Hi, I have namechanged but I am a fairly regular MN poster.
OK, so I have a friend that I've known for several years, and who has always been quite demanding and bossy. She doesn't have many friends but being a mug decent person I've always stayed friends with her. I actually became friends with her by default as our DDs were best friends at preschool and in the first few years of primary. She is the type of person who wants her own way all the time, won't take no for an answer and who pesters and persuades and comes up with solutions until she gets her own way.
Examples include every time I go to her house for coffee she seems to try to delegate a job to me to do. Last time she invited me to her house I arrived and she was ironing and said that she would iron, and I could fold all the stuff. There was no asking if I minded, just an assumption that I'd do it. Another time she said she had lots of jobs to do upstairs and told me to load her dishwasher so we'd be able to sit down quicker if I did that. I feel that she gives me no choice but to do these things. Another time she wanted me to look after her DD for a couple of days in the holidays whilst she was at work. Without even asking me, when she dropped her off on the second day she said I'd have to drop the DD at the DD's dad's house that evening, which is an hour away. The reason? My friend was going for a weekend away with her boyfriend so wouldn't be able to pick her up that night. I felt I had no choice but to do it. She treats everything as a fait acomplis.
So, things came to a bit of a head yesterday for me. She and I went to London for the day on the train. She was absolutely awful in London, ordering me around and wanting to do everything that she wanted, with no consideration to me at all. I said that I wanted to eat lunch at one place and she said abruptly that no, she was not eating in there, and we'd go somewhere else. At the bit to get on the tube where you swipe your card, she kept standing behind me telling me to hurry up, and speaking to me like I was a child. But, the best bit is she did a load of shopping, then said after a while that I was going to have to carry her bags, as her back was hurting her. I was very pissed off by that point and I said that no, I wouldn't carry them as my back was hurting too. This clearly really annoyed her, and she tried to manipulate me saying that I wasn't being a very good friend as I wouldn't help her out, but I stood my ground for once, and then she was even stroppier and snappier for the rest of the day. On the train home she said she didn't know what was wrong with me, again as if I was a naughty child.
Is there any way to handle someone like her or is the best way just to cut her off? The latter would be difficult as our DDs are friends. Am I best off trying to put some boundaries in place about what I will and won't do? Or to just see her when it's something about the DDs?