friend provides nothing to our relationship, but i don't know how to remove her from my life
I'm a college student entering the last few semesters of my undergraduate career, but I have a friend that is heavily integrated in my life that I don't know how to distance myself from.
We are pretty close friends and I have a good time being around her, but I've recently been pretty frustrated with the way she handles things and her general approach to life. She's a huge complainer and at first I didn't really care, but it's like she just wants to complain more than do something about her problems. She acts like any minor convenience is the worst thing in the world, and makes it everyone's problem, but then doesn't make any changes to make sure those don't happen to her again.
As for our friendship, I just put way more into it than she does. She doesn't plan or initiate hang outs, every time we do anything it's always me asking her. She prioritizes her other friends, and then when they do her wrong, she complains about it to me and says that she feels like she has no one when I'm sitting there and listening to all her problems. There have been multiple instances of her leaving me out, when I always include her when my friends come over. She hangs out with our mutual friends, and they're always the ones to ask if to join them, but never her. She doesn't have a job, and depends on her parents for money for any activity, so she typically doesn't want to do things that will cost a lot, which is fine, but as soon as her other friends ask her to go to dinner 4x a week, she goes with them every time. She's literally left hangouts to go hang out with our neighbors (men btw).
On that note, she's done some things that make me question her morals and if she'd even be there for me when I need it. Not saying I'm a perfect person, but the things that she's done are just crazy. To keep things brief, she basically slept with one of her closest friends' boyfriends on multiple occasions, even after I told her repeatedly that what she's doing is terrible. I'm the only person who knows and I feel like I should just get out of it before things potentially blow up, and people find out that I know. She would complain about how he is ghosting her and being so different, and I'm like....yeah...he has a girlfriend and he used you for sex. I think what she did was disgusting and honestly even if nothing else, just that fact would make me want to distance myself from her.
Finally, and probably the most frustrating thing about being friends with her is her inability and incompetence to get things done. She is just so clueless, and she doesn't seem to want to change that. When I ask her to do things around the apartment (she's also my roommate) she just complains about how tired she is from classes and waking up early, but she chooses to procrastinate and sleep super late even though she has to get up early. Things do not get done, and the apartment is gross if I don't take initiative to clean it up. She's also a very one dimentional thinker, and someone I can't really have deeper and more introspective conversations with. She's not reliable and does not care about other people's time, and is always late and slow to move.
The question isn't if I distance myself, it's how. She's so integrated in my life being my current roommate and potentially future one too, and when we're both home we're always together. I've also recently met some amazing people through her that I would love to get to know better, but I feel like I can't both distance myself from her and get closer to them. I've tried to talk to her multiple times about how her actions make me feel, but she just doesn't understand it. She feels left out when I make plans with someone she introduced me to, but doesn't even try to make me feel included when making plans with our mutual friends. While I don't think she does any of these things with any malintention, but after repeated conversations and situations, it's just not worth my time to keep giving her chances. I want to grow and be around motivated and driven people, not lazy, complacent people that don't do anything about their problems. How do I approach the distance considering how close I am to her?
Posted Jun 11, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC