It’s hard to say no when someone’s in crisis, even if they’ve never shown up for you.

So, what would you do if a friend who regularly forgets your birthday, ignores your messages, and only reaches out when they need something suddenly asked you to donate to a life-saving fundraiser for their relative overseas? Would you help anyway out of kindness? Or would you take it as a sign to finally set some boundaries?

In the following story, one woman faces this exact dilemma and wrestles with the guilt of putting her own well-being first. Here’s what’s going on.

AITA for not contributing to my friend’s go fund me for her overseas relative in need

I (24F) have a friend from Uni (26F), and I recently decided I need to take a small step back from her. I’ve been finding more often that she just isn’t there for me the way I’m there for her.

Sometimes she is there for me, but more often I’m finding that she ignores me unless the topic is about her. Or she’ll ask me to buy her things, which puts me in an awkward situation, as I used to buy her food, but I’ve taken a step back from doing that, as I felt taken advantage of.

She’s been going through some love troubles, which may affect her treatment of me, or maybe she’s just always been that way.

However, I’m finding our friendship is becoming more and more one-sided on my part.

Now, she’s in a really awkward situation.

I was going to take a step back, but my friend opened up about how her relative is in the hospital and her family can’t afford treatment overseas.

She sent me a link to her GoFundMe to raise funds for the operation, travels, etc, and asked me to donate.

I feel like I’ve been put in an awkward situation, similar to how she asks me to buy her items, but it’s never reciprocated back (where I get her birthday gifts, but she doesn’t even get me a card back).

Her friends (whom I’m not friends with) have also asked me to contribute to her gifts that cost thousands of dollars, and I feel like we aren’t close enough friends for that.

She still wants to take a step back.

I’m leaning towards not contributing because I wanted to take a step back from the friendship.

But I don’t want to end the friendship altogether, I just intend to deprioritize it and focus on people who actually care about me.

AITA?

Wow! That’s a really tough decision, but it’s easy to see why she’s hesitant.

Let’s see what advice the readers over at Reddit have to offer her.

According to this comment, the friend is taking advantage.

It doesn’t sound like this commenter believes her story either.

As this person points out, she’s already done enough.

Here’s someone who simply thinks it’s not her problem.

She should take a hard pass.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.