‘I feel that I am always expected to put my card down’: 21-year-old Guy realizes 8-year best friend treats him like a personal ATM, uses his car, but never pays him back, decides enough is enough

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Aug 3, 2025 2:00 PM EDT

Some people possess an unmatched ability to transform friendship into a one-way toll road where they receive unlimited benefits while somehow never managing to locate their wallet when the bill arrives. These emotional freeloaders operate under the delusion that shared trauma creates permanent payment exemptions, treating childhood bonding as lifetime meal tickets and genuine connections as all-access passes to other people's resources.

The financially parasitic friend has mastered the art of strategic helplessness, developing convenient blind spots about money while maintaining perfect vision for personal benefits. They approach adult responsibilities like optional side quests, genuinely baffled by concepts like reciprocity and advance planning. These creatures possess supernatural timing abilities, always discovering their empty bank accounts precisely when payment becomes due. They've weaponized their difficult backgrounds into permanent victim status, using shared hardships as eternal get-out-of-paying cards while positioning themselves as misunderstood rather than exploitative.

Add as a preferred
source on Google
Advertisement

  • I think my best friend is taking advantage of me.

    Cheezburger Image 10536141824
    via GG Creative Productions

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • The most impressive skill involves their ability to critique generosity while simultaneously demanding more of it. They treat free favors like subpar restaurant service, offering feedback on homemade soup while expecting continued meal delivery. These friendship leeches understand exactly which boundaries to push and when to deploy guilt tactics, operating with calculated precision while maintaining plausible deniability about their exploitation. They sprinkle just enough occasional generosity to prevent complete abandonment, like feeding pigeons to keep them coming back.

  • The psychology of enabling creates perfect storms where generous people mistake boundaries for meanness while users mistake kindness for stupidity. Our long-suffering friend learned that eight years of emotional connection doesn't justify financial servitude, discovering that some relationships require auditing rather than nurturing.

  • So I (21 M) have been friends with my best friend (21 F) for 8 years. We initially bonded over having similar crazy home situations with our parents.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Our relationship is almost as if we were siblings. However, recently I've been noticing some patterns that I'm not willing to put up with anymore.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Cheezburger Image 10536141568
    via Andy K.

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • For starters, we've never been on the same page about finances. I have always been on my own. Paid for my own college, clothes, bills, car, everything.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I've been working since I was 14. However, she has always been supported by her aunt for occasional money, nothing substantial or life changing.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Her parents aren't responsible or there for her and I empathize with her for that, because its the same for me too. She has a summer job, not full time, as a camp counselor for kids, she wants to be a teacher.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Cheezburger Image 10536142080
    via Avi Richards

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • She also has been putting off getting her license for years, and doesn't have a car so anytime we want to hang out or go somewhere, I am always the one driving.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Often going out of my way to include her, which up until recently I was happy to do.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I started noticing years ago when I would complain about my job she would never understand what was fair/unfair in a workplace, or the fatigue of working a full week.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • So I eventually stopped going to her when I would need to rant about work altogether. This has translated into our relationship now as almost not understanding the value. of hard-earned money.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • For example, I feel that I am always expected to put my card down, to buy things when we go to the beach, to pay for a majority of the groceries when we go on a little trip, to drive everyone, and recently when we went out to eat,
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I put my card down and days later | noticed she didn't pay me back, and when I asked her to she said "eventually" and sent me a picture of her empty bank account.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I asked her over text if she would please let me know ahead of time if she needed to pay me back later, because we are both broke college students, and I ended up blowing my tire the next day and immediately was looking at the people who owed me money to pay up!
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • She never acknowledged my text. Granted, none of us should have been going out to eat, learned that lesson the hard way. But it bothered me that she didn't acknowledge or at least say sorry/thank you for picking up the bill.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Additionally I had been helping her practice for her driving test. She finally had scheduled a date for it after I had berated her for months to do it, and it happened to be for the second day of my first full time job post-grad.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I allowed her to use my car to take the test because she didn't have anyone else. We were practicing and she was going away the weekend before the test.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • We both were free Monday (the day before my first day) and she asked to practice that day. I said I wanted the day for myself cause I'm about to work for the rest of my life, to which she said "so what I'm just not going to practice?"
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I told her it wasn't my problem that she felt unprepared. We practiced that day anyways because I'm a push- over. But it bothered me that she ignored my boundary,
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • and confirmed that she doesn't understand having a real job.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Another example was when we went on a trip to her aunts house for 4th of July this year. We went to the grocery store, and when it was time to pay, I asked how we were gonna split the stuff, and she grabbed the stuff she wanted personally, and I paid for the rest.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I paid $70 and she paid $20. I was furious. The next morning we went out to grab donuts early in the morning and I paid for the whole groups donuts ($50!, there was 8 of us) and she didn't even offer to chip in.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • Long story short moments like these have become more common. Recently she was sick so I made her a homemade soup with chicken broth that I made! (I like to cook), and delivered it to her house.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • She said thank you but the next day she texted me that she wished it had more broth. Like WHAT!
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • I've always been transparent with her when I am struggling with money, and I know she doesn't have any either. But I'm beginning to get less willing to go out of my way when I don't get acknowledged or thanked often,
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • and I also feel that she's a big girl and can take charge of these things in her life and become less reliant on me! She has a harder life than most, I will give her that, but so do I!
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • There are times when she will give me gas money, or pay for the whole groups dinner, but this is very very few and far between, and I feel that the friendship is still quite unbalanced.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • How do I set boundaries without ending the friendship? Is she being entitled? Is this intentional? There are good moments in our friendship although all of this seems terrible.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • She has been there for me in other ways and understood me when no one has.
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • What do I do...
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942
  • TDLR. My long time best friend has gotten too comfortable in our friendship, how do I set boundaries?
    via Puzzleheaded_Lime942

Want More? Follow Us and Add Us as a Preferred Source on Google.

Tags

boyfriend friendship bad friend best friends friends girlfriend friend mean girls Party
Scroll Down For The Next Article