Emotional exhaustion is just as real as physical exhaustion. Most times, it’s even deeper and can affect one’s general mood and entire well-being.
u/kamisamaaahh felt this when her friend, Sarah (not her real name), wouldn’t stop talking about her ex, even after three years.
Exes and Ohs
OP, who is telling the story, and her friend Sarah attended high school together but only became friends at the university. Sarah was in a long-distance relationship for about two years before they broke up.
Long-distance relationships are always challenging to deal with. The relationship probably already took a toll on her before it ended. The breakup was the final straw, but it stung just the same.
The breakup affected Sarah a lot. She was depressed, and OP tried to support her throughout. After a while, she realized that Sarah seemed to get a kick out of talking about her breakup, so she always brought it up.
The first few times may have been okay, and OP just wanted to be a good friend. Breakups can take weeks, months, and even years to get over. But it can get tiring when a person feels their friend is faking their blues to gain sympathy.
Well, Sarah became more dramatic. She began to curse and complain about her ex's new girlfriend even though Sarah was hooking up with someone else.
A bit hypocritical of her, eh? She has unresolved issues and anger toward her ex.
OP told Sarah she didn't appreciate her speaking ill of someone they didn't know. This was when she noticed that she wanted to hang out less with Sarah because she felt drained whenever she came around.
Three Years Later
Surprise guests are often bad surprises.
Sarah visited OP uninvited and stayed for hours. Even though OP told her she needed to make an important call to her parents, Sarah stayed there and talked about her ex. Then, she called a friend and stayed on the phone with them for forty minutes.
Sarah clearly wasn’t seeing the signs.
OP left the room to call her parents. When she returned, she took the bull by the horn and asked Sarah when she planned on leaving. Still not getting the signals, Sarah said soon but continued talking about her ex.
OP had enough and told Sarah to leave because she was emotionally exhausted. She also told her that it'd been three years since they broke up and that it was time for Sarah to let go.
Letting go is never easy, but Sarah sure doesn’t look like she’s trying, especially when she’s talking bad about her ex’s new girl.
OP put her mental health first when she kicked her out. But now, she’s not sure if she made the right choice. Her friends are saying she was wrong and should apologize, but a bigger part of her doesn’t think she is wrong.
Sarah Needed To Go
Other people have weighed in on the case, and they don’t think she’s wrong for kicking Sarah out.
u/ParsimoniousSalad suggested that the upset friends who think OP should apologize can host Sarah's “emotional late-night visits” instead.
“NTA. She invites herself over to talk about her three-year-long upset, fails to leave when you tell her you have something to do and again when you just ask her to go, then people are upset and think you should apologize? They can host her emotional late-night visits if they want.”
u/friedonionscent calls Sarah an “energy vampire.” That’s definitely a phrase I’ll be using from now on.
They said, “She's an energy vampire who has no self-awareness or consideration for others. I'm not too sure if a friendship with someone like her can ever be particularly reciprocal or energizing. If you're asexual, I'm not sure if that makes you less tolerant to this kind of talk or not but from what you've described, she's tiring regardless of how much you can relate to her or not. NTA.”
Another person shared a similar experience and how they dealt with it based on their own personal experiences:
“NTA. I have a friend who acted like that. It drove me insane. Years after the fact she'd still lament this guy. I had to finally tell her, ‘I love you, but this obsessing over J has got to stop around me. I'll talk to you if you think you have something productive to talk about in your grieving process, but from what I can tell, you're not trying to process this whatever, but you’re holding onto it by whatever means you can.
Over the years, she's mentioned him every so often, but not very often. And there’s purpose when she does mention him, like she's had a dream about him, and we talk about the dream.
Your friends are wrong. She can feel pain over whatever she wishes. But she doesn't have the right to spew her pain everywhere.”
In The End
It turns out OP isn’t wrong to feel the way she does, and Sarah should be more considerate because the world doesn't revolve around her or her ex.
Sometimes, we can get so engrossed in our pain that we neglect other people and forget they have their issues, too. One does not even realize when they become toxic to everyone else. Hopefully, Sarah will do better.
How would you have handled the case if you were OP?
A thread inspired this post.
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Boloere Seibidor, fondly called B.S. is a Nigerian-based writer and poet. Her favorite topics to cover include music, especially Hip-Hop, film, lifestyle, and fashion. She's been published by Feral Journal, Fantasy Magazine, The Temz Review, and most notably, Wealth of Geeks. She enjoys romantic dinners, movie nights, and touring new sites. When she's not writing, she's delving back in time to the underground world of Hip-Hop, watching TikTok, or visiting the cinema.