So I have a good friend, known her about 4 years and we've been very close. Both mid 30s. Recently she moved in with me ( I own the house) after a break up and I've started to notice things I don't like so much. She can get sulky when things don't go her way and has a big issue with defensiveness. Eg, once I told her she had a habit of forgetting to turn off lights around the house. She responded with phrases like 'yeah well I'm not poor so I don't see why I have to count every minute they're left on'. I told her I didn't expect her to count the time but that it was 'wasteful'. That comment clearly hurt her and after that conversation she spent about 3 days in her room not interacting with me.

I've seen other instances like this but would feel petty going into detail. Basically like I said, defensive and sulky.

Obviously this is a good friend and I love her so I'm trying to give her grace. We all have habits that help us feel safe and while hers don't align with mine, I can step back and see the bigger picture - getting to live with one of my best friends.

So to the issue at hand. She wants a favor from me. This favor is not small. She also has not directly asked me but has mentioned several times 'if we were to do this favor...' or 'I wonder if the favor would take long' etc etc. I have to take responsibility here and acknowledge that I was open to the idea of doing this for her and gave the impression that I would definitely consider it.

One day I said 'hey regarding this favor, I would love it if we could both sit down and discuss in detail how we would do it and how it would impact me. I know you're not the kind of person who would take advantage of me but I think a conversation would really assure me of that'. She didn't respond well. She got defensive saying 'I don't know why you think I would know that' 'I've never done this before so it's not like I'm an expert' 'I know that I would be in a bad situation for sure' 'why don't you just google it'. I tried to reassure her that I wanted an open, everything on the table discussion to make an informed decision. She didn't really respond and again, after that interaction, spent about 5 days in her room. (She also spent the weekend socialising without inviting me, not necessarily a negative thing but strange for our dynamic and I can't help but feel she was trying to punish me).

Since then, she dances around the topic saying things like 'I just don't know what the future holds' 'I couldn't sleep last night thinking about my plans' but never directly asking me to talk about the favor itself. The anxiety and tension is really getting to me. I'm starting to feel manipulated and I'm getting concerned that she's only going to be nice for as long as she can get something from me (I'm aware that could be paranoia too!)

So, to the WIBTA part, I want to straight up address the situation by saying 'hey I know the favor hasn't come up in a while, not sure if you were still considering it, but I want to be honest and let you know I've really thought about it and I can't do it. I hope you understand and if I can support you with anything within my comfort zone I absolutely will'.

I feel bad because this is a good friend and I would be helping her massively and I did give the impression that I was on board. But when the conversation about it was dismissed I changed my mind.

So, WIBTA?