up call I needed. And I did feel guilty but not for long, mostly I felt massive relief.

Around 18 months later her husband got in touch a few times begging me to be friends with her again. But I think this was to give him an easier life.

I am glad I made the break.

@Crystalknobs

Tell her that you value her friendship but you feel you have become her counsellor, which you are not equipped to be , tell her that you would love to return to being her friend but if she continues to use you as a counsellor you will have to distance yourself - see if it makes a difference. Give her a chance to change, at least then you can say you’ve tried.

But there isn't a 'friendship' to value.

Friendship is a two-way street. This isn't.

@Violetroselily
Don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm...
So true! So true....

@monkeyonthetable
Such a good idea and proves people don’t like a taste of their own medicine...

In life people are takers or givers Surround yourself with givers

What I dislike about these sorts of friends is that when you do mention to them how their issues, or the complaining of their issues, affects you then they don’t seem to get it, this is when I get so stressed out to the point of wanting to slap them sometimes to get my point across, but then not everyone has that wonderful gift of self awareness!