Was I wrong to cut off my friend?

D (34m) and I (33m) have been friends for twenty years.

Generally, he’s been a very good friend but our relationship has become strained this year.

He, his wife and baby moved to earlier this year. They needed some help getting their apartment, so I helped with the deposit and even agreed to co-sign for the apartment. In hindsight, I would never do that again.

I received a large amount of money in the last several years due to the death of my mother. It came under very traumatic circumstances. She was a victim of domestic violence. The man who killed her took his life shortly after. All because she wanted to end the relationship.

I was at home when it happened and found them the next morning. That’s how I started 2019. It was a very traumatic experience and in less than a month I lost my mother, home and job. I was working at the local paper at the time.

I felt guilty getting all that money and felt dead inside. Using it to help people in need made me feel less dead inside. I have always been a bit of a people-pleaser and The Incident only exacerbated that. I’ve learned that people-pleasing is a trauma response.

In the past, people have taken advantage of my generosity, which is what it felt like was happening with my friend.

He was asking for money every month because he was short of rent. His wife was not working because she’d had their child earlier this year. He got second jobs but none of them seemed to work out.

It got to a point where I was dreading getting texts from him because I assumed they’d be requests for money.

I reached a breaking point in August and just stopped responding to his texts. He got emotionally manipulative due to his desperation.

The breaking point was him telling me that his wife and child were all the he has and that his own family doesn’t talk to him.

It was really hurtful to read that considering what I have been through. Most of my family is dead and I don’t have a s/o or anything like that.

It’s not the first insensitive thing he’s said to me like that. He told me that the death of my mother led him to ending his first marriage because life is too short and he saw the end result of unhappiness.

I hid my IG stories from him and his wife because they were watching them and it felt like a way of guilt-tripping me into covering their bills.

I helped pay their rent one last time, but only because I didn’t want that eviction on my record. They have since moved back home and it has been nearly two months since I have spoken to him.

I just don’t want to speak to him for a while, I’m pretty hurt by the whole thing. I figure silence is better because I don’t want to say anything hurtful in anger.

I know it sucks to be ghosted by a friend, but I am so struggling quite a bit with my mental health due to the last three years and my continued grief and trauma over the loss of my mother. As such, I have withdrawn and deactivated virtually all my social media.

Was I wrong to draw a boundary after I felt like I was being used and should I make amends?

TL;DR — I ghosted my friend of twenty years because I felt he was taking advantage of me and being emotionally manipulative.