I have used fake names in this story. I have been best friends with Mariana F31. We have been best friends since high school and we have had a great friendship. In 2024, she started talking to a guy named Eduardo M30. She told me she was just hooking up with him after ending things with her ex. Over time, she started falling for him and expressed wanting to have a serious relationship, and he expressed not wanting that. Finally, they decide to get serious, but then he broke up with her after 2 months. She called me at 9am crying on FaceTime and how she couldn’t live without him and couldn’t recover from this. I tried to console her through the phone.
Mariana then got back together with Eduardo. Months later, my friend got a message from the Tea app saying she saw her post and had information on her relationship with him. He had been two-timing my friend and another woman, Luisa for about a year. She provided photos and screenshots all while with Mariana. Mariana confronted him and gave him another chance. One month later, Eduardo broke up with her. Heartbroken, she told me that she wanted to fake a pregnancy test and put it in the bathroom so that she could get a reaction from him when he came over. I asked him why he would come over. She admitted that she texted him to just “have sex” and nothing else. I suggested she not do any of those because that would make things worse. She got defensive and told me, “Well, I’m going to find healing in my own way”. I told her that if she told her therapist about this, she said no. She told me that she is afraid her therapist will judge her and would suggest that she shouldn’t do that. She reiterated that she would do things her way.
On Jan 1 2026 she sent me voicenote crying about another issue with Eduardo and that she needed her best friend. I sent her a frustrated voicenote and she stated that I scolded her and needed support from me. I told her that I was frustrated with her. She then told me that she would finally stop talking to him after this.
This past weekend, she visited me to do a spiritual cleansing from a curandera. The night before she left, she told me in tearfully she had been talking to him and that he made her feel worthless. Again, I try to console her and empower her. I want to be there for my friend, but it seems that she is committed to being disrespected. I care about my friend and her feelings, but what she does in her love life, I am checked out. She’s defensive and resistant to change, and she actively makes choices that cause her problems. AITA for feeling checked out and apathetic?
NTA.
She doesn’t want advice, she wants an audience. And you’ve been cast in the role of emotional support human while she keeps repeating the exact choices that break her.
NTA she sounds exhausting.
NTA
Your friend will eventually realize that the relationship is never going to change.
YWTA if you keep engaging in all this drama.
You do you and focus on your life instead, because this people (“friends”) do not care about your wellbeing
You can be apathetic about this situation without being apathetic about her. Tell her that you’ve spoken your piece about Eduardo and have nothing to add. NTA. Same for her, really. He is.
NTA. Sometimes you just have to take a few steps back and let them dig themselves out of the hole they’ve created.
Make the topic of Eduardo a no-go in your friendship. Set a boundary and be straight forward: “he doesn’t love you and this situation is beyond toxic, it’s pathetic that you continue to see him.” I’ve been Mariana before (granted I was a teenager) and my bff was real with me and then gave me the cold shoulder for a while and it ended up being the wake up call I needed.
Outside of the guy do you still have common interests… I have a friend who complains about EVERYTHING. literally, nothing is her fault. The world wrongs her. All the time. Little things that could be fixed like the food place handed her the wrong sandwich and she doesn’t ask them to fix it and instead will text me about it and how workers suck and people are lazy and stupid.
BUT in person when we have an activity going we have so much fun together, so I don’t always reply to every text, sometimes I let it go for over 24 hours- we both have the same socially demanding job in different places so it’s never questioned if one of us doesn’t reply clearly it was just a tough work day.
I guess it’s what do you want from this friendship and what do you get.
\[And I don’t think friends are worth boundaries, it’s kind of all or nothing, you either have to hear about the guy or stop talking to her, but good friends don’t put “rules” about what the other friends can and can’t talk about, that’s the purpose of a friendship- I mean obviously like “hey don’t tell this embarrassing story to my new group of friends” is like one thing but telling a friend they can not talk about x y z to you, to me that is just ending the friendship.\]
I’d step back, don’t reply, or minimal reply, that sucks, oh darn, he’s stupid…. those types of things, and again really look at the good of the friendship.
NTA
NTA you can definitely tell her that you’ll still be her friend and always support her but she knows your feelings about Eduardo and there’s nothing further you can contribute to the conversation so you’re done talking about him.