Hi all,
Would welcome any advice on a friendship. I've known this woman for about a decade. When we first met we were part of a small-ish social group that was close for another couple of years, but that has since largely dissipated except for special occasions.
About 2 years into the friendship (we were early-mid 20s) I made an ill-advised boyfriend choice and was with him for a couple of months before I left to go abroad for three months - we were still technically together when I left. On my return she told me that they'd slept together. Since he was spectacularly ill-advised, and I was quite seriously depressed at the time, I let it go - told her I forgave her, it didn't matter, etc.
A few years after that, we didn't speak for quite a long period, initiated by me. Relatively minor things had contributed to me being just irritated by her and not wanting to spend time with her (and perhaps lingering issues around her sleeping with my boyfriend...)
Anyway, time passes and we resurrect the friendship. Not long in she tells me that she's seeing a married man. At that point she hadn't told anyone else about it, so I became her sole form of support on the relationship. Over time it became more and more apparent that the man concerned was actively manipulative, emotionally abusive, etc. I supported her in her attempts to split up with him, but he was always so persistent (calling constantly, turning up at her flat, promising all sorts - harassment) that she got back together with him. Cycle repeated at least three times and it's now being going on for about three years.
The last time she told me she'd seen him, it was after a long period when she hadn't, when I'd spent literally hours of my life talking to her about him and encouraging her to leave him for good. I told her that when next we met up, I didn't want to discuss him. She told me that it was 'distressing' to hear me say that and we had no contact for nearly a month. Now she wants to meet up again.
So, to the crux of the problem: I don't really want to meet her, or see her, either because we will just end of treading old ground on the awful man issue, or because even if we don't, the whole dysfunctional history of our friendship is just lingering in the background.
I have tried, hard, to support her to leave the relationship, but she can't or won't do it. Each time we discussed it, I took examples from my own unhealthy relationship history to provide 'real-life' examples - found her links and resources on emotional abuse etc - told her that her friends loved her, he didn't and on and on. And now I just feel that it was so much wasted emotional effort. But I simultaneously feel guilty for abandoning the friendship when she needs friends to help her get out, if she hasn't managed it properly in the last month or so.
I know intellectually that I'm quite within my rights to end a friendship for any reason I like - but emotionally I feel guilty about this, and suspect that I'm being a bad friend. But: I've had enough. Of him, of hearing about him, and of her ongoing bad choices with men, which have now been impacting on me one way or another for ten years and causing all sorts of drama that I just do not want. Am I being unfair to her?