 

First, duplicate account, because if I am  the asshole I'd rather process that hard truth quietly to myself instead  of having it lurk in my reddit history for anyone to see.

Second,  context: $Friend is someone I met in college. She has gone through a  lot of very traumatic shit, including an abusive household with parents  who on the regular manipulate her. I don't want to go into details on  all of that, but I do want to acknowledge that she comes from a pretty  toxic background.

Third, TL;DR (put at the front, as per a recent LPT I saw):

\- I have a friend with anxiety issues that probably qualify as mental illness

\-  I have done a lot for this friend. Like, a lot. But the most relevant  are loaning her $2,000 and giving her a ride to work everyday and a  couch to sleep on nearly every night for two and a half months.

\-  I told what I thought was a funny anecdote about her at a company  get-together (she and I both work for the same company), which caused  her to become upset with me and accuse me of being a shitty friend.

\- I blew up on her.

\-  Recently learned that she told a mutual friend she was afraid of me,  but it looks to me like that she's using me as a scapegoat to avoid  responsibility for a financial obligation.

\-  Am I the asshole for blowing up? Am I being too hard on her?  Insensitive to her emotional needs? Or is she being an asshole for using  me? Throwing me under the bus to cover for her personal and  professional failures?

\- It's a VERY long read. It's a doozy. With months of things boiling up to a point.

Fourth, the story:

Me  and this friend met way back in college, and while we are not and never  have been romantically involved we spent enough time around each other  that multiple rumors popped up that we were secretly cheating on our  respective S/Os. Generally, these rumors never bothered me because,  honestly, in college I was definitely the kind of asshole who didn't  give a shit what anyone else thought about anything if it didn't effect  me in an immediate and direct way. Looking back on it, I cringe. But  hey. That's who I was, and I try my best to own that part of my life-- I  don't make excuses for myself and I try hard to acknowledge when I'm in  the wrong. So part of me posting here is, I guess, checking to see if  I'm still that asshole.

After college,  me and $Friend kept in touch. My S/O and I broke up for unrelated  reasons, and I ended up leaving the country for a bit after graduation. I  was pretty heartbroken and lonely, and yeah, I know leaving a country  due to a breakup is overly dramatic. So sue me. While overseas, I got to  missing a lot of my old friends from college, so I saved up my money  and flew $Friend to where I was along with her S/O.

I  came back to the U.S. a little over a year later, and shortly after  that $Friend and her S/O broke up. I didn't get involved-- I was close  to both of them, and didn't want to be put in the awkward situation of  choosing sides.

Years go by, and we're  thick as thieves. End up going overseas together again-- she lost her  passport, and the night before the flight I helped her find it by  tearing her apartment apart. It's a fun anecdote.

She  ends up getting with a new $S/O, who I've since become very close to as  well. Cool dude. Laid back, easy going kind of guy. I briefly ended up  with a new S/O, the Bad Ex who ended up cheating on me and spreading a  lot of false rumors about me. Luck of the draw, I guess. Now, maybe it's  because the whole time I was overseas no one I used to be super close  to ever reached out to me or even knew I had left the country, and that  HURT. So when my ex started spreading shit about me, that REALLY got  under my skin--- I had felt like I had finally built some real  friendships, only to find that people I'd known for years were willing  to ditch me in a heartbeat. Of those, I ended up getting an apology from  one of them-- he later found out through someone else that my Bad Ex  was lying, and sent me a message on social media apologizing for not  believing me. I don't know if he was the only one who ever found out,  the only one who ever ended up believing me, or the only one who was big  enough to admit he did me wrong, but I have a massive amount of respect  for the dude. My point here is that while I was an asshole, I am not  and was not the kind of person who regularly used or manipulated other  people to settle some kind of vindictive streak. (Which was the specific  thing I was accused of by my Bad Ex when she got caught cheating, and  will become relevant later) But, for all of those reasons, those kinds  of accusations hit a very sore spot for me.

