My best frenemy - is it time to cut the cord?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Joy and I have been close for over 10 years and we’ve had a lot of fun together, but over this time I’ve been gradually moving away from the big drinking sessions and towards career, family and “adult” life. I think that this is natural, as you get older the idea of writing yourself off becomes less attractive and dvd nights at home with pizza and your partner start to sparkle more brightly.

The problem is that, while I was doing all this, she’s been sinking into alcoholism and drug addiction, so while I’ve been progressing my career she’s been getting fired repeatedly from admin roles, and while I was buying a house with my partner she was getting involved with inapproriate guys and having volatile on-again/off-again relationships. The nail in the coffin is that I am now 5 months pregnant and she’s discovered the joys of crystal meth.

I’m probably being a bit unfair here, I think she only did it a few times over a couple of months and is not doing it anymore - I just thought at the time that in your late teens and early 20s it was probably ok to experiment a little - but at 32??? :dubious:

So I haven’t been seeing as much of her as I used to, the main reason is because being pregnant and working full-time is really hard! I am sore, sick and exhausted most of the time and I really haven’t had many chances to catch up with anyone - I’m not singling her out, I’m just really tired! My friends are all pretty understanding, but she’s taking it personally and is freaking out. I feel bad about not being available, I just don’t have the capacity to hang out like I used to and I can’t see that changing once the baby arrives.

She’s being really unreasonable at the moment, cancelling on me one week and then going bananas when I cancel on her, going on and on about how busy she is and how much of an effort it is for her to catch up - but then demanding that we catch up, like she’s doing me such a big favour, she even called my partner to bitch about me and try to manipulate me into doing her boyfriends tax return when I’d told her I didn’t have time to do it.

I’m concerned that if she’s going to behave like this now she will be completely out of control once this baby arrives and, as hard as it’s going to be now it’s going to be 10 times harder when I’m trying to take care of a newborn.

Is it time to pull the pin and does anyone have any advice on how I should do it or should I try to reconcile first?

Thanks! :slight_smile:

2

I’m not sure cutting off ties to a friend with her kind of problems is such a great idea. For her, I mean. What will she do to herself without you to stabilize her?

Does she have other friends, or just a dependency on you?

3

On the other hand, what do you do when she calls sobbing for bail money at two in the morning when you’re home with a three-week-old baby?

You are not responsible for supporting her during her descent. In my world, that’s called enabling. Block her numbers. Hell, it might be the impetus for her to better herself, although I wouldn’t believe it coming from her mouth.

4

This is a serious understatement - kids are much more time- and energy-consuming than those who haven’t directly experienced them can imagine. You correct in believing that your ability to continue this relationship is at an end.

5

Drop her like a rock. I would have long ago, and now you’re pregnant. You want this woman around your baby?

6

Dear Friend,

This isn’t going to work. You are my friend, but for me to be the friend you need me to be takes more time and energy then I have, with my pregnancy and the coming baby. I hope we can be friends again when you have settled down in the future.

Love, BangBang

…and then cut the chord. Don’t defriend her, but reply late and non-committially to her e-mails and don’t send her any e-mails yourself. Don’t plan get-togethers with her. When she calls, say: “No, I’m really too busy to plan anything. I’ll call you when I have more time and energy.”

7

Do I want an unstable drug user around my baby?
Hmm, tough call.

Regards,
Shodan

8

The two of you used to be on the same path, so you had a lot you could relate to with each other. That path has split; she is now walking one path and you are walking another. You no longer have anything in common. You cannot save or fix her, nor do you have the time. Your focus will be completely on your little sprog. I vote for cut the cord. Your new frenemies will come from the Mommy club.

9

A more friendly but passive agressive way to deal with any calls from her is to use her to load your own woes on. Cut her off when she starts about her problems and rattle on and on about swollen ankles, loose ligaments, the trouble of finding good child care, the strain on you marriage the pregnancy causes. You will feel good for having vented and she will feel good for not getting pregnatn anytime soon.

10

Years ago I ended a toxic friendship (originally typed that as “friendshit”). This was a person I at one point thought of almost as a sister, but she kept making her issues into mine until I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was incredibly painful but once the ~Drama~ was over I felt so relieved and un-stressed that it was all worth it.

