34-year-old friend begs to move in rent free with friend who just bought her first home: 'I got so outraged I called her a terrible friend'

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• Am I in the wrong for not letting one of my childhood friends move in with me?

  I, 35f, just closed on my first house, I have a friend, 34f, we can call her Sam, living with me and jobless. She likes to travel back home a lot to visit her family, a luxury I wish I had. And for context of where “home” is, let’s just say I currently live in the Midwest and she drives her happy self to the west coast multiple times a year for weeks on end. As I’m writhing this post she just left for Cali, again, for another three weeks. Granted she still pays me monthly, but if we are transparent with numbers, our rent was $2.5k/ month and I only had her paying me $600/month, not including city parking pass, internet, and electricity. I thought I was being nice, okay, please don’t attack my soft heart!

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• If you already have one friend living with you, you probably don't want another one. This is too many cooks in the kitchen, even if you have the space. Plus, it doesn't sound like there is an end date in mind for any of these friends. You have the right to protect your space and your peace. Someone else, even if they're your best friend, taking up room in your life, might be a decision that you would take pretty seriously. You're allowed to set boundaries when you need to, even if it hurts someone else's feelings. Keep reading to see what continued to happen.

• Anyway! Bring in the next friend, we’ll call her Meg, 34f. She has never once been responsible for herself. Either living with family, a bf, or friends, she’s always only ever had a room to her name. No judgement here, like I said, I love these women, but at a certain age I feel like we should be wanting more for ourselves. Anyway, she decided that since I have a house now, and I offered her a place to stay if ever she needed (to visit, mind you) she was always welcome. She took that as an invite to move in for a “month or two” while she “worked her *** off” and hung out with her best friend. I felt very uncomfortable with it. Not only would I have one person living in my home without a job, but now another living in MY home, that I paid for when it came to down payment and closing costs, all while I’m away at work for the day. It just didn’t sit right with me and as bad as I felt for saying no to her, to Meg, I did.

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• I don't know about you, but I would take “no” for an answer here. You can't strong-arm your way into living in someone else's house. Because even if you wear them down and it works out, they will resent you for it. Then you're living in the house of someone who resents you, and that's something that you should avoid if possible. But the friend in this story was a little more persistent than that. They didn't want to let it go and were willing to nuke the friendship in the process. Keep scrolling to see exactly what happened here. 

• I told Meg I didn’t think it was financially or logistically smart for her to come all this way (she’d be driving, not flying) just for a month or two and then turn around and go back. I was polite and told her that it made me uncomfortable having her and Sam here at the same time and that the answer was no, she couldn’t come stay with me. Well that was the wrong answer. Suddenly our friendship was in question, she was a ride or d** for me and clearly I wasn’t for her and she was devastated by my answer. She was so hurt, in fact, that she needed to reevaluate our friendship because how dare I “call her a burden” which I never did, and how dare I insinuate I know what’s best for her by stating I didn’t think her move was financially or logistically smart. It got so bad she decided to remove me from her social media platforms because she needed to “set a healthy boundary” for herself against me. I got so outraged I called her a terrible friend for trying to guilt trip me simply because I set a boundary for myself to which she mirrored and stated I was the terrible friend. She claimed she wasn’t asking for much out of me, just a room with a bed and a desk. Clearly I could handle that. Regardless, I ended up taking it a step further, because I’m petty, and blocked her on everything. 

  -u/colloquial_cartwheel

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