I’ve had the same best friend since high school. We’re now in our 30s and live very separate lives in different states but we still text every day. When we were younger she had a lot of issues with gossiping and shit talking. She’d hang out with a friend and immediately text me about them talking crap. As a teen and young adult I used to engage with this and partake but as I’ve gotten older it no longer interests me. However, she is still very much stuck on this behavior, I think mostly because her life has not changed much since we were kids. She 1) still lives at home with her parents 2) is financially dependent on them despite working as a teacher and 3) has never lived independently or ever had any sort of romantic relationship. Her life is pretty much the same as it was when we were 16. Now the kicker with all this is that she’s insanely miserable with her life. She goes to therapy twice a week for anxiety and to “cope with her parents”. She claims her mother is a narcissist and emotionally abuses her. However, like I said, she continues to live with her despite having the financial means to leave. Her therapist has encouraged her to leave but she just… won’t. She’s also miserable with her job. She HATES being a teacher. She shit talks all of her coteachers and she even talks shit about her students sometimes. Yet she has worked there for 8 years and won’t find a different job. There’s always an excuse as to why. The most recent excuse is that it’s near her house and she doesn’t like long commutes. But to everyone else, my friend is the picture perfect model daughter and teacher. She posts these long gushes on Facebook about how blessed she is with her family, and with this school she teaches at. Yet turns around to me and tells me they make her miserable and she hates her mother and hates teaching. Her other close friends, she will post pics with them captioning them like “love this woman so much!” yet texts me while she’s hanging out with them “Cora is so fucking stupid. Let me tell you what she said…” Now she claims that her therapist tells her that all of the people in her life are toxic and that her mother is definitely a narcissist. But I’m starting to think that maybe she’s the narcissist. Everything is always everyone else’s problem and nothing she does is ever wrong. I don’t know how it took me so long to realize how two faced and fake she is. My husband told me last night “if she’s talking shit about all her other friends you can bet she’s talking shit about you too.” I feel heartbroken because this is my best friend since I was a teenager but I’m getting so burned out from the fakeness. I just opened Facebook to see her promoting her mom’s jewelry business yet yesterday she was crying to me on the phone about her mom is a horrible person and she hates her. Every time I’m like “well you can move out…” and she changes the subject. I’m just over it.