No one made Joy’s poor choices but her. She’s an adult and she’s the one who has to deal with them. Taking care of yourself so that you can take good care of your baby is Job 1 right now, and if all she’s doing is stressing you out I think it’s time to pull the plug.

What I did was a lot like Maastricht said: I wrote my ex-friend a letter explaining how I felt and then just refused to have anything to do with her. I ignored her calls, avoided places where I might run into her, things like that.

And if you miss having “frienemies” just go to any mommy board and start a thread on the merits of breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding :wink:

11

For you, drugs were an experiment and a phase. For her, they’re an addiction. She’s mentally ill. With the right effort, she can get healthy, but it’s very hard for her. The best thing you can do for her, IMO, is cut her off and make it very clear that you’re ending the friendship as a consequence of her addiction; you’ll be her friend if she gets well, but you won’t enable her when she’s sick.

Imagine instead if she were bipolar or schizophrenic and refusing treatment. It would be clear for you that someone with such major problems should not be around you and your baby, but it also might help you do what you have to do with more sympathy.

12

I had to dump a friend like Joy. The party just never ended for her. As her oldest friend, I felt obligated to protect and advise her regarding her horrible decisions: unsafe sex, drunk driving and befriending a long list of losers guaranteed to ruin her life. At the end, I just felt exhausted by her escapades. All of this in our thirties. She just became too unpredictable to be a part of my life.

13

I don’t think you need to do anything as dramatic as writing letters or officially ending your friendship; just do what the rest of us do in our thirties and forties, and let the relationship die a natural death. Unless she wants the drama and doesn’t understand what “growing apart” looks like.

14

@foolsguinea “Does she have other friends, or just a dependency on you?”

Not really, she’s burned through a lot of relationships over the years, I guess to be fair I’ve moved on from a lot of people too. Mine seem to just gradually slip away till I’m just wishing them happy birthday on facebook but I don’t think that any of them would hate to hear from me, we’re just in different places. She ends her friendships the same way she does her relationships, she tries to force them to be something they’re not and then berates and castrates them when they don’t meet up to her expectations - but she never lets them go gracefully. I think I’ve survived this long because I just let her have her moments and leave the door open, she’s distanced herself from me a few times and I’ve just calmly waited for her to get over it, no pressure and always an open door. I have a very fulfilling life outside of her so it doesn’t bother me. So no she really doesn’t have any friends.

@Drain Bead “what do you do when she calls sobbing for bail money at two in the morning when you’re home with a three-week-old baby”

Actually she’s more likely to call me sobbing, hysterical and suicidal because she’s broken up with her boyfriend for the 6th time and hasn’t eaten in two days. She’ll get back together with him in a couple of weeks, rinse and repeat. I used to drop everything and go over with a care package (now that is enabling) but the last time she pulled that and then got back together again I told her I wasn’t going to judge her for getting back together, if on the balance she felt that being with this guy was better than not being with him that was up to her but that I was not willing to go through another breakup with her. So of course it didn’t take long for her to call me sobbing, hysterical blah blah blah. I stayed on the phone with her for a little while but I was so angry at her I don’t think I was a huge help and I sure as hell did not go over there! She’s back together with him now but I just don’t trust her not to pull this shit again in a month or 3 months or 6 months and I cannot deal with it with a newborn. Maybe I’m being unfair, she is and has made an effort to improve, she’s really cut down the drinking, still uses a lot of pot and has the occasional big night out, but it’s a huge improvement on the past.

@Xema - I couldn’t agree more, if being pregnant is this exhausting I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s an actual baby. I keep wondering when it’s my turn to kick him - because he’s kicking the hell out of me right now :wink:

@Anaamika & @Shodan - my concern exactly, I do see it as a bit of a lazy out though, she’s trying to improve her life, and is currently going through a pretty stable period. My problem is that I’ve lost faith in her ability to maintain it, she’s fallen over soooooo many times.

@Maastricht - this is really great advice and the angle I think I’ll take, she needs some closure so she doesn’t start spinning trying to work out what went wrong. Probably not so much the passive agressive route, although I like it :slight_smile:

@Tom Tildrum - I think she is bipolar, incredible highs and lows, risk taking behaviour, externalising responsibility for everything. It’s the sort of behavour that works as a teenager but not so much as a grown woman. She’s actually in a pretty stable phase at the moment so it’s almost like I’m doing the opposite dumping her for getting well. Of course it’s really that I don’t trust her to stay well and she’s starting to pull the “berate and castrate” shit on me and I don’t want to drag it out the way she likes to. Sigh… I don’t know!