Now,  sometime later, I end up leaving my really shitty job and I get a new  job working at the same company as $Friend, on her recommendation.  Shortly after that, due to the death of my grandmother, I ended up with a  small inheritance. It was a lot of money, to be sure, but I wasn't like  ultra rich or anything like that. $Friend mentions, in multiple  conversations, how lucky I was to get this inheritance, as it would play  no small part in me paying off some minor debts. (I wasn't close to my  grandmother at all, and she'd been catatonic for the better part of  three years-- so this isn't a "Fuck your grandmother" kind of  conversation. It's very much a "Wow! What a windfall!" kind of  conversation.) And she also mentions how burdened she is by debt  herself. Now, I've got my own stuff I have to take care of, but I'm in a  much better position financially than she is. So these conversations  were REALLY uncomfortable for me, because, real talk, I didn't want to  share my money, and it very much felt like that's what it was coming to.

Finally,  one night she calls me, crying and sobbing about how overwhelming her  debt is. She beats around the bush a lot, but I finally bite the bullet  and say, "Alright, you know what? I'll pay for some of it. How much is  your credit card debt?"

$2,000. Not as  bad as it could be-- I had never owned a credit card, but I've read  stories about people who are in debt their entire lives. Besides, she  DID help me get my new job. Which I love very much. But I need that  money to pay for my own stuff-- my car, my new apartment, moving, etc.

So  I tell her, "I'll loan you $2,000, but I want it back. Not all at once,  but in a way that'll help you out of this hole you're in. We get paid  weekly, so I want $25 per paycheck. If you can't do it sometimes, that's  fine. Let me know-- I'm not going to come break your kneecaps over it,  but I DO want my money back."

She  agrees, but under one condition: I do NOT tell her $S/O. See, he doesn't  know about the credit card debt, and a condition he has for marrying  her is she gets her debt under control. Until then, he tells her when  she brings it up, marriage is off the table because he doesn't want to  be blindsided by that.

I think that's a little odd, but whatever. Their relationship isn't any of my business.

And,  to her credit, she does uphold her end of the bargain mostly. There are  some months where she can't afford to pay out anything-- and generally I  tell her "Not a problem, get it to me when you can." She ends up paying  about 1/3 of what she owes, and I was, truthfully, quite happy with  that. I'm not a mobster-- I'm not harassing her over this.

Well,  one day, the tags on her vehicle expire, and she can't get the time to  go and renew them. How about we just carpool to work, since we live in  the same city, work in the same company? She'll split the gas with me.  Hell yeah. I'm happy with this arrangement, too. At first.

But  the thing is, it gets to a point where being around her is just a  constant drain. She's always depressed about something--- and I want to  be a good, supportive friend, but I need a break. But she's feeling  anxiety about her apartment because she hasn't cleaned in awhile and she  "doesn't have the spoons to deal with that right now", and then she  accuses our company's IT guy of sexual assault and her boss is breathing  down her neck about some paperwork that needs to be filed and HR can't  find video footage of the assault because (she says) IT guy must have  erased it and the company's quotas aren't being met, and her job is  really difficult and so on and so forth. And $S/O is absolutely nowhere  to be seen during all of this--- he's always busy. He's in the military  and about to deploy, so when he's not on base he's trying to get in as  much time with his other friends as he can before he ships off to not  see them again for a few years. And she's upset and anxious about that,  too. And I want to be a good, supportive friend, but $Friend is always  upset about SOMETHING, and I'm a pretty social person but I have  absolutely no time to myself.

My daily routine has become this:

\- I wake up, shower, dress, get ready for work

\- I carpool $Friend, who is usually on my couch, to work

\- I work.

\-  I carpool $Friend back to our city. Sometimes we drop by her apartment  so she can get her work clothes for the next day. She then returns to my  couch. Sometimes, she needs to run other errands, and I take her there,  too, because she can't renew her tags due to some technical difficulty.

\-  She stops paying me back for the credit card debt. Times are tough, she  says, and she's got no money. Do I have any idea how hard it is to be a  woman in this economy? (She gets paid about $3 more than I do, so this  comment annoys me. I ask her, on multiple occasions, where all of that  money is going. She argues that because she's in a higher tax bracket  than I am, she actually makes less than I do. I don't buy it--- I point  out that she gets paid more after taxes than I do before taxes. The  argument goes on in circles. I eventually give up and the $25