How do I confront a friend?

ALCS - Sep 5 2014 at 03:59

Member since Sep 2014

Okay so this issue stems a few different ways. Basically I have been friends with this girl since college. We were roommates along with 3 other girls. We always hung and partied together and life was great. Fast forward 3 and 1/2 years, she now has 2 children, a 1 and 2 year old, and lives with them and her boyfriend (father of the children) that she met in college around the time I met my husband (we just got married 2 months ago). Back in college we would always talk about everything and hang out like normal friends do. We live up the road from them and my husband and her boyfriend seem to get along and they work at the same employer so we hang out pretty frequently. So far it sounds good right? Here is where things get tricky. Me and my husband share a car and have conflicting hours of work therefore we ask the boyfriend (girl does not drive or work) to help with bringing my husband to work while I pick him up after his shift. He has agreed and helped us out. We give him gas money as needed. But because of this arrangement she has started constantly calling and texting me about driving her and the kids places ranging from necessary appointments and errands to taking them out to the mall. Sometimes I do not mind helping her out because friends help each other out but it has gotten to the point where every single time she calls or texts me she will either a) just ask me to take her somewhere, or b) invite me over so she can ask me to take her somewhere. Also when I do help her or take her and the kids somewhere she will never offer gas money and majority of the time I will have to pay for food for both her and her kids (One time a trip took 4 hours long including driving!). On top of all of this she will also randomly show up at my door if she sees my car in the driveway and will try to leave one or both her kids at my house (which isn't baby proofed at all, and she knows that). It is getting the the point where I will just ignore her calls and texts and call her back at a later time or ignore a knock on my door. Another part of the issue is that when I am at their house if she isn't asking me to take her and the kids somewhere she is barely speaking to me at all. She will almost always be in a different room talking on the phone with somebody or she will leave me in a room to play with her kids while she goes to a different room to hang out with someone else. As if this wasn't annoying enough one of the major people she tries to hang with is my husband. They have never had a significant friendship before a few months ago so naturally I was a little suspicious when she started speaking with him more. Initially I shrugged it off as maybe she is making an effort to know him because he is my husband and friends with her boyfriend. But, lately I have been having a weird feeling about it and here is why. Her boyfriend, while he is okay to hang with, is not the most family-oriented. He has gotten better since the first child was born but he is still on the immature side. He like to play card games (yu-gi-oh and pokemon mostly) and he spends the majority of his money on the cards and taking trips to play these games. While I would normally have no objections to this, they get assistance for their rent, foodstamps, and other programs even though he could easily afford these things showing that he is more about himself then his children. Now understandably she gets really upset with him because of this as well as the fact that he always has friends over to the house and pays more attention to his friends then his children. On the other hand when my husband and I go over there, both of us will play with the children, me more-so but my husband is way more family oriented and loves kids. When this happens the issue arises where it appears that wherever my husband is the girl goes to. For example the other night me and my husband where playing with the children in their room, she was in the room while we were in there. The whole time it seemed like I didn't even exist to her. She kept talking to my husband about the kids but would not hold a conversation with me. After a few minutes her boyfriend texted my husband (he was at work while my husband had the night off) asking him to look at their computer in the living room. My husband left the room and almost immediately she followed him, again leaving me to play with the kids. I did for a while because I do really like her kids then I went into the living room bringing her kids with me. She did not look too pleased when we came into the room. I sat in a chair behind my husband who was on the floor and dangled my legs over his shoulders. While doing this I noticed she kept looking over at us. She didn't speak to my husband at all or me for the rest of the time we were there except to tell my husband to make sure not to delete any of her boyfriends programs on the computer. After we left my husband shared that he didn't feel too comfortable because she just kept randomly trying to converse with him while he was working on their computer. He has told me several other times where he was uncomfortable at their house because when he was hanging with her boyfriend, she would try to converse with him, mostly to talk about how dissatisfied she is with the way her boyfriend acts. Because of all of this I think that this friend is using me for 1) my car, 2) to get free "babysitting" for her kids and 3) she may be looking to try and advance on my husband (this is just speculation right now. I have tried to confront her on the first 2 aspects and both times she has either denied doing it, made excuses or seemed to think what she was doing was okay. So my questions are 1) could she be really advancing on my husband or could I be over thinking this? 2) how do I get through to her that what she is doing is not okay and possibly get her to stop? and 3) could our friendship be salvaged or is this friendship really over?