Hi, I hope you can help me. I moved into the property where I stay about 3 and 1/2 years ago. When I moved in, I realised that one of the tenants there was an old friend from a friend group that I had, in recent years, made contact with again as I’d moved back to my hometown. This man has been a friend for about 30 years although we lost contact for many years when I moved away with my then-husband. (We only have a platonic relationship although he does seem to get jealous if I date other men.)

He was very pleased to see me. I have always tried to be kind to him and friendly, as he’d had some very difficult things happen to him, and over the last 3 and 1/2 years, we have remained friends. But the last few months, I have had a strong dislike for him coming to talk to me. For one, it seems excessive. I work from home and he was talking to me during working hours, and on weekends, when I just want time to relax and unwind, he wants to talk. It’s not for long – maybe 20 minutes at a time, but something about it gets to me. I spoke to him about it about a week ago and he promised to back off. It has been a bit better. But I think the dislike goes deeper than him disturbing me. I feel he’s needy, he drains me, and I don’t trust him anymore.

The other thing is that he has had these episodes where he has a big fight with a neighbour over such stupid things. Months can go by without this happening, but when it does, he gets really angry and aggressive with the person. I’ve tried to break up the fights, and he then gets upset with me and blames me for not taking his side, and will sometimes give me the silent treatment. I have to apologise if I want things to be okay between us. If I try to bring up that he’s being unfair or unkind to the person, he becomes very defensive. I believe he has a low self-image as he is very defensive all the time. You cannot point out anything to him, even if it is to help him. I don’t do that often, but when he treats other people badly, I feel that for their sake, I should.

It’s happened recently with a new tenant on the property who was so scared of him, she was shaking. I’ve told him that she’s scared of men because of past trauma, but he just said something like: “Oh, so now, I have to deal with that.” The thing is, he can be so helpful and friendly at times. He genuinely seems nice. But when he’s like that, it doesn’t feel honest to me anymore. I actually feel sick inside. I feel like he’s sometimes just nice so that people will like him because he is so lonely, not because he genuinely cares. He fears being rejected by people so much that it makes him act like this. I think that’s why he was so angry with the new tenant – he liked her and found her attractive, and she ignored him after he told her that. Because she ignored him, now he gets really angry with her and pushy. He calls her controlling because she set boundaries with him.

I don’t understand. He can be wise and kind, but he’s got this blindspot. It’s come to the point where I don’t really want him around anymore. I don’t want to talk to him. But I don’t know how to break contact as we live on the same property where us tenants live very close to each other. I also don’t want to devastate him as he feels so rejected and lonely, and I’m one of the only people there for him. He doesn’t have family in the country – his son lives thousands of miles away in Canada. It would be too much to tell him that I don’t want to be friends with him anymore. I just feel energetically like he’s drawing out of me all the time. It doesn’t feel right anymore to be with him. Is there a way I can do this slowly so as not to hurt him?