When the combo of personal/industry relationships get..um..interesting

i had become friends with a girl who i had met because she held the same position previosuly at a label that i currently held. phew did that make sense?

once i left that job we bonded over comparing our experiences about the job, making fun of the boss and what not. we hit it off right away, and she won me over with her extremely loud voice and unapologetic personality. as i got to know her more there were certain "red flags" that came up that made me want to pull back a bit (very frequent drug use, she'd constantly talk about herself and not listen to anything i had to say, get pissed if i didn't text her back right away, getting heinously jealous when i'd have some success). I figured no one is perfect and I should just give her a shot.

Both of us happen to be in the same area of the music industry, technically competitors which i thought wouldn't eventually come between us. about 8 months ago I had asked her for a person's contact info, not even thinking twice about it. she immediately retorted saying that she didn't appreciate my asking he for that info, and i shouldn't keep doing things like that, and she technically could get fired for it. she also went to her boss (whom i know) and talked to her about how i had asked for it.

i was really taken back since:

a) i had never asked her for info before and she was saying i did

b) went to her boss who knows me about it

i apologized and said i understand about the firing thing and how i didn't want to put her in that position, but that it was ridiculous to say i do that all the time since that wasn't the case. of course she has every right to speak with her boss, thats her business and her private relationship. but she didn't have to tell her boss that it was me. anyway, we moved on from it and carried on the friendship. In this time I bent over backwards to get her into shows for artists I work for who she loves and didn't even think twice about it, i went over to her place the night after she got a DUI and let her sleep and cry in my lap for an entire day after canceling plans I had made in advance with my boyfriend.

flash forward to a few weeks ago, and a coworker had asked me if i knew a particular band (a small one at that) had management representation. I knew this friend worked with the band so I asked her if she knew who the manager was. Again, I get this dramatic answer consisting of "what do you need?" "why do you need to know?""management information is confidential here".  I just lost it, and said actually there's a Web site called Pollstar that has a ton of management info and I asked you because you rep the band. I added that if I had asked anyone else they would have told me, and if it was such a big deal just say you can't give it out. Our arguement got completely blown out of proportion  I decided I needed to take some space. I didn't speak to her for 3 weeks until she emailed me that she missed me and wanted to talk about what happened.

things haven't been the same, which is partly a good thing because i've been keeping her at arms length, being positive and cordial. many of my other friends and my boyfriend had been very vocal about how they weren't a big fan of hers, but I didn't think it was worth cutting her completely out b/c there are just too many professional people we have in common and I didn't want it to escalate any more than it had.

overall, i just think professionally if you are able to help someone out, you should. and if legally you can't, say so right away and don't make it into a soap opera mini-series. in any work setting whether its music or not.  i found it strange that someone so close to me who i had supported personally and professionally would act in that manner, when there were far higher roads to take. i don't think i've ever reacted that way nor from my prior experiences from interning to my actual jobs had i been instructed to do otherwise. 

phew this was a lot of rambling hope it made sense.