Hi all,
I don’t really post much but I’m desperate for some advice.
I have a very toxic friendship with another woman. It hasn’t always been toxic but she worked abroad a lot and I only saw her a few times a year. Since covid and Brexit she is home permanently and we have started going out more socially. Over the past few months of this, I’ve come to realise that I don’t enjoy her company. In short she puts me down a lot in front of others, always needs to be the centre of attention to the point that she will physically block me with her body from speaking to people, and she has made a number of personal comments that have upset me. I recently helped her out a lot by being there for her through some troubles she was having but when my marriage became rocky and DH left for a little while she wasn’t there for me and continued to put her problems on me instead of listening to mine as well. She also messages and calls me constantly to the point I feel suffocated. I have spoken to her about it on a number of occasions and she promises to stop but as soon as we go out and alcohol is involved she starts again.
It’s her birthday this week and she has set up a group of her friends all who don’t know each other to go out on Saturday for bottomless brunch and drinks myself included. Her attitude in the group chat has been ‘there’s no excuse not to come, it’s my birthday, do as you’re told’ which is frankly already rubbing Me up the wrong way and I really don’t want to go.
I’m aware I need to let go of this friendship but don’t want the drama of a big bust up with her because she can get very nasty. My plan is to make myself less available, go out with people I actually enjoy spending time with and when she asks to make plans tell her I’m not free until she gets bored of asking me and latches on to someone else.
The issue really is the birthday brunch, so I suffer through it and go bearing in mind that this will be the last time I go drinking with her and then plan to cut her off, or do I find some excuse? At the moment I can’t think of a single excuse to not go that she won’t cause drama over. I don’t have children so can’t say cancelled babysitter, DH or the dog being unwell or even myself being unwell wouldn’t be a ‘reasonable’ excuse in her eyes and it’s been planned for 2 months so I can’t say I can’t afford it either 😔 any advice would be greatly appreciated. She’s really affecting my mental health at this point.