{"id":4783,"date":"2026-02-26T22:19:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/?p=4783"},"modified":"2026-02-26T22:19:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:19:48","slug":"he-pushed-his-shop-too-hard-and-lost-our-friendship-in-the-process-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/?p=4783","title":{"rendered":"He Pushed His Shop Too Hard\u2014And Lost Our Friendship in the Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

My best friend recently started an online shop, and at first, it seemed harmless enough. He asked me to \u201clike\u201d his page, which I was totally fine with. Then, it turned into \u201cshare this\u201d requests. I understood that promotion is important for a new business, so I did it. But then, it got exhausting. He started messaging me literally every day, asking me to buy products I didn\u2019t even need. I\u2019m not going to lie\u2014I even caved a few times and bought things because I didn\u2019t want to hurt his feelings.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I just got tired of the pressure. I started saying, \u201cHey, I\u2019m busy, sorry,\u201d and stopped replying so much. That is when he snapped. He told me, \u201cYou aren\u2019t happy for my success!\u201d I tried to smooth things over and even pretended to be supportive when he asked again.<\/p>\n

But two days later, he showed up at my place crying. It turns out he was embarrassed because I had talked to a few of our mutual friends about feeling used, and they had all admitted to feeling the exact same way. One of them let it slip to him. Now, I feel awful because he was so upset, but at the same time, I feel like he pushed it too far. Where is the line between supporting a friend and feeling exploited? I wonder if I should have just kept going along with it to avoid hurting him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My best friend recently started an online shop, and at first, it seemed harmless enough. He asked me to \u201clike\u201d his page, which I was totally fine with. Then, it … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4784,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4783\/revisions\/4784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readupdatemystory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}