@Ugly ripe tomato and @dogzilla thanks for sharing your experience and you’re right - those mommas are crazy! Try circumcision and vaccinations, and god forbid you have a sip of beer while pregnant - yikes!

Thanks to all of you for your advice, I think I need to go and write a letter now!

Have a great day :slight_smile:

15

@Stolatt - how did you do it? How did she take it?

@Cat Whisperer - I wish!!! No it’s going to be dramatic and disasterous, she’ll take to her bed for a couple of days, sobbing hysterical blah blah blah. I’ll be the most evil person on the planet, it’ll all be totally unfair… yawn!

16

It sounds like she has a system for coping with the drama she needs. I know someone who loved, loved, loved the ups and downs she created. Burned once, I just kept my mouth shut, mmm hmmmed when I couldn’t get away and screened my calls. I called only when the storm had passed.

Even though she made it seem as though she had nobody but me, she did and she found new people to cast in her little tragi-comedy.

It’s been years, but she’s rock steady now. Finally she learned, because she had to-- the only enablers left were too obviously losers and she dropped them.

We’ve since become just as close, if not closer, than before. Not having a big scene kept any bridges from being burned, so that helped. If a letter is the only way she’ll get a clue, then go for it. You can try a different tack if that doesn’t work.

In the end, you know you’re doing what’s right for you and the little soccer player you’re carrying!

17

I have to agree with Xema. My binge-drinking days and needy-histrionic-friend days are long gone. Be thankful. My life is MUCH more rewarding than it ever was before.

You’ll have to be firm and consistent with her. Her lifestyle seems like a giant downer. Once that baby comes, believe me, your priorities shift dramatically and your tolerance for what you’ll put up with in your life will become close to nill. Especially someone who appears to have issues with addiction/mental illness.

Like the others said, too, let it die a natural death. I had many of these “friendships” prior to a family/career. Admittedly, I am lonely for friendships now, I have a few friends, but nothing like the close relationships of my teens and 20’s.

18

Ending friendships is a tough call, but I think it really only gets to that point when they’ve lived on longer than they should have. In many cases of friends lost, I remember a period where we just had less and less contact over time. But there’s other friendships where we were sentimental and held onto it longer than we should have and so when it finally reaches that point where it needs to end, it will be painful. This sounds like that latter case, where you two were close when you were doing similar things but somewhere along the lines your paths in life diverged but extra effort was made to keep the friendship when it may have been better served if just let go.

The way I see it, you really don’t have much option at this point but to more or less just cut her off. You can probably give her an explanation about how your pregnancy affects your time and mood and how you’ll have even less time after the baby is born, but it would probably benefit both of you to come clean about how you really aren’t friends anymore anyway because it’s not really mutually beneficial and your lifes and interests are just too different. If at some point your lives somehow realign, perhaps when things get in shape for her, you can look at patching things up, but it’s just not good for you to pour all that energy into a broken friendship or for her to have that dependcy that perhaps enables some of her behavior.

So, yeah, I think you should cut the cord.

19

@Ashes, Ashes - what an awesome outcome, that’s really inspiring! I’d love to get to that point too. To be fair I’m really the one who’s pushing the parameters of the relationship into a different place than they were before, she’s still expecting things to be the same as they always have been. I’m not willing to continue the relationship the way that it was and I don’t know if it’s fair to ask her to change to adapt to my needs but it’s worth a go!

@Red Bloom - I think it’s normal to have fewer friends as you get older, I certainly have less now than I did 10 years ago. I’m really lucky that I do have plenty of friends, don’t see them that often but that’s life right? I also am blessed that I work with a great crew, I’ve never been in a workplace with such a fantastic group of people, so I get a lot of my social interaction at work, and we often meet up outside of work too. I think if I didn’t have them I’d really struggle. I guess that’s where Joy’s at, she loves her job but all the other girls are really cliquey and standoffish, and most of her friends outside of work burn out really quickly.

I wish this was easier for me! I almost feel like I’m out of practice, that this is something I might have been better equipped as a teenager to deal with.

Anyway enough procrastination - back to the letter!

Thanks again to everyone for helping me! :slight_smile:

20

@Master Blaster - I’m going to plagarise some of your post, thanks!