My friend (35F) only cares about her ex (25F) and it's taking a toll on me (25F)

My friend is very inexperienced and in the summer met a guy on tinder after years of negative self talk and belief that she would always be alone. They never met up but they messaged and video chatted daily, but things took a bad turn when he had to move back to his home country to look after a sick family member. He told her he was stressed out and couldn't hurt her by not being able to give her the time and attention she deserved, so he called it off.

She handled it very poorly, and went back into a spiral of seld pity and catastrophising. She waited for a few weeks and then continued to send him messages, the exact frequency I'm unsure. He eventually messaged back after a month to say he doesn't want to and hasn't been talking to anybody. She is convinced he is self sabotaging and is going to continue to message and even send things in the mail.

It's taken a toll on me personally because I hear about this almost daily and she's delicate so I'm afraid to firmly tell her to move on. I've suggested as such but she comes back the next day doubling down on this duty to be an incredible friend to this boy. But she doesn't realise she's not being aan incredible friend to me.

I live in an area heavily afflicted by the coronavirus, and it has messed up every aspect of my life. I'm away from home and out of work while things are shut down, I can't pay my bills or rent, my health insurance was cancelled because I missed a payment on time, which is bad because I'm down to my emergency supply of anti-depressants and can't afford the visit to restock without it... you get the idea. But every time I share a piece of my struggles, it is completely brushed over for her own. She is also contemplating flying over to try meet him, and I'm afraid she isn't taking the pandemic seriously at all.

tl;dr: My friend has poor self esteem and put it all into her worth to men. She got dropped, is still trying to chase him and I am asked for advice near daily. She doesn't seem responsive to my own issues. For years I have had to deal with this to some degree but I'm at my limit. I don't want to abandon her out of duty, but I wonder if that's the only reason I do this. What should I do?

Submitted March 16, 2020 at 11:53PM

My friend is very inexperienced and in the summer met a guy on tinder after years of negative self talk and belief that she would always be alone. They never met up but they messaged and video chatted daily, but things took a bad turn when he had to move back to his home country to look after a sick family member. He told her he was stressed out and couldn't hurt her by not being able to give her the time and attention she deserved, so he called it off.She handled it very poorly, and went back into a spiral of seld pity and catastrophising. She waited for a few weeks and then continued to send him messages, the exact frequency I'm unsure. He eventually messaged back after a month to say he doesn't want to and hasn't been talking to anybody. She is convinced he is self sabotaging and is going to continue to message and even send things in the mail.It's taken a toll on me personally because I hear about this almost daily and she's delicate so I'm afraid to firmly tell her to move on. I've suggested as such but she comes back the next day doubling down on this duty to be an incredible friend to this boy. But she doesn't realise she's not being aan incredible friend to me.I live in an area heavily afflicted by the coronavirus, and it has messed up every aspect of my life. I'm away from home and out of work while things are shut down, I can't pay my bills or rent, my health insurance was cancelled because I missed a payment on time, which is bad because I'm down to my emergency supply of anti-depressants and can't afford the visit to restock without it... you get the idea. But every time I share a piece of my struggles, it is completely brushed over for her own. She is also contemplating flying over to try meet him, and I'm afraid she isn't taking the pandemic seriously at all.tl;dr: My friend has poor self esteem and put it all into her worth to men. She got dropped, is still trying to chase him and I am asked for advice near daily. She doesn't seem responsive to my own issues. For years I have had to deal with this to some degree but I'm at my limit. I don't want to abandon her out of duty, but I wonder if that's the only reason I do this. What should I do?