I have / had a fairly casual friend. I’ve known her for 10+ years but it was the sort of friendship where we would meet up for a coffee every few months. About five years ago she had a crisis (I don’t want to say what it was, it isn’t my story to tell) and I was glad to help her and her husband out.
Since then she has been really quite hard work - to the point where I don’t feel good after I’ve seen her. It feels as though whenever things get to a more normal place, she ramps up the drama. She has thrown herself into a couple of causes (both of which I consider quite dubious) and talks at length about them despite me not being very interested.
Her husband has a small business and I have been glad to mention him to people who say that they are looking for that sort of thing. From time to time they have asked me to circulate flyers for it on my groups which I haven’t done (because I hate spam). Recently one of the people I recommended him to had a bit of a weird time with him so I regretted doing so. He also asked me for a fairly serious favour which I refused.
I have unfollowed her and her husband on FB so I don’t have to see all the stuff about the causes. Last summer she went through a phase of sending me a flurry of messages about the causes on WhatsApp (which arrived in the early hours of the morning). Some of the messages called me by a different name so I expect she has sent them to a bunch of people. I wasn’t sure how to react so I muted her for a week and it stopped. I rather hoped that my silence would tell her that I wasn’t up for getting this sort of spam.
I haven’t met up with her since last September but every so often I still get these spam messages from her. Recently I asked if she had only sent the latest one to me or to lots of people and that I wasn’t a good audience for that sort of thing. In response she sent a fairly chatty message including something along the lines of fair enough, this isn’t for you. However the following day she sent through a message telling me that a relative of a friend of hers needs an operation (in a poor, war torn country) and they were trying to raise several thousand for it. I have no idea whether she has donated herself and the way the message was written makes me think she has sent it to lots of people.
Basically I have run out of juice. I think that neither of us are meeting each other’s needs - I was tempted to unfriend her and block her on WhatsApp but I wondered if that is a bit dramatic. She is someone I will still run into from time to time. So far I have just muted her.
I suspect that I have given her a lot more headspace than she has given me. Sorry, this was quite long in the end.