'I had to dump my best friend after she turned obsessive'

When *Jenny, 40, from Glasgow, tried to support her best friend Alison* through her marriage break-up, Alison began placing more and more demands on her. After she physically blocked Jenny from leaving her house one night, she knew she had to end the friendship.

Alison and I met at work when we were in our 20s. We’d always be the first in the office in the mornings and we discovered we had loads in common. We started hanging out outside of work and found we both had a shared interest in fashion and the desire to run our own business. We decided to join forces and set up our own small retail business together.

Initially, it was great and loads of fun – I mean, what could be better than working with your best friend? We were doing something we both loved and had what we called business strategy meetings but we’d only spend a few hours talking about work – the rest of the time we’d chat about anything and everything – books, colleagues, films and so on.

Around that time, Alison got married and started a family. I was happy to support her and be part of her life. I was dating and working full-time alongside trying to grow our business so we were both really busy. I would say we were good at supporting one another.

Red flags

Looking back though, there were times when things would happen, which rang a few alarm bells. I remember one time I disagreed with something Alison had said, I can’t even remember what now, nothing serious. But she just hung up the phone on me. When I tried to call back, she didn’t answer. I had no idea what I’d done wrong.

I’d invested all my hopes and dreams and also a bit financially into the business though, as well as into our friendship and I really wanted to make things work.

One day, Alison confided in me that she was having problems with her husband. He had told her he found her quite narcissistic and she had apparently gone ballistic.

I told her I would always be there for her, no matter what but that’s when things changed.

She started texting and messaging me at all hours. I’d sometimes be up till 3am answering her messages. I would tell her I’d have to go because I had to get up for work in a few hours but she’d tell me I couldn’t just leave her.

Obsessive tendencies

There was one night when I had been out on a date and turned my phone off for the evening. When I got back, I found multiple messages from Alison. She had become increasingly frantic.

I tried to reason with her and reminded her that I’d been on a date, and that I’d already told her I was going out beforehand, but she guilt-tripped me and said she couldn’t believe I hadn’t answered her.

"What am I supposed to do when you don’t answer or reply? You know you have to keep your phone on for me," she said.

I remember her saying that her ex used to tell her that she was too reliant on me and should be asking him for help more with the day-to-day stuff. She told me that he thought our friendship had contributed to the breakdown of their marriage. It was almost as though she had replaced him with me. So I also felt responsible too and as though I had to step up to support her.

Another time, when I didn’t reply for a few hours to one of her many messages, she told me I’d made her feel abandoned.

Guilt and confusion

I felt so conflicted. I knew things were getting really intense but I didn’t know what to say. One part of me felt a bit freaked out by the commitment and responsibility Alison had put on me but another part of me felt, 'Oh yes, I should be there for her. I should step up as her best friend.' It was really hard and confusing to deal with.

It felt as though our lives were so intertwined, I didn’t have a choice but to support her as much as I could. I kept thinking, 'It’s not going to be like this forever, things will get better. I just need to get her through this' but things seemed to go from bad to worse.

I remember her saying to me at one point that I needed to focus more on the business and do things more quickly. When I told her I was doing things as quickly as I could alongside trying to work full-time she told me: "It’s okay for you, you’ve got money from your job coming in. I need to do this to put food on the table for me and my kids." Again, I felt responsible and like I had to work for the two of us.

Seeking professional help

When I realised that things weren’t going to ease off, I told Alison that she should talk to someone, a professional therapist or a counsellor. She didn’t have a lot of money, she said, so she ended up talking to a client about things. The boundaries were all blurred. I didn’t think it was appropriate but I didn’t want to say anything.

Things carried on like this for about two to three years at varying degrees but then Alison got involved in a new relationship. She had been on a few dates and had a brilliant time. She seemed really happy, at last. Then this man she’d been dating just disappeared.

She didn’t hear from him for weeks. She was devastated. I told her that it wasn’t acceptable for him to just dump her like that but she made excuses for him. She said he’d had a few mental health problems and also issues with drugs in the past as if that basically excused his behaviour.

Then, he came back on the scene and Alison acted as though nothing had happened. She told me I was all wrong about him. When I told her I wasn’t convinced about this guy and didn’t want him to disappear again, she became quite aggressive and told me I was just jealous of her and her relationship.

The turning point

Things came to a head one night when I had gone over there to go through some work stuff. Alison lived in the middle of nowhere and it took me about 45 minutes to get there. She spent most of the evening on the phone to her boyfriend and it got later and later. Finally, at around 9pm we sat down to discuss things and I told her I would need to leave by about 10:30pm as I didn’t want to be too late on a work night.

When I stood up to go, she completely lost it with me. She told me that we hadn’t got enough done and that I couldn’t leave her. She stood in front of the door and blocked me from going and then started shouting at me. She started screaming at me then she lay on the floor, scrunched up into a ball and told me that if I left she might do something to hurt herself. I had to comfort and console her for hours before she allowed me to leave.

On the way home, in the early hours of the morning, I burst into tears. It had all been so frightening. I realised I couldn’t take it anymore but I didn’t know how to deal with things as our lives had become so interlinked – and there was the business to think of too.

The next morning at work I felt completely drained and emotionally battered. She messaged me as though nothing had happened. I told her I’d been really upset about things and she said she’d got annoyed that I had disagreed with her over a minor work issue. She told me I wasn’t very good at managing conflict and that it was my fault she had got so upset.

Over the following months, there were a few more incidents where she shouted at me and lost it over a little thing. I became a bit numb to it and looking back, I think I just shut down.

I spoke to a few other friends about things and told two of them just how bad it had got. They both said she was too controlling and that there had been lots of red flags from the start. During one work event, for example, she drank half a bottle of wine and smoked a joint beforehand. When I said that was not really something she should be doing before a work do, she laughed and told me I was being unreasonable.

Breaking free

Through work, I signed up to a new online course and met a few other people with similar interests to me who went on to become quite good friends. That gave me the confidence I needed to break free of the toxic friendship I’d had with Alison.

During one of our business strategy meetings, about six months after that awful night, I told her that I’d changed my business plans and wanted to focus on something else for a bit. I tried to depersonalise it and make it about work. We told our clients we would be taking a break and would come back to them when things were a bit more settled.

The business ended and bit by bit, our friendship petered out and I heard from her less and less. A year or so on, I blocked her on social media and that was that.

A few months afterwards, I met up with a mutual friend who mentioned how Alison had been casually using drugs for several years. I’d had no idea she was using. It helped put things into perspective and her erratic behaviour fell into place.

Now, five years on, I still feel a bit wary about meeting and making new friends. I’ve had to think carefully about the sort of people I'm attracting. I’ve realised, though, that I am not responsible for Alison or her behaviour and that I don’t always have to save people. I won’t make that same mistake again.

*Names have been changed to protect identities.