One of my friends has become so draining, I don’t know how to politely stop speaking to her. I don’t really have the energy to deal with that situation so I’d rather just put up with her here and there for summer classes but I just wanted to vent about how draining she’s become. She’s so pessimistic it’s too much

I stopped being friends with somebody years ago and still get magical thinking OCD about them (it was over something, not losing contact because we grew up). We were friends for many years, since high school, althought at times even my relatives noticed I was mentally drained every time we met. Like the kind of person that you wish the best for them, but you don't connect anymore and they take all your energy. I see it as toxic, to be honest. How do I erase this person and all my memories of them out of my brain? I get so much anxiety about this

Ok...so I need help navigating a relationship I have. I met this guy in trade school bc he kept following me around to talk to me and so we became friends and we kept in contact after leaving the school. He occasionally visits for a few hours maybe a few times a year and most of our interactions are over text. That's essentially all the necessary background. 2 problems 1. This person once had feelings for me, which I did not return because I just didn't feel the same way. He jokingly called me cruel because of it and one of my loved ones even joked that I was racist for rejecting him. Now I can't stop thinking about those things, even though I'm 80% sure they weren't serious. I know I'm not cruel for not having caught feelings for him, and I was extremely careful to let him down as gently as possible and as soon as possible so as not to give false hope. I also know that his race was not the reason I didn't catch feelings. Regardless, these comments still stick in my head. 2. This person is draining to me unintentionally. Our senses of humor kind of clash and our conversations are stiff and awkward because we have little in common and can rarely find things to talk together about that aren't sad or about our relationships with people who treated us poorly. It doesn't feel natural even after years of talking. He doesn't seem to understand me half the time but will pretend to and I've noticed I avoid starting conversations with him when we're not in person, so neither of us are perfect to one another. Major views of ours are also conflicting as well, as in, I am not exactly accepted around this person as a non-binary person, and this person defends those who want my rights taken from me. This is political, and I don't like to break relationships over politics, but it ads this undercurrent of tension. This person is also often taking risks and getting into accidents, so even more stress there in worrying about his safety. Every time we talk, I feel a pit of anxiety in my stomach and I worry I'll hear of another accident. I have trouble understanding him and he has trouble understanding me as well. We both struggle to communicate with frequent misunderstandings and I'm unsure why. It stresses me out when I struggle to read his meanings and tone and because of that, I particularly misunderstand him a lot, especially over text. His levels of sarcasm and irony are often too advanced for me to interpret and so I don't know when he's joking vs when he's serious vs when he's upset. Because I have so much trouble telling his emotions and he's not the type of person you really open up to about stuff like that, it's hard to navigate so I get very stressed and anxious never knowing if my responses are socially appropriate to the mood of the conversation. This is really frustrating, because from what it seems, he's a great person and there is no reason why we shouldn't be friends. He's different from me and interesting and tells great stories that make for thoughtful conversations to follow, yet I often wish he would never contact me because of the stress, and that he would not like to visit me or leave sooner, and that makes me feel really evil and a terrible friend. Right now I feel like I'm talking behind his back too. It feels bad. And now my OCD wants to tell me that not only am I a bad friend and person for this, but also racist, because a friend put that idea in my head after I rejected his romantic advance. Idk how to feel about this and what to do moving forward. Why does being friends with him stress me out so much? I only ever felt this way with one other person, but that was in highschool, and because the person was extremely high energy and extroverted while I'm very much not. This guy is not as extremely extroverted. Just a risk-taker who likes to poke fun a lot and confuse people for giggles. Idk. I want to stay friends because he's done nothing wrong, and he's a good guy, but it's draining and overwhelming.

Recently I had a close friend emotionally dump on me and it drained me and negatively affected me for days. I would describe his behavior as an adult tantrum, he didn’t seem well and it scared me. We were going to a jazz bar with me and another friend and I was dressed up nice. He picked me up and was upset that I liked good. He insisted on going home to change, so we did that. He started getting really upset about how he hated shopping because he didn’t like how clothes fit his body because he’s overweight. He brings this up a lot. It’s really sad but he is deeply concerned about it. We went to the jazz bar. We all ordered something to snack on. He ordered a drink, I ordered a drink, our other friend ordered ice cream. He didn’t like his drink so he kept asking to sip my drink and he ordered the same ice cream as our other friend. Afterwards he drove me home and vented about his life and being gay and lds and how the church had done so much stuff to him. He was in major victim mode — and I want nothing to do with that. I tried to speak some sense into him but he wasn’t listening and was being really dramatic and mad. I took some space from him and honestly didn’t want to hang out with him for a while after that. He kept messaging me to hang out and I kept declining. Recently he messaged me to hang out again (it had been about a month since that hang out) wanted to hang out again. I responded and said that I didn’t really want to be social much these days because I was going into hibernation mode — I further explained how his negativity that night was not something I was seeking out. He seemed to respond in a way was angry, rude, and again rooted in victimhood. I’m sad that our friendship ended on such a terrible note, and I think he has so many awesome qualities. I worry that I did something wrong in how I ended the friendship because it was all over text 😅 but I do feel like that boundary needed to be set even though I handled it clumsily. To be honest I don’t really care about loosing him as a friend but I do care about doing the right thing. Then around the same time as this friendship was ending…I messaged another friend of mine (I work with her) to apologize for a venting session in which I had been especially petty. She took that as me bringing her into that pettiness and hasn’t really been initiating any communication between us. Again, this was all over text which wasn’t good and pretty clumsy. This makes me sad, I think she’s really cool and having friends at work was starting to be a fun thing. Then on Sunday, my roommate’s brother (me and my roomate are close and he’s like a little brother to me) was acting low-key racist towards some Ukrainian people at church. He was calling them russian and imitating their accents. That IRKED ME. Then my roommate asked if she can invite her friend on our Europe trip were planning for next year which kinda stung a little bit because I thought it would just be an us thing? And also I don’t know her friend at all so I’m a little worried that maybe the dynamic will be unknown. I feel a loss of control, like I may be the problem in a lot of this…and like I just want to be alone and not deal with a lot of this. And also I don’t want my relationship with my roomate to go down the drain like the other two relationships of like this past month.