AITA for distancing myself from my depressive best friend?
I have slowly began distancing myself from my best friend and she makes me feel like a terrible human being.
For context, we have been best friends since we were 7 years old. Like absolute best friends. Jane (fake name) is the sweetest and kindest girl ever. She is also extremely attractive and was one of the most popular girls in highschool (graduating class of 1,000). An Instagram page was eve made on the "hottest girls" at our school and she was the first post. She had lots of friends, but she always was around me, ate lunch with me everyday, and we drove to school every day together and would always stop by after every class to have a quick talk.
For more context, I started dating a boy, Eli (all fake names), when I was 13. We had some rough patches but we are still going extremely strong! We are the happiest and healthiest we have ever been and we also go to school around 10 minutes away from each other (we all live in LA area, but Jane lives like 2 minutes away by car). We have (and have had) 3 major vacation trips together this year (one that's around 11 hours away by plane) and are really planning our future together. I am an EXTREMELY busy person. I usually pull 2-3 all nighters per week because of how little time I have. I am enrolled in 8 courses (25 credits), working a part time job, officer and president of two major clubs, and am in the honors program. I also am really focused on my portfolio and spend around 15 hours per week on portfolio projects. I rarely get more than 4-5 hours of sleep per night. I try to make time for my boyfriend though because I truly believe I will grow old with this boy and he is my #1 priority outside of school and work. We hang out 1-2 times a week max (usually one long day and the second is a quick food date that's 30 minutes to an hour long). He is also CRAZY busy so we both understand.
Jane started dating a boy when she was 17 and they just celebrated their 2 year anniversary. But ever since we graduated highschool, I started noticing her behavior was becoming much more clingy towards me and him. All of her friends went off to state schools or universities. I'm not kidding when I say I am her only friend she hangs out with, texts, and calls. She lost everyone except me and her boyfriend (except some people she'll hang out with once every few months when they come back from break). At college, she has not made a single friend. Over the past year, she went from hanging out with her boyfriend 2+ times a week, to 7 days a week, multiple times a day. She began to become extremely clingy towards him and would tell me whenever she feels he is overwhelmed in the relationship, she gets extremely emotional and (this happens multiple times a month) she will cry to him for 2-3 hours straight and he'll just hold her the entire time. She cries to him every week and will send long messages of her emotions. They also have weekly check ins where they voice how they feel in the relationship, but while the boyfriend never says anything negative, Jane always brings up things she's unhappy with (not enough time spent together).
When they weren't hanging out, they were calling, sending lots of texts, and even when we'd hang out, she'd invite him over or call him. I could tell he was slowly realizing how emotionally dependent she was becoming. On the small chance he couldn't hang out every day of the week, she'd become extremely emotional to me, would beg me to hangout, and I'd see her text him extremely passive aggressive things.
Then, two months ago, he admitted to her that the relationship was becoming too emotionally draining for him. All he asked was that they could hang out 7 days a week still, but to only call once or twice per day and have more space with texting. She became a mess and it became too much for him. To put things simply, he broke up with her and I am 100% on his side.
Well, over the last year she has become increasingly clingy towards me too (but usually on the days her boyfriend couldn't hang out with her). I'd get angry, passive aggressive texts from her when I wasn't free. Whenever we would hang out, she would just be rude to me and always make EVERYTHING a competition. I just became miserable.
So, as of around a year ago, I slowly started distancing myself. We went from hanging out 2 ish times a week to once every 2+ weeks. But ever since 2 months ago when her boyfriend asked for some space, she has made my life so miserable.
I get multiple calls every day. I am woken up to a call usually in the mornings from her asking to come over. I always get calls at night time begging for me to see her. She stalks my location religiously and will always ask where I am, why I'm at a location I'm not usually at (if I'm out somewhere), when I'll be home, and will tell me she sees how I'm active and I'm not responding to her. I get probably 4-5 spam texts EVERY DAY from her pleading me to spend time with her. She has texted my boyfriend that I need to respond to her when I left the chat for less than 5 minutes.
Even though I only hangout with my boyfriend 1-2 times a week MAXIMUM, when I'm with him, she'll try to set me up for her to come over to so I feel guilty into hanging out with her. For instance, here is a text message from two days ago: "hey you're at Eli's house right now, right?" -Jand "yeah I've been with Eli, [his friend, and his friends girlfriend]" -me. "yeah I saw can I come over with you guys?" "sorry they're leaving soon and we're going to have a family dinner with his grandparents" "oh boo I wanted to come over cuz I'm at a [random park] trying to kill time haha." "yeah sorry I'ma be spending time with his grandparents tonight." "okay if you're free later wanna hang out" (I left her on read and 4 hours pass). "wyd right now" (she saw my location change to home).
I usually text my boyfriend only on Snapchat and I can't even go on it most days now because she'll be stalking when I'm active. for instance, she texted me 4 messages this morning, all at different times from 10am to 2pm. I wasn't active on Snapchat at all until 6pm today. I go on Snapchat to text my boyfriend and within one minute, she sees I'm active and she starts spamming me again how I'm ignoring her.
I just can't do this friendship's clingliness anymore. But I don't know what to do. I have honestly distanced myself from nearly all of my college friends this last year just because I have 0 free time and there were a lot of major problems in my other friendships. I am now only really close to my boyfriend and our mutual friends (since we shared friend groups since we dated all of highschool). But Jane always takes it as a personal attack and I just don't really want to be close to her anymore. Besides my boyfriend, she is 1/2 of my friends that I hangout with on a monthly basis. And I still feel exhausted from being a friend to her.
I feel like I could the the asshole because I still spend 10-12 hours with my boyfriend per week, but will hang out with Jane maybe once every two weeks. And she is extremely alone right now after just getting broken up with. She also struggles a lot with mental health. She doesn't have any other friends besides me after 4+ years of have tens of friends she was with every day. She has a really rough family situation too. She spends nearly every day at a random park somewhere, sitting alone in her car. And I could carve out time to see her - but I just don't want to anymore.
AITA for distancing myself from my friend?
Posted May 5, 2025, 2:17 AM UTC