Best friend has made our friendship totally unhealthy and I don’t know how to handle it
Background story. Had been best friends with this girl for almost 20 years. We were joined at the hip, acted like sisters and did everything together. Through college 10 years ago, I lived with her family and things were great. I started dating my now husband, freshman year of college. To start off with she was supportive of the of the relationship but only because she didn’t think it would last I think. Once we got more serious she was not happy at it at all. She would tell her mom my boyfriend was a bad guy (which he wasn’t at all) just so her mom wouldn’t let me leave the house or see him at all. Despite all of that we stayed together but it was a very hard situation. Junior year of college I moved out of her family’s house to move in with my boyfriend and she was SO upset I moved out and blamed it entirely on my boyfriend at the time. She said he pressured me to do it because he didn’t like our friendship which is absolutely untrue.
The year after graduation my husband and I got married and we got pregnant shortly after. She was furious with me when I told her I was pregnant and cried and I didn’t know what to do and actually felt bad for her so I started being way more accommodating to her than I should have been. When she wanted to hang out she refused to come to my house saying that she didn’t feel comfortable being around my husband or being anywhere he lives so my heavily pregnant self would always drive to her. We would hang out and every time she would literally BEG me to leave my husband and move back in with her. I would refuse obviously and tell her if she kept going I would stop being her friend entirely. She would apologize but would then burst into tears every time I left to go home because “she can’t believe we live in two different places”. When my son was born she insisted on being in the delivery room but I refused because I knew she would make a big deal about my husband being there and I refused to deal with the drama or for my husband to have to feel uncomfortable. She tried to come in three times until the labor and delivery staff told her to leave the hospital. I was 9cm without any pain meds and she was testing me how awful I was because I refused to let her in the delivery room. She showed up the day after my son was born and acted like she made such a big selfless effort by congratulating my husband on our sons birth before she left 🙄
After that I cut ties. I couldn’t deal with the bizarre behavior anymore. Shortly after my son was born my husband and I moved 4 hours away for his job.
We now have four kids and this friend recently text me apologizing for everything and saying she got therapy etc and wanted to hang out and meet my three younger kids. I agreed and we met at a park close by my house. Things went great and we slowly started hanging out again. She seemed like she had really grown and changed for the better. This past weekend, I invited her to hang out again and we took my kids to an amusement park for the day. When we were done I invited her back to my house for dinner and she insisted on buying us dinner and we all ate at a picnic table at the park. After we ate, I once again invited her back to my house to hang out back at my house since it was almost my kids bedtime and she refused and again said she couldn’t come back to my house because she didn’t want to be anywhere my husband was. She told me she loved me and the kids and wanted to continue being friends but “will never be ok with or want to be around my husband in any capacity”. She said that’s her one ground rule for the friendship. And that her having boundaries should be ok. She then said next time she comes up to hang out we should get a hotel room so we don’t have to be in the car most of the day and the kids can go to bed at a reasonable time but she won’t have to be at my home where my husband could be or could come home to at any point while she’s there.
At that point, I packed my kids in the car and went home without saying a single word because it was their bedtime and she went home. When I got home she text me and told me she hopes I think about it but that she’s never going to budge on the “one ground rule”she has. That’s insane right? Like why does me being her friend only involve compromise from me? This is toxic behavior right? I’m not going to reach out to her anymore, I just wanted other peoples thoughts on this.
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