The confusing part is that being needed and being used feel almost identical while it is happening. You are helping, they are grateful, everything appears fine. It is only over months that you notice the calls have a pattern, and the pattern is that they arrive when something is wrong and stop when it is resolved.
Scripture is realistic about this and does not require you to pretend otherwise.
What does Scripture say about friendship having two directions?
A friend loves at all times; and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17 (WEB)
At all times — including the times when nothing is needed. That is the distinguishing feature. A friend who appears only in adversity may still be a friend; one who appears only in their adversity is describing a different arrangement.
A man of many companions may be ruined, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24 (WEB)
And Proverbs is willing to be quite blunt about the limits of one person’s demands on another.
Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house, lest he be weary of you, and hate you.
Proverbs 25:17 (WEB)
That is Scripture acknowledging that a person can wear out their welcome, and that resentment is the predictable result. It is not written to the tired friend; it is written to the one doing the visiting.
Two questions worth separating
Is this a season or a pattern? Someone in genuine crisis — bereavement, illness, a collapsing marriage — will take far more than they give for a year or more. That is not being used; that is what Galatians 6:2 describes, and there may be a season where you are on the other side of it.
A pattern is different: five years, several crises, and they have never once asked how you are.
Is the imbalance the problem, or is the disregard? Some friendships are permanently uneven and perfectly good — with someone chronically ill, or much older, or in circumstances that will not change. The thing that actually corrodes is not the imbalance but being treated as a function rather than a person.
Where Jesus complicates it
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil.
Luke 6:35 (WEB)
Expecting nothing back. That is a real instruction and it does apply here — you are not entitled to reciprocity as the price of being decent to someone.
But it is about generosity, not about pretending. Giving freely to someone is compatible with knowing accurately what the relationship is, and it does not require you to be endlessly available or to call it a friendship if it is something else.
What to actually do
Say something once, plainly and without a case file. “I’ve noticed we mostly talk when something’s wrong. I’d like to see you when nothing is.” No list of examples — a list turns it into a prosecution and they will defend rather than hear.
Watch what happens next. Some people genuinely have not noticed and change immediately. Some become defensive and then adjust. Some do nothing at all, and that is your answer.
Adjust your effort to the actual relationship. Not punishment — accuracy. You can be warm, helpful when asked, and no longer the person organizing the friendship. Much of the exhaustion here comes from doing all the maintenance for something the other person is not maintaining.
Keep helping if you want to, on your terms. “I can’t do Saturday, but I could drop something round Sunday.” A specific yes with a boundary is more sustainable than an open-ended one you will resent.
Check your own side. Some of us build relationships on being useful because being needed is easier than being known. If saying no feels impossible, that is worth looking at regardless of what this friend does.
If you decide to step back
Most friendships like this do not need a confrontation. They quietly rebalance to what they actually were — friendly, occasional, real enough.
If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men.
Romans 12:18 (WEB)
Your portion is your portion. Having said the true thing once and stayed kind, you have done it.
The thing to hold
Wanting a friendship to go both ways is not selfishness, and noticing that it does not is not a failure of grace.
A friend loves at all times was written as a description of what friendship is. Using it to identify what something is not is a legitimate reading.