Woman cuts off friend who treated her apartment like a free hotel for years, finally blocks her after she demanded a spare key while host was out of town: 'She invited herself'

Author image for Isabella Penn
Isabella Penn
May 3, 2025 6:00 PM EDT

Having a friend move to a different city can be devastating. You go from hanging out on the regular to coordinating the rare weekend meetup that seems to get few and far between as the years go on. But if you're truly close, the distance doesn't have to ruin the friendship. In fact, if your friend moves to a cool city, it can become your own little vacation spot (bonus if they have a comfy couch).

I have a group of eight girlfriends that I've been close with since grade school. We all live in different cities now, which is hard, but we've made it better by coordinating a sleepover at one of our apartments once a month. The traveling can be a lot, but the FOMO of missing a group hangout keeps us all in check.

What not to do, however, is treat your friend's home like a hotel (and a free one at that).

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  • In this story, one woman learned the hard way that her so-called bestie wasn’t visiting her so much as she was visiting the football stadium a few blocks away that she was a mega fan of. Every trip somehow “coincidentally” lined up with an Arsenal match, and every stay came with complaints, guilt trips, and zero consideration for the host’s work schedule. And it only got worse…

  • Cheezburger Image 10499896320
    via Pablo Merchán Montes For Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "AITAH for leaving my friend on the ice after she planned a trip using my flat as her accommodation despite me telling her I'm not available on the dates she planned?"

    Me (29f) have, well, had a "friend" - let's call her Emma (32f). I live in London and Emma lives in Manchester. We met before I moved to London, in a smaller town we both lived in, and we
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  • met and became friends in 2013 on a fan page of an actor we both liked, and realising we live close by we started hanging out in person. Everything was normal when we both lived in the smaller town, and then in 2015 she moved to
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  • Manchester for work, we stayed in touch - I was never invited to visit her, even for a day, but I didn't think much of it back then. Then in 2016 I got a job in London, and moved here, and that's when the signs I see in retrospect began. See,
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  • Emma is Arsenal fan, and I was renting a flat very close to the stadium. Suddenly, Emma was very eager to meet in person again, which I was happy to do too because I was excited about the move and also haven't seen her in a long time. Only once
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  • she arrived at my flat, she told me she wanted to come this specific weekend because there was Arsenal game. For the first couple years, admittedly it went over my head that every single time she visited it was coincidentally a game. I
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  • don't follow football, so I never knew until she told me - which for the first couple years was upon her arrival. With time I changed job for one that was a regular 9-5, but because of the industry often more like 9-8. She
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  • PPLIER P ORD
    via Mario Klassen For Unsplash+
  • started coming for every. Other. Game. I feel like an idiot, because the first thing that started making me uncomfortable was that I told her that I couldn't take time off every time she's over, and she'd say it's absolutely fine, but then as her stay
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  • progressed she'd get more and more upset that 'I don't spend time with her' - I was at work all day, came back home exhausted to her not even having done groceries for whatever dinner she wanted, asking when I'll be making food. She was
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  • also always unhappy with the food choice I made, never saying what she wanted but always being unhappy with whatever I came up with. It was the same with whatever pastimes I planned for us in the evenings or over the weekends, she never
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  • had any input but was complaining about every aspect of what I came up with. However, the way she was saying it, framing it like it's my lack of consideration, made me feel like I'm a sh friend. When the pan mic was truly done and dusted,
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  • she shifted from guilting me into agreeing for her to come to ignoring my responses if I said I can't on those dates - for reasons like, I will be gone all day because I was going to comicon, or my room floor is fully taken up by my costume and
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  • props in progress, or that there's already another friend who flew in from abroad staying with me those dates. She'd say 'oh that's okay', and then the day before I'll get a text from her with her train details asking me to come get her from the station.
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  • All this time she's never invited me to visit her in Manchester even though I asked her when she would have time for me multiple times. The last straw happened the end of last year. First, as per usual at that point,
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  • she invited herself for the Christmas break - to watch the game obviously - even though at this point we've known each other for over ten years, and she knew Christmas is a difficult time for me and I prefer to be alone.
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  • She also got tickets for the new year eve fireworks show by the Thames, for both of us, even though I explicitly told her I didn't want to go because 1) I don't do well I'm crowds this dense, and 2) I had a trapped nerve in my
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  • lower back, and I couldn't stand or walk for long periods of time. If you don't know, you have to show up a couple of hours in advance to even get into the viewing area for these fireworks, not to mention have a good spot, and then it's about
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  • 20mins walk to the closest open bus or tube stop after the show ended. I told her all of these reasons when she asked initially. Obviously, she was extremely upset with me for not going with her, saying she misunderstood because I
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  • wasn't very clear so she had bought a ticket for me and was now out of pocket. She also left way too late, even though I told her she needs to be there early to get in, and naturally wasn't let in and missed the show completely which again, -
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  • she was mad at me for again. At that point I was extremely fed up with her, and then she sat and connected her phone to the TV - we were in the middle of a TV show - and started booking her train for the next visit, going through how the exact game date was not
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  • yet set but it's gonna be between these three days, so she's gonna come for all 3. Not a single sentence out of her mouth was a question if I'm free those days, or if the train arrival times would work for me.
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  • Just her, planning around her shifts and Arsenal games. Well the chance had it, I already had plans, and flights booked to visit my family in Austria. I tried saying that it doesn't really work for
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  • me, but she dismissed me saying its okay. As I watched her pay for the trains, I once again said I am not free to host her those days, but she just responded I never have. time for her anymore anyway, so it's fine, she's gonna come anyway.
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  • Come the day before her "planned" visit, in February this year. She send me a 'reminder' of what time her train comes. I simply responded that I'm not in the UK, and focused on spending time with my family. When I looked at
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  • my phone again, it was a barrage of missed calls - she's never called me before in all the years we knew each other - and messages, all asking what she's supposed to do now. Not one question about where I am, and if everything is OK -
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  • reminder from her perspective, I went abroad suddenly, considering she's never asked or listened when I said those dates don't work for me. I also had messages from my flatmates, who were looped in on the situation, and they were
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  • the same - lamenting this is what I've done, asking if they could let her in, not a single question if they knew where I went or if something bad happened. They were a couple, and also genuinely not in the flat at the time.
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  • It took her three days to send a message saying she hoped everything was okay. Closely followed by complain about how difficult situation this put her in, and how she was out of pocket for the hostel, and request I make a copy of my keys
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  • for her in case this happens in the future. I responded it's good to know that all she cared about is the free accommodation I can provide, I then blocked her promptly everywhere I could.
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  • My flatmates and close friends say I've made a right decision and good riddance, but I had some colleagues say it was a b move and I should have tried harder to tell her she couldn't come. Are my friends biased? Am I the a_h_le here?
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  • So… is she? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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friendship hotel best friends revenge friends petty host blocked football karma entitled people apartment
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