Aw, my mom is right...Nilly is the nicest person on the planet.ETA: As you can tell from the new tag, I fall short a lot. Even if it is just a joke(funnier still if you know what I looked like in '94, but I digress. Two words, though. Fashion. Victim.)

Now. Smart Bitches, I do need your advice.

I don't know if you remember the story about my friend, who I bitched about few weeks ago. The one who needs me, pretty much, while I don't need her at all. She's acting like a child about it - she's, the one who's 10 years older than I.

(Edit: and I mostly mean that she keeps talking with me when I specifically tell her I can't talk with her. And I'm too polite to hung up on friends).

But I like her. And she is in pain, I have no doubt about it. She's just driving me mental. I told her I don't feel comfortable about the whole thing, and she replied with "but you know you're really helping me, right?", and continued storming off with gazillion other questions that will send me to the asylum. And unfortunately, due to her lack of money she stopped seeing her psychologist.

She needs help. I can help her, but the whole thing is making me feel very uncomfortable. I feel guilty leaving her almost on her own on this.

How do I cut this?

Also. I might do something crazy, that might turn out wonderful for me, and apply to HUJI School of History. Where people actually want to study, and cow-people don't look at me as weirdo for actually - God forbid - reading the articles for class.

Oh, and in my previous post, I forgot to congratulate fellow Buffistas on their academic achievements (and yes. Getting out of bed to class is an academic achievement, too!). Also, ~mas to those who need them.

Now, I leave you with this. The only song I know of with negative time durance (-0:34, IIRC). I have the cassette - it's an Israeli sci-fi album, which I enjoy tremendously).

I don't know the answer about your friend, because the bottom line is you are helping her at the expense of your own mental health and ability to get work done you need to get done. She obviously will push as hard as she can to have you continue to help at that cost to you. So basically the question is how strong your survival instincts are. You set limits or you don't. It doesn't sound like she is going to honor limits: she will walk right over any lines you draw if you let her, push as hard as she can against any lines you don't let her cross. So basically that leaves it your decision how much damage you let her do to you in order to help her. So no advice. Once you decide on that tradeoff, there are lots of wise people on this list who can help you figure out how to enforce. But first you have to decide how much are willing to endanger your own survival to meet her needs. If the situation were slightly more dramatic, would take a bullet for her? If not, that might be a guide for this admittedly less extreme situation.

But I would totally take a bullet for my friends...it still doesn't mean I'd be doing it for healthy reasons.

That's the thing, Typo Boy: I kindda know my limits. Only when I ask her to respect them, it's not happening, for some reason (from "I gotta hang up now. Really" to when I tell her I can't talk with her, she emails instead, kindda expecting me to pick up from there).

I never understood the "would you take a bullet for" questions. In theory, I'd take a bullet for anyone unless he/she are the ones who are pointing the gun at me. In reality, between the flight or fight, I'm the freeze.

Either way, it's the classical "needs me more than I need her" case. Which never turns out well.

But again, advice has to be based on what people are actually willing to do. Quite often giving into something like this is done without really straight out facing what you are doing. But you are right that the bullet is probably a bad analogy. I would take bullets for people I would not let push past my boundaries like that. Differnt circumstances. I guess the main point is that I don't that whether to let the boundaries be crossed is not something that good advice can be given on. For what it is worth, I wouldn't but not much discussion. But basically any advice has to be based on a firm determination not let boundaries be crossed. Cause not much to say if the decision is the other way.

X-post. OK so that is clear. You are willing to enforce boundaries. You just need advice on the how. Cause then yeah, I think we have a lot of smart people who can help with that one. In that case I would just be mean and hang up, but I'm not the best person when it comes to figuring out th tactful way to do things.

Edit: redundant post, I guess. I'm leaving it here in case it'll help someone to understand the situation better.

Typo Boy, I get what you're saying, about how I'm letting that situation continue.

Let me rephrase, then. What I need now is an advice how to tell someone who is convinced she is respecting said limits that in fact, she really doesn't, and I'd be very much relived to finish our communication because of that. I don't see her changing and not asking her to change her ways to keep in touch with me, but I spent a hell lot of time shaping my life the way I want them to be (work in progress), but mostly, surrounded by the ones I want and love next to me. And with the current relationship, I just don't want her there. And I think it's more fair than asking her to change.

In the stuff I didn't need to know category, my upstairs neighbor and her teenage son are fighting about which one drinks more alcohol.

Ouch, sj. In that situation, if I weren't brought up with my own Straight Edge mentality, I'd say I would be the one to drink more alcohol.