To end 20 year friendship over this?

[BirdieStar]

Been I’d say best friends with G for 20 years. We are v close and do a lot together. We’ve recently just last year travelled across America together and I’d considered her family.

So a few months ago G started seeing someone for the first time and I was delighted for her. She had always shied away from relationships. However he’s turned out to be not so good, no job, does drugs, doesn’t see his child, ex-offender and refuses to meet her family or friends so we’ve never met.

This person has become her whole world and she adores him but it’s sort of taken over her life and made her a shitty friend. She keeps missing prearranged and expensive plans we’d made at last minute with some very serious excuses only for me to find out she was actually dossing at her boyfriends house. (She’s said previously he sits on games most the day and she just watches- we are 40!)

So, for example, we’d had a afternoon tea booked for a few weeks after her birthday- I paid the deposit and train tickets as part of her gift, she said she’d like to do this and said she wanted to go- talks excited really happy until the day before when she went quite cold and started saying she had to take her mum to hospital urgently. I completely understood, I rearranged the plans, lost the train money but that’s life. Only to find out by accident through her weeks later that she was actually at her boyfriends that weekend at a concert and mum was never sick. I confronted her for lying, she got upset and we moved on from it- although I was annoyed.

The same thing happened with the rescheduled date- big drama involving her now having to work and her manager saying so (the day before we were suppose to go again) to again find out that she was at her boyfriends house waiting in for a package for him.

Then comes this weekend, it’s my 40th birthday bbq. Friend is coming and really excited- messaging the day before saying that she’s going to be bringing certain things and what time train she’s getting in, she’d asked me if she could pay for the cake as part of my present and I said I’d pick her up at the station. The day comes and nobody has heard from her- we are all worried when the time the train is suppose to be getting in comes and she isn’t there, calling round, trying to get her to answer- only for her to respond 5 hours later saying she and her BF went out, got too drunk and she’d only just woken up and charged her phone. I’d messaged her BF on Facebook to check if she was ok and with him, and when he saw it later on he just replied “lol”. She’s known it was my birthday bbq for weeks.

I spent my whole birthday morning trying to get hold of her, feeling worried something had happened to find out that she had just overslept- and we had to quickly run out and get another cake too!

When I finally spoke to her, she said a half sorry but her apology was mainly about how awful she felt herself hungover.

Im feeling just so sad today, it’s like my friend has had a personality transplant since meeting this person. I’m happy for her, but I’ve never behaved this way myself when I got into a relationship.

Im really feeling like I should say enough is enough and end the friendship, but I’m heartbroken a little and trying to rationalise that before she met this person she wouldn’t have been like this in the last 19 years! She’s never been this person- it’s horrid.

but should I end the friendship and distance myself?

I don’t think you should dwell on the actions you and Maggie have taken. There are no rules for how best to handle such situations. All you can hope is that your friend will come to her senses. I would also be very concerned about her after your more recent updates.

Again, unfortunately, none of this shocks me OP. I think it was clear from the start your gut was right and there was something very fishy about this guy. It's just unravelled faster than anticipated but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe he'll be spooked by the police and move on or she'll come to her senses as others have mentioned. Maybe this is the wake up call she needs to get out before there's no way back.
I am sorry for you OP and your other friends, what an effing situation to find yourselves in.

It seems like everyone is happy to blame the man she's seeing.

This could be her "relationship" behaviour and isn't familiar to you as she's been single for such a long time. We've all had friends that drops everyone like a brick, acts completely out of character. She could just be being an arsehole.

I would honestly take a massive step back now. When someone shows you who they really are, believe them - and all that. She may not need rescuing.....

Another one who had a friend like this. She broke up with them and now cringes at her behaviour when they were together and acknowledges how toxic it was. I took a huge step back to let her realise for herself

It’s incredibly sad and hurtful, I don’t think her BF is completely so blame though as friend does have a lot of free will in certain areas and I think she knows quite well what she is doing in some retrospects.

I’m hoping that once she repays the 1500 (two of us friends paid 750 each for her) then perhaps we can all be blocked and go our own separate ways if that’s what she wants. She’s very funny about money (happy to take, hates paying for anything) so I think she will see this request for it back as “betrayal”.

Just to add I don't agree you saw her as like family. You don't just drop family members like this.

She absolutely was family to myself and all of us. My DC adore her and call her Auntie, we've travelled the world together, we've lived together- but in all honestly, she's incredibly toxic at the moment. She isn't responding to us, not engaging, blocks us for no reason. She is suppose to be paying us back in 10.00 a month installments which would've taken her 12 years to pay the money back and we were patient, she keeps missing them/cancelling the direct debit.

Is it wrong to want to take a step back from a person like that even if you do love them? I will always love her, still now I have been sobbing most nights over this and feel sick- but she cannot treat us like this even if we do love her.

She's almost certainly using drugs. As a recovered addict I see three glaring red flags in your post which indicate drug use on her part.

