“If you were really my friend, you’d…” is how people start using your loyalty as a leash.

Framing a request as a test of friendship skips the part where you get to think about it. Once the question becomes whether you are a real friend, the actual thing being asked disappears, and saying no means failing a definition rather than declining a favor. People who do this are not always calculating about it. Plenty of them picked it up because it worked on them.

Pull the two questions apart out loud: you care about them, and this specific thing is still a no. A friend can handle that. Somebody who keeps escalating the loyalty talk is telling you what the friendship runs on.