- It's tricky when a friend you care about dearly dates someone you thing is a loser.
- You may think that your friend is being treated poorly and can do much better.
- Experts advise in most cases it's better to keep your concerns to yourself.
- Saying something can backfire so rather be there for your friend as much as possible.
Your best friend has finally got a boyfriend.
After years of being on her own and longing for someone to notice her, ask her out, treat her nicely, she’s found one. And you’re thrilled ... until you meet him.
She’s all smiles and is eager for your seal of approval. But you can’t give it. He spends the entire evening subtly putting her down. He’s loud, bad-mannered and oafish. He teases her unmercifully about her weight, looks, job and family. But she’s in love.
What can you do? Should you keep your concerns to yourself?
After all, it’s her life and one day this man, the very sight of whom you loathe, might marry this friend you care about so deeply and you’ll have to go to the wedding and smile through gritted teeth and tell everyone that you’re very happy for her when you’re anything but.
Do you owe it to her to at least express doubts about him? Or should you stand by and hope she eventually sees sense?
“If he’s beating her up, or you think he might be, then it’s a no-brainer – you get her out of there. I don’t care how you do it but you do it,” says counsellor Marie Cauldon.
But suppose it’s the more psychological kind of abuse? The one that leaves no visible bruises but scars her nevertheless.
“That’s much trickier because it’s not illegal to emotionally abuse your partner – you can hardly call the police because he calls her a fat cow when she’s thin as hell but thinks she isn’t,” adds Cauldon.
“What you can do though is support her, build her up, be there for her so that she eventually learns to contrast the warmth she gets from you with the callous treatment she’s getting from him.”
Your friend may be struggling with co-dependency
Unfortunately, some women respond to being treated badly, says another counsellor, Louise Brooke.
“It’s known as co-dependency in psychodynamic terms and basically what it boils down to is that she’s used to being treated appallingly, usually by her parents, so she unconsciously seeks out a partner who reinforces the low opinion she already has of herself.”
It can be heartbreaking to witness, as Tessa confirms. When her best friend, Kara, started seeing a man Tessa refers to only as “the loser”, it was incredibly difficult for her to be honest when Kara asked for her opinion.
“She’d been on her own for some time after a very messy break-up, so at first, all her friends were just very pleased she’d finally got out there and found someone else ... until we met him.
“We just couldn’t see what she saw in him. He didn’t take good care of his appearance, he ran her down the whole time, expected her to fetch and carry for him – and he made her pay whenever they went out!”
Tessa’s eyes still flame with fury remembering it all.
“But we couldn’t say anything to her because then it would be, ‘But you told me to get out there again and now I have, you don’t like it!’”
Sex perhaps? Tessa smiles wryly and accepts that maybe, that was it.
“It sure as hell couldn’t have been anything else. He was so vile, though. I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him.”
Tessa has checked herself to make sure jealousy wasn’t at play.
“How could it be? I loathed him and wanted nothing to do with him. I did want her to have a boyfriend, though. It’s not like I wanted her to stay in all the time or be available for me. I had a boyfriend, so I wasn’t jealous that she had one.” Tessa was baffled.
What did Kara see in this man? What on earth was she getting from it?
“She must’ve been getting something out of it or she wouldn’t have been there,” says Brooke.
“None of us can ever truly understand what attracts and keeps a couple together. If he made her happy, in his own way, that’s all that matters.” And it’s true, admits Tessa – Kara did seem happy with the loser.
“The more he ran her down, called her a stupid fat cow, the more she seemed to like it!” says Tessa. But after eight months, the penny finally dropped.
“She came around one night and said she’d seen the loser out with another woman! I was so relieved – well, not really relieved because obviously Kara was terribly upset, but at least it meant she was rid of him and I could at last, though very carefully at first, tell her what an unpleasant fellow we all thought he was.”
A few years down the line and now happily married to a wonderful guy, Kara herself tells friends she’s stunned by this strange period in her life.
“We could only conclude in the end that she’d taken such a blow when her previous relationship ended and been on her own for so long afterwards that basically the first guy who showed interest got green lighted. It’s like she didn’t feel worthy of someone decent, someone nice. It’s like she was punishing herself in a weird kind of way,” says Tessa.
This can happen after a major relationship ends, says Cauldon. We lose our bearings, and our normal antennae that filter out the bad guys stop working for a bit.
“It can be quite a body blow when a relationship ends. You can lose your confidence and your belief in yourself, and your whole judgment becomes skewed. It sounds like this is what happened with Kara; she thought less of herself and picked a boyfriend who confirmed that view.”
Should you ever say anything to your friend?
It all worked out well in the end and Kara saw the light but what can you do until then? Do you try to pull a friend away from someone you think is bad for her?
Neither Brooke nor Cauldon think you should.
“It’s bound to backfire,” says Brooke.
“You could lose her and she stays with him,” adds Cauldon.
Then what is to be done?
“Be there for her, support her, be ready to catch her if she falls. Really, you can’t do anything else,” says Brooke.
Then Cauldon slowly smiles: “Or you could try, if you think you can get away with it, to introduce her to someone much nicer. Someone who’ll take her away from all that.”
And that just might do the trick. After all, desperate problems call for desperate measures and isn’t your friend lucky you care about her so much?
