The older I get, the more I realize how one sided most of my friendships are, what should I do?

I (f26) am starting to get really tired of friendships that revolve my friends wants, needs, feelings, and emotions. I do tend to feel like I owe people more of my help, or that if I didn’t they wouldn’t be there. I’ll list a main example.

Friend a: only reaches out to me to talk about themselves, things they bought, new love interests, or plans they have. If I scroll through our messages it’s just multiple days of this going back for months. When I start to talk about myself they lose interest in talking or leave me on seen. The last time we hungout they got black out drunk, ditched me midway through the night (unaware) and then asked me to help them search for their missing bag the next day without as much of a thank you, though they apologized. The friendship feels draining, and they seem largely unaware.

I’ve had series of friendships like this and I don’t know why. I feel bad asserting myself more or like I’m not worthy of it, however I also wouldn’t call myself a pushover really. Do I make people like this by showing too much interest or always offering my advice? Should I just cut them off sometimes and jump on board talking about myself instead of listening and asking questions?

It’s starting to make me bitter. I think what’s been making it worse is I’ve been dealing with a LOT of stress, and health issues and no one is there to care- and they are aware of my issues and yet still feel okay to be like ‘uhg that sucks, anyways can you tell me what you think he meant by his message he sent last night?’ And we will spent 5x the amount of time talking about their trivial issues.

TLDR: I feel a lot of friends I have/had are very self absorbed and use me as a founding board/therapist and I’m getting real tired of it.

Submitted March 14, 2020 at 12:30AM

I (f26) am starting to get really tired of friendships that revolve my friends wants, needs, feelings, and emotions. I do tend to feel like I owe people more of my help, or that if I didn’t they wouldn’t be there. I’ll list a main example.Friend a: only reaches out to me to talk about themselves, things they bought, new love interests, or plans they have. If I scroll through our messages it’s just multiple days of this going back for months. When I start to talk about myself they lose interest in talking or leave me on seen. The last time we hungout they got black out drunk, ditched me midway through the night (unaware) and then asked me to help them search for their missing bag the next day without as much of a thank you, though they apologized. The friendship feels draining, and they seem largely unaware.I’ve had series of friendships like this and I don’t know why. I feel bad asserting myself more or like I’m not worthy of it, however I also wouldn’t call myself a pushover really. Do I make people like this by showing too much interest or always offering my advice? Should I just cut them off sometimes and jump on board talking about myself instead of listening and asking questions?It’s starting to make me bitter. I think what’s been making it worse is I’ve been dealing with a LOT of stress, and health issues and no one is there to care- and they are aware of my issues and yet still feel okay to be like ‘uhg that sucks, anyways can you tell me what you think he meant by his message he sent last night?’ And we will spent 5x the amount of time talking about their trivial issues.TLDR: I feel a lot of friends I have/had are very self absorbed and use me as a founding board/therapist and I’m getting real tired of it.