Dear Shae03,

What you’re describing of your relationship seems to be the beginning stages of a codependent friendship. After your friend moved in and you started to connect emotionally, you found a person willing to validate your thoughts and emotions, which is awesome because not a lot of people in society are willing to acknowledge the emotions men have and feel. But what’s not awesome is that it’s easy to become dependent on this person who acknowledges your emotions, especially given that they live in the same house as you. So it’s just became that much easier and convenient to depend on one person for your emotional need rather than look for other sources of friendship.

Though your friend is a great person, you are too comfortable becoming dependent on her to validate your emotions, which is her doing the emotional labor of listening and giving feedbacks whenever you’ve feel the need to vent. But then you don’t have to do the work of figuring out your emotion because she is right there to be your soundboard. As that progress, you two become closer friends so now you two are the BFFs that everyone envy. So you two hang out together so much that many are lumping you two as a pair instead as individuals. You can’t have one person without seeing the other, as if you two are glued together. Because that’s what BFFs do, they don’t go out without the other. Switch BFFs with codependent and you would get a similar thing, though more exclusive to the two of you.

That you’ve noticed the new dynamic is a good thing, but the difficult part comes after acknowledging that your friendship right now is not working out. The difficult thing right now is to sit down and talk this out with your friend. Explain to her what’s happening and your feelings on the subject matter. Also, you need to begin to distance yourself from her since you are the one who is depending on her to be your emotion laborer. You don’t need to cut off contact, but you do need to keep a certain distance since it was the distance in the first place that made it easy to become dependent on your friend. Of course, it’ll be difficult to do since you live in the same house and is part of the same social circle. So maybe you can agree to meet with friends on separate days while lessening your daily interactions. You can even decide to move out, though only if it’s one of the last options.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you talk this over with your friend first. The first talk might not turn out any good solutions, but at least you’ve brought the issues to the table. After that, you two can work together to figure out what would be the best schedule to follow between the two of you. But remember, it’s not about finding fault in your friendship, it’s about building a friendship that is about support and not reliant.

Good luck.