My friend's drama is causing ME stress

[Vintage106]

I started working in a small office about a year and a half ago. I only work with 4 women and 1 man. Where I sit, is a desk that is in it's own little, private area. It's connected to another desk where Kay works. When I started, Kay and I really hit it off. We joked around and talked the whole day away while working. It made the day go super fast! Over time, we became really close. Kay has 2 young sons and at the time, she was living with her boyfriend(John), who was also the father of her children. Around June of last year, they broke up and she and her sons moved into their own place. It's been a WHOLE year since they broke up and John has been harrassing Kay EVERYDAY since they split. He calls our work phone 10 times/day and not to mention, he text messages her many, many times a day! And every time he texts or calls her, she gets more and more angry and she lets out this angry growl/sigh that is super irritating! And she feels the need to tell me EVERYTHING that goes on in their fights. I love her to death and I have been there for her, but it is the same thing that goes on over and over again every single day. Nothing changes! I hear the same story every day. "John is such a piece of sh**! I am SO sick of him! He won't leave me alone! He keeps on calling me a b*tch and a whore when we all know that I am not! He won't watch the boys this weekend, AGAIN!" I was sympathetic with her the first few months it was going on. But it has been over a year now and I am just tired of it! I've tried tuning her out, but it's kind of hard when we are pretty much the only 2 people in the room. She is my good friend and I don't want to hurt her feelings, but whenever she tells me these things, it interrupts my work and it's causing me a lot of stress. I really want to tell her to just stop talking. We don't even have a normal conversation anymore without her bringing up her ex. She says she hates him, but all she does is talk about him and how bad of a father he is. How can I tell her that she is causing me stress with HER drama? She always tells me how I am her only friend and the only person she can trust. I am in a really bad situation and I just want out. I think that she is a good friend, but I just want her to keep her problems at home. What should I do?

[JackJack]

Maybe you should kindly say to her, the next time she brings up her situation, that she needs to report him for harrasment. He shouldn't be calling the work for that many times a day harrassing her. She could loose her job. Tell her to disable her text messaging, or get the phone company to give her a new cell number and have it changed. I understand he may need it for getting in touch with her because they share two boys, but if he is going to keep harrasing her, he wont need to to get in touch with her about the boys, because he'll get a restriaining order on him. Tell her, to stop talking about it to you, and do something about it. Because it seems that's all she's doing.

[huh]

or maybe you could look up some abused women's advocate contact numbers & give them to her. His calling her that many times a day isn't normal. If she ignores the info you give her, that's one thing, but at least try to help her with a diffcult situation.