You’ve probably heard all of the (too true) jokes about making friends after college (or worse, after becoming a parent). Honestly, it’s so hard to find someone you click with as an adult.

Which could be why we try so hard to make it happen, even when we know deep inside that it’s probably not going to work.

OP is going through a trying time in her life.

I have had an awful week. I won’t go into every unecessary detail, but suffice to say the collision of various medical, work, and relationship stressors all at once have me on my last nerve.

I banged my wrist on a doorknob yesterday and sunk to the floor and cried on the spot for a half hour because I just couldn’t take one more thing.

I had brunch planned for today with a pretty new acquaintance. It was actually scheduled weeks ago, so I didn’t anticipate what kind of shape I was gonna be in today.

She has a new friend who is always going through a trying time in life.

We’ve hung out a handful of times and we have a lot in common, but she has a bit of an oversharing problem.

My life sucks in the short term because right now I’m like a lightning rod for two years worth of crap that goes wrong to happen all at once.

Her life sucks for more long-term family and mental health-related reason, which she has started going into with ever-increasing levels of morose detail.

I’ll be honest: It’s way too much for how little we actually know each other. And I am really not in a place to become close friends with someone who chronically does not have a modicum of their life together.

But because of my current lightning rod situation, I have not been able to make a clean break. So I figured I would just get through today and then tell her I needed to take a step back when I had a crumb of dopamine to spare for that uncomfortable convo.

Life is really getting OP down, so she decided to just tell her new “friend” the truth.

At like 6 am this morning she starts texting me stuff like “You are literally the only person I can trust” and “I guess I’ve got a week to find my own place,” and “everything falls apart.”

Like ok relatable but also WHAT. Girl, I am not your facebook wall circa 2011.

And I’m just thinking ahead to the hour-long hardcore trauma dump session that I am about to endure, so I text her back and say hey I’m really sorry for everything you’re going through right now, but I am really in no position to be anyone’s emotional support rn.

So if you don’t think you can have brunch today without bringing up intense stuff, I’d rather just cancel.”

Response was basically “Wow. Ok.”

It did not go well.

I followed up several hours later with a bombardment of tweets about how the world doesn’t revolve around me and how she’s so sorry that the things going wrong in her life right now didn’t wait until it was convenient for me, but it sucks to be vulnerable and in need of a listening ear and be told essentially to shut the heck up.

Also that I care more about enjoying my brunch than I do about being an empathetic person.

OP is wondering if maybe honesty wasn’t actually the best policy.

Now I don’t know if my exhaustion and stress made me act like an awful person, or if it made it justified to want to have a meal where I could actually relax for an hour.

Reddit is going to weigh in!

The top comment says her friends reaction was over-the-top.

This person thinks it could have been handled better all around.

But this commenter says NTA when taking the whole situation into consideration.

Clean breaks sometimes hurt even when they’re necessary.

It’s probably for the best that they end things now.

I feel sorry for all of the people involved here.

But it definitely sounds as if she made the right call.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.