Through some restructuring, my team now has a new lead, part of management team, who has been in the company many years. I have also been there several years and have made a lot of friends in the workplace. I go out pretty regularly with a few of them, others I have lunches with, drop by their desk and talk, or just hang around with at work parties. I have been called “influential” and “an integral part” of our culture. I walk through the office daily and say hello to everyone that might be in the office, and I feel like I am generally well liked. People even come to me for work advice and personal advice too.
I also got one of my long-term friends hired into our team because I knew she would be an amazing asset to the company. Her and I developed our friendship from a previous workplace. We've been dear friends for over a decade.
I am also known to be a bit of a challenger around the workplace and at times I do get a bit heated or even upset. My dear friend loves that I challenge people at work because it's often people being unempathetic, rude, or just critical without being appreciative to people at the same time. Also, for the “getting heated” bits, I go to a therapist regularly and literally the only things “wrong” with me are perimenopause and ADHD, with some pretty typical problems faced by an adult my age.
The reason I bring up the last piece is that in discussing our new roles inside our team, this manager told my friend over the course of a couple talks things like: I am detrimental to her career, that she should distance herself from me professionally, and even questioned if our friendship was healthy for her in general. My friend of course has shared all of this with me. Again, at least my therapist agrees and the general state of having so many friends would not suggest I am some sort of toxic person. The last bit about me being good for her is deeply disturbing to us both. It feels like she (the manager) is trying to break our friendship apart.
This whole thing feels very toxic to us both! What would Reddit would do? Should I, or even we together, confront this manager? What's a professional way to say “butt out of our friendship”?
Edit for typos.