What should I do about this changing friendship? Her partner reached out to me on an app and it has changed the dynamic further.
TLDR: A childhood friend has changed a lot after her divorce. She is dating a liar from a dating app that reached out to me when they were dating for 4 months but not exclusive. Since then we have grown distant. She wants to catch up but I feel the friendship is over. I’m not sure if I am being overly judgmental and harsh.
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I have a friend, let’s call her Sue. We go back to our early teenage years and got pretty close in our 20s. We both moved back to our hometown in our mid 20s and Sue suffered a really scary medical condition. I ended up being her caregiver and was by her side throughout as she had a falling out with her family. This sort of solidified a lifelong bond.
Over the course of our late 20s, we grew apart.
She got into a relationship with an older man, and I went to grad school then traveled the world. We still maintained a friendship where we would check in with each other and meet up about 1-2 times a year. She got married at 30 and moved away with her husband. I was the maid of honor, but the guy gave me red flags. He lied about some major things and as a concerned friend I asked how she felt about it and she said that it’s fine, it’s the time to get married as we were entering our 30s. Fast-forward 10 years, she got divorced. She says he was a narcissist and manipulated her.
About 2-3 years ago during an annual catch-up session with her and another friend, she started gushing about her online dating experiences. She told me about one guy in particular, let’s call him Bob. She said that she has butterflies thinking about him, they’re super connected and had been seeing each other for four months. He was recently separated, and she told me that he was still taking her to hotel rooms given his living situation with his wife 🚩. He even called her while we were hanging out and played the role of the doting love interest, wanting to make sure she was having a good time with her girlfriends. She told me that he said that he’s really crazy about her and once he moves out, he wants to make sure that he has all of her favorite things in his place. But they were not exclusive yet. Given my vast experience with dating in my 30s, I told her to be careful. About a week later, I randomly decided to expand my distance on hinge. Moments later, I get a long message from Bob raving about my physical appearance. My instinct was to delete the message and pretend it never happened but a mutual friend said that I should absolutely let her know. I sent Sue a screenshot of his message and her response was “damn but I guess I’m still technically dating too.” She asked me to respond to him and tell him that he looks familiar and ask if he’s dating my friend Sue. He said yes and then continued to chat with me, telling me I’m such a great friend lol. He immediately told Sue about the situation and she said she felt relieved because it means that he was honest with her. I never brought this up to her again, but after that situation 2.5 years ago, we have not hung out one on one. I have attended her birthday parties for the last two years and last year, a friend of hers brought up Bob at brunch, making a comment that he is so rich and will take care of her so she can retire early. She shushed her friend immediately. Then later that day she handed me her phone to take a picture of her and another friend, and I see Bob’s photo and name pop-up in a text. I ignored it, but figured she was still seeing him and did not want me to know. I had actually run across his profile about a year prior on the local Facebook group Are we dating the same guy. Someone had posted him, but I didn’t relay the information to her bc I assumed they were no longer dating. Not sure I would even share had I known that they were. Because I had noticed that he spelled his name differently with her, on hinge, and then on the Facebook group, I did a quick Google search and discovered that he had lied about his age by over a decade (late 50s rather than early 40s).
She reached out recently because she’s going through some things and needed my professional advice (I’m a lawyer). She made what I think are some poor choices that got her into a bind. She then suggested that we catch up because it’s been a long time. Then she asked if I would willing to do legal work for this guy in her state…she said she knows I am not licensed in her state and don’t practice that area of law. It was quite obvious she was talking about Bob because the help pertained to his very specific line of work in the state that he lives and wanted to bring him up? Or maybe imply be needs an attorney? I just responded no that I’m not able to help. But now I don’t really care to meet up with her. For one, I don’t want to hear about this guy at all and something feels off.
Idk if I am being judgmental about this or if I have just lost interest in her. Am I being too hard on her? I will say she has changed a lot in the last few years. She calls herself a “baddie” on instagram and constantly posts about her glow up and soft girl era. If I met her today, I am not sure I would associate with her.