I would distance yourself, but explain why you are doing so and say that you are worried about her. That will get her thinking as to whether she's really doing the right thing with her life.

Then, distance yourself and keep your boundaries in place. But if she wants to leave him and needs your help, be there for her. You have history.

What are the three red flags?

What three red flags? Good chance to learn.

Yes please definitely share the three red flags as I too would think it’s handy to know them :) thank you!

Sounds like she’s on drugs with hun to me!

More than three actually.

These are all shared from my own experience of my own behaviour when actively using, and from sponsoring a number of women over my ten years clean and sober, some of whom relapsed:

1. Dropping out of big planned events at last minute with dramatic excuses. A person may well intend in all honesty to go to the event but 'pick up' (ie take drug of choice) a few hours beforehand, possibly for Dutch courage, then overdo it and then be too screwed up to go. Person panics and because high or on a comedown makes a wild and dramatic excuse, partly because they're aware that the excuse needs to be a 'good one', partly (I believe) as a subconscious cry for help.
2. Going out then needing to leave quite quickly. I used to do this when I was jonesing for the substance of my choice. My fidgetiness and nerves would be obvious to the person I was with.
3. Sitting all day watching the guy play computer games. Unless she's really into gaming, most adults of 40 just wouldn't do this because it's boring as hell and also because the BF is probably playing with other people through Discord or whatever so not interacting with her at all. Most likely she is drinking and/or smoking weed and just monging out on the sofa as the hours slip by.
4. The BBQ thing. It really wasn't unusual for me to be passed out and literally UNWAKE-UP-ABLE after an all night session. I'd maybe come to late afternoon. Adults who aren't overdoing drink/drugs don't tend to behave like this, even if they are super hungover after a late night they can at least get it together enough to text their friend with an excuse, especially if the friend is making multiple calls and/or v worried. Going totally off-grid where you're too fucked/frightened to even look at your phone is classic coke comedown behaviour.

The BF may be controlling but tbh most relationships between two people who are both involved in drink & drugs are codependent as fuck and that can easily shade into control and abuse. I was with my addicted ex for 16 years and we abused and controlled the hell out of each other. But, addicts make each other worse because they go into their own little shell where it's 'us against the world' and everyone else is mean / a square /just wants to ruin their fun.

These are just my opinions and should be taken with a ginormous pinch because I don't know you or her. I would just withdraw but keep the door open in case she needs help as others have said.

Everything you and her other friends have done for her absolutely is important, OP. You've been good friends.

You are allowed to be hurt and worried and I do think it's understandable that you may not want her back in your life, should she reappear.

@BirdieStar

Well, we each deal with things in our own way. If 'Maggie' wanted to be blunt that's her privilege. But I do think that she was a wee bit out of line in demanding the whole 1500 be repaid. She was entitled to demand her 750 back immediately, but should have left it up to you to decide how you wanted to handle the balance owed you. But that's water under the bridge.

At this point there's nothing more for you to do so I'm afraid you'll just have to 'let it go'. Even if you do a 'Clare's Law' on this guy and find out he's had convictions, what would you expect the end result to be? Even if your friend hasn't blocked you, do you think she's going to listen to you? And if she hears you out do you think it'll change her 'love' for him? He'll fill her full of tales of psycho exes filing false police reports and then lying on the stand. And she'll believe him. I'm not saying not to do it. I'm saying not to be surprised if it changes nothing.

It's a hard, hard place to be in, I know. I haven't heard from my 'former' BFF for around 3 years now and I don't think she'll ever leave her abusive husband. If I'm honest with myself (and I hate to even type this) I think the next time I hear anything about her will be when her family lets me know that he's finally killed her.

This 100% he sounds like the sort of manipulative bad news loser that gets with a woman with low self esteem and isolates her, by completely shutting the door on your friendship although understandable after the hurt she’s caused, you are cutting off any chance she has to get out of this relationship/trap. I’m a sane woman with past SA and childhood trauma and have struggled with low self esteem self doubt and fell into a relationship with someone who was trying to drive a wedge between me and anyone who I cared about, friends and even my teenage children. He would invite me over to cook me a meal and drug me so I couldn’t go home to my kids or keep plans and literally made me go crazy because he would be so nice to me but do horrible things, I couldn’t go out with friends he would go absolutely mad if I did. It was a whirlwind and I just wanted to be loved and feel safe and would crave his little morsels of love (fake love-control manipulation) I woke up one day and realised wtf was I doing?! And left and he still reaches out to me on social media or dating sites and I split with him in 2019!!! I have to block and not engage as he just wants a way in again as I was in his words “the loveliest person I know” which translates to ‘the easiest to manipulate person I know’.
Please don’t drop her completely, she’s in some kind of fucked up situation and if you have 20years of friendship I’d suggest just sadly moving on and like previous posters have suggested, just send check in texts and invite her to things it doesn’t matter if she misses etc. in time, hopefully not long, she will wake up and realise she’s being played and she’s been hurting you and betraying herself. Good luck! Hang in there OP!