I need some advice on this please.
I don't know how to approach this- Firstly, I need to know if I made the right decision to step back from an old friend of 20 years (let's call her Nina) in part because of behaviour after our mutual friend (let's call her Anne) died suddenly.
At the time I put it all down to grief but now I have some perspective and considering what she's like before and since I think its time to move on.
The main thing was what I consider selfishness. She would not entertain the idea that anyone else other than the two of us had a close relationship with Anne, which was just not true, she was very popular. A neighbour of Anne's wanted to be a pall-bearer and my friend was horrified at this. She also demanded that we were made admins of the Facebook memorial group that a work colleague had set up and moaned to me about how 'fake' everyone's grief was. As if only ours was real. I kind of get that and put it down to the shock and grief. I didn’t feel comfortable about it all but was going through grief myself so didn't really pay too much attention at the time.
Then Nina turned on me when we were clearing out Anne's house. Anne's father had showed Nina round and she had taken a few things as mementoes - all fine.Later that week, I was helping to box things up for the charity shop - the family clearly wanted rid of things quickly so I took books and a few other bits of Anne's . Nina was put out about this and a bit childish I thought. She talked to Anne's brother while I was there, ignoring me, saying things like "I would never just take things, I'm not like that". "I'm not grabby like that". Clearly aimed as a dig at me. Anne's brother didn't really reply and commented to me privately that he thought Nina was a bit off - she'd been invited to take whatever she wanted already!
At the time I put it down to grief, I was all over the place myself. I brought all of the books to her house the next day so she could pick what she wanted. She took a couple, but didn't apologise for her 'off' comments. I let it go because of the situation.
Now I'm not sure I should have.
It's not just that though- she's always been quite negative. I used to often spend time listening to her talk about how someone had been awful to her and I would tend to ask her to look at things from their perspective and see the other side. Often it was a misunderstanding on her part. She might think someone had been talking about her 'behind her back'. That sort of thing.
It's quite exhausting, talking to her, it's always negative and I just feel like a counsellor. It's not a mutual thing any more. She's not interested in hearing about my kids or.my job and we might speak for 5 mins about that and get back to her.
She's asked for us to meet up and I've just put her off and said I'm busy. I will have to answer eventually. What do I say to her? I feel like I owe her an explanation but really don'twant to continue the friendship at the same level. I don't feel like she will take any of this on board though and I think I'll be the next person she's talking about.
It's making me anxious to think about it and I would rather just hide but I know I'll have to face her eventually - we both are still in contact with Anne's family.
Am I being mean to Nina here? What should I do?
Sorry this is long and if you got to the end.Thanks!