“Therapy speak” can be dangerous, since it can be weaponized against someone when they’re just trying to be honest about their feelings.

In this woman’s case, she was just uncomfortable with the amount of voice messages her friend leaves, but when she kindly told her that, she doubled down and even said mean things to her.

Would you just accept this is what the friendship will look like out of love, or part ways?

Let’s read the whole story and see what happened.

AITA for telling my friend to stop sending me voice messages?

I have this close friend who depends on voice messages for all communication.

I’ve asked her many times to limit the number and length of them, and she’ll stop for a bit, but then start doing it again.

She is very done with them.

I don’t like them because:

1 – I have ADHD, and an auditory processing disorder. If I can muster the attention span to listen to them, I struggle to understand them through phone speakers.

2 – She talks a lot without saying much.

Her friend overshares. She already hinted that she doesn’t like it.

It’s a lot of mundane details about her daily comings and goings. I’m not sure why she feels the need to share so much.

I like that she’s thinking of me and staying connected, but I find voice messages to be mentally draining.

I’ve asked her multiple times to simply call me if it’s too hard to text.

I can sympathize that she doesn’t like typing on a phone screen, but I would prefer to listen in real time and have a conversation, than be forced to sit and listen to what feels like a string of rambling monologues.

It’s aggravating and reaching a boiling point.

I can quickly scan or glance at a text and no weather is important and warrants immediate reply or not.

I cannot do that with voice messages.

Recently she moved away and she’s a bit lonely and going through a difficult time in life, so the number and length of these messages has multiplied exponentially.

She’s at a crossroads.

I think I’ve set a reasonable boundary.

But her take is that this is just how she communicates and if I want to have a friendship, I’m just going to have to “listen to all of my messages and be happy to do so because you care about me and want to hear about my life.”

This sounds like guilt-tripping. And it’s kind of working.

I genuinely like her very much when we are spending time together and I certainly do not have many other close friends, so I’d be sad to lose her.

But I’m also exhausted and overwhelmed by these messages coming at me all day long.

She was finally more frank about it.

I see it pop up and I get anxiety because I know I’ll have to go find a quiet place to listen to them later before I can even respond.

It’s such a terrible way to communicate.

Today I admitted that I am frustrated by all the voice messages recently ramping up again, and I’d really prefer if she would call or text me instead.

Her friend didn’t react well, as expected.

She accused me of being selfish and uninterested in her life, and she brought up my marriage issues and said maybe my problems are due to my selfishness or unwillingness to hold space for others.

Which I found weird because I’ve always been considered a very generous, dependable, and loyal friend who will drop everything to help someone or jump on the phone if someone is in distress.

I’d say that in itself is almost a superpower in a world where everyone is “protecting their energy,” and “no negative vibes” etc, etc.

AITA?

Since her friend seems to regard herself as a therapist at this point, she should understand it’s time for some strong ✨boundaries✨.

Let’s see how Reddit feels about this.

Exactly.

Good question.

This commenter sums it up.

A reader shares some thoughts.

Another reader chimes in.

No one likes that.

Blaming her for her marriage issues just because she was tired of the voice notes was a low blow.

Her friend is the one being selfish and inconsiderate.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.