Passive Agressive Friend

by Meg
(Salem)

I've had this girlfriend for about 5 years now and I am always feeling stressed and overwhelmed by our friendship. She is always expecting so much of me and when I turn her down (for whatever reason) she throws it in my face. If she invites us over for dinner and we don't feel like going, she tells us how much fun it was and how much we missed. If I'm sick and don't go for dinner she sends pictures of the food and tells me how delicious it was. She is always putting down my decisions and telling me how to parent my child. Right down to haircuts. When I recently got my son's haircut she told me how much better it looked now and I was pretty offended by that. I wasn't sure what to say so I said I really liked his hair long and she was instantly angry with me and said I shouldn't say that when people tell me my son's hair looks better short I should just thank them. Our husbands work together and she wants to tell me what my husband is doing wrong at work too. I'm just not sure how to approach these various situations without being mean. I do want to remain friends because we do have fun together and our children do too, but I need to be able to tell her how I'm feeling. She also recently ruined a surprise for my 30th birthday because she was mad that my sister and husband didn't want to do the party how she wanted to, so she just told me all about it. I told her it had hurt my feelings and she pretended she didn't know it was all supposed to be a surprise, when I knew she knew that because my husband showed me email conversations between them specifically saying surprise party. Could you please help me learn how to deal with this tactfully?