Patience going with immature friend

[Spaghettihoops2026]

I have a group of about 5 friends who have all been friends for 20 years plus.

One of them has always been immature but over the past year it has for some reason really started to grate on me. We all turned 40 this year. The more the group grows up and moves to new stages of life the worse this one friend gets, but this week they did something that disgusted me so much I no longer know if I want to continue the friendship.

Examples of behaviour, but this behaviour is constant:

. We have a group chat for general catch up/ meet up arrangements/ kids birthday reminders etc. They text all day on chat then gets annoyed when people don't respond because we are at work.
. Whenever a serious conversation is being had ie: another friend was having some cells removed after a smear test and this friend in between our conversation with the others was saying things like 'ewwww you have to let someone up your vagina'
. Whenever anyone reaches a landmark- buying a house/ having a kid/ getting a promotion they change the subject back to themselves and start saying we are all conformists.
. I said the other day I was going to the garden centre and they started just repeatedly sending pictures of OAPs to my phone.
. Another one of our group befriended a single mum from school and bought her out for dinner and when she got home text my friend a genuinely lovely message saying how amazing it is we have a friend with learning difficulties, it gives her hope for her daughter. The immature friend has no learning difficulties.
. Had a tantrum two of the girls in the group went for drinks together and didn't invite the rest of us.
. I just took my youngest daughter to college open day and said friend spent the entirety of it texting me saying she needed urgent help until I left the room to call her and she went JOKING and hung up.

Typing this out it sounds insane, but it has unfortunately been normalised over 20 plus years, until now.

They live at home still, have a job which they keep being offered promotions in but won't take.

Half of the people that meet this person find them endearing in an entertaining way as it's like having a bouncy toddler around, the other half ask how we are friends.

This week she had a tantrum at a family members funeral because she wanted to cut a cake early, resulting in her mum crying.

I guess I'm looking for permission to end the friendship without sounding like a jumped up cow but I have had enough. I want to live my adult life with my adult friends.

Are sure she hasn't got LDs? She certainly lacks a filter, social skills, emotional intelligence and by the sounds of things any actual intelligence.

Sounds like she's not all there..

You may not be.
I'm not and I'm ND too but some people just are.
We are all different and our brains are different.
She does sound like she has a screw loose

No, it doesn’t.

@Spaghettihoops2026

You & your friends must have incredible patience to have put up with this immature, ridiculous shit for so long - I'd have snapped, big-time, by now! If she has no neuro diversity & you've already plainly told her how you feel, then I'd just be done with her & cut her out. Swift, clean, final. Feel no guilt.

yeah no one has to put up with shit like that. Being neurodivergent isn't an excuse.

I was thinking this, but be aware that there's a big difference between 'learning difficulties' and autism. Some of us are highly intelligent. She is definitely lacking in social awareness. I will say this though, just have a straight conversation with her and be as kind as you can. ND people value straight talking, personal experience - I would have more respect for a person who told me straight "I don't like you" than I would ever have for someone who puts up with me because it's the 'polite' thing to do.
Chances are that she acts the fool because she is desperately trying to be the 'crazy, funny friend'. And chances are she knows how everyone feels about her but the thought of not having 'friends' around is scary and society expects us to have friends and so you coexist in this really uncomfortable state. In the end it comes down to whether or not you want to invest in the person or not. I will tell you this though, ND people will die for you, whilst I wouldn't say the same about NT people (again from personal experience).

Sounds like she’s jealous that everyone else has progressed in her life and she hasn’t. So she constantly tries to belittle you all and also to relive a time when you were all equal and she was the fun one. And she’s got some weird hang-up that stops her progressing.

But you are under zero obligation to be friends with someone you don’t like.

Am actually more annoyed by their enablers!
”how dare you not put up with demanding selfishness!? How unkind not to put these me centric demanding prima Donnas before you and anyone else! Don’t you know nothing matters but them?!”

Are you sure she doesn't have a special need? It sounds like she's undiagnosed. Very interesting how she still lives at home and has tantrums about not being able to cut into a cake at a funeral. It sounds like she can't self regulate. Surely she doesn't actively want to offend? Or do you think she has remained infantalised by remaining at home?