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My best friend is an **
We've been best friends for eleven years. We've been through really difficult **. And when she offered to let me and my fiance live in her house for pretty cheap I was excited because it was something we'd talked about since high school. Everything was fine until she broke-up with her live-in boyfriend and immediately started sleeping with this guy at work. Now he's over here at least four times a week, a lot of the times without her even telling us he's coming. She avoids spending time with us to spend time with him, they spend all their time in her room or in a room separate from us, and when I confronted her about it she got livid and started bringing up all this ** that didn't even make sense.
I'm angry that she seems to be choosing to spend time with this guy over spending any time with us. She works from 7 in the morning until 4:30, but still manages to find other things to fill her time so that we hard get to see her. To make matters worse the guy is so shy that even when we do try to talk with him and be social he doesn't say a word. I feel like I've lost my best friend to this guy she barely knows.
She's told us countless times, even when coming to her being very calm and asking 'do you want us here? are we causing problems', that we aren't an issue. The more my fiance and I have discussed it the more we've figured she doesn't do this on purpose, but she's been without friends, close friends, for a very long time and I'm not sure she knows how to be a friend to someone who is around for more than a few days. We've decided just to let things run their course, to stop waiting for her to hang out with us, and let things happen organically. We're both very 'hippie' type people, and she's been living in the city for a long time so the views on life that we used to share aren't really the same anymore, and I don't think at this point we can return it to that so it's just going to take some time to work out how we can still be friends.
I do want to talk to her about her pill dependency, because she's already banned from any type of opiates because she was addicted to percocet and ended up having to go to the hospital because of it. So she has a history of prescription drug abuse. I know it's a delicate subject, but no she doesn't live close to her mother, her brother is a bit of a flake, and she doesn't really have anyone static in her life to point out the issue. She does have problems with insomnia, but taking these meds to the point that she doesn't wake up when someone is hitting her or yelling her name is a problem and it's really affecting her personality. She's been talked to twice at her job for her change in attitude.
The biggest problem is not knowing what my boundaries are. This is her house, and though we buy 80% of the food, pay for the internet and give her rent (on top of all the other stuff we do for her) I don't feel like I have the place to tell her what to do with her life. I want to tell her I don't think she has her priorities in order, but again, I feel like that's overstepping my bounds. I am worried for her, her career and our friendship.
And it's interesting how this post has evolved from the original one. It's like the layers of an onion... When you say your views on life are different now, that could be true. But you are also in different places in each of your respective lives. And two people can be living in the same small town for years and simply grow apart. That doesn't mean you won't be good friends, it's just that your friendship changes. You have a far different and more complexed situation happening. From your first post, I could have never guessed this was what was happening. You're not just dealing with a friend with problems. You're dealing with an addict. And everything that you may be doing for, may in fact be enabling her to keep using and to keep it a secret and to keep you close, but not too close. You may want to look into al-anon and just. As for your boundaries.. you care about your friend. Anything you say is going to be coming from the heart. But you just have to be okay with the fact that she is not ready to do anything to change her life right now. And sometimes that's the hardest part of being a friend..to have healthy boundaries and to know how far you'll go. She also may not care what you think. The fact that she has been spoken to twice at her job, that's her issue to deal with..not yours. You can't rescue your friends, if they don't want to be rescued. Trust me, I've been in similar situations and it really has to be what you're okay with. Because you don't want to enable her behavior. You can say I'm worried about you. And I'm willing to help you get whatever help you need...but you have to want to get help. But if you don't then this is what changes..(be careful here..cause she could just say leave..) In some ways, even though her mom doesn't live close by ..she maybe should know what's going on with her daughter. But that's fine line and your friend may be **. Why are you guys doing and paying for so much? Was that just the agreement? She got it made....