I’ve become friends 24/7 unpaid therapist!

[Redcurrent100]

Please Help. I am starting to feel like my friends therapist and I’m struggling. She is going through a horrible situation, but I feel like I’m stuck.

Friend is going through a nasty “we’re going to end the engagement” but 5 mins later “we’re going to give it another go” with her fiancé now for the last 6-7 months.

He isn’t a great person. In 3 years of knowing each other they have had 2 kids and got engaged. She has always moaned about him, but never to this extent. I’ve spent the whole time wondering why she is with him or marrying him.

He is so controlling, financially, socially, everything.

Every day for the last 7 months my friend comes to me, calls me, pops over and chats about what he’s done wrong now. Last night I spent an hour on the phone to her whilst she tells me he’s stopped her going out tonight and what not but then this morning she’s messaged to say they sorted things and that she loves him.

I’m meant to be seeing her this weekend for a mums day out (I have young DC as well) and the whole day will be spent talking about her toxic fiancé. Nothing will change.

What do I do? I don’t want to say never talk to me about him again but I can’t keep doing this for my sanity.

Agree with this. Something like this is honest and open, is respectful of your relationship with friend, gives her a chance to change and sets boundaries for you.

you might end up having to be less available to her eventually depending on how she responds, but seems unkind to not even talk to her about it first

I've been through this OP. It's unbelievably hard to cut off the constant support but the fact is that she's addicted to the cycle and she has made you a part of it.

By withdrawing your constant support you're forcing that cycle to change. Hopefully for the better, maybe not but either way it's not on you.

She relies on the drama to give her life meaning.
She won't change.
You need to step back a bit, be unavailable sometimes.

No, OP. She doesn’t get to be upset by you setting boundaries. Or rather her being upset shouldn’t stop you. You’ve spent 20 years being her emotional support person so there is not being wrong with pointing out how much time she is spending moaning about him to you, which is clearly a waste of time because nothing actually changes as a result and actually, it’s getting too much for you. If she strips about it, let her.

Get into the habit of not feeding her with attention when she starts talking about him, and change the subject every time. Otherwise in 20 years you’ll be in the same place.

you can’t change her, but you can change your response to her.

Maybe because you're so close (matching tatts!), she feels like she doesn't really need to get a grip and be sensible because you do all that for her. So she can hash it all out with you, hear what's wrong, recognise it and then ignore it.

You could try suggesting some really wild stuff instead. "Maybe it would help for you to have an affair..." / "Why not start a heroin habit?" / "Abandon the kids at the zoo, life will be much easier!" etc.

At some point she needs to learn to exercise her own life appraisal skills. As someone who took decades to learn to trust my own judgement, in an odd way it can be debilitating to rely on a friend's advice to make sense of things. St some point, you must learn to do that for yourself.

(Mind you, I'm not looking forward to the thread next year if she takes you up on the wild ideas! 😀)

I don't think this poster was accusing you of creating the situation your friend is in or that you caused her to constantly complain to you about her partner.

I read it more as saying that you and your friend are in a codependent relationship. You want to help her feel better (and maybe get out of that awful relationship), but by allowing her to constantly complain about him you are giving her just enough emotional relief for her to keep enduring the relationship, rather than standing up for herself or walking away.

But I could be wrong.

No one is saying to turn a blind eye to a mate who stays with an abuser.

I think if he's toxic to the extent of stopping her going out, is it not perhaps an abusive relationship?

Maybe a way out for you is to tell her that, go for the "I'm not qualified" sort of thing. "Look, I feel for you, but this is clearly an abusive relationship. He is an abuser. I think you need to speak to a professional who is better qualified to unpack this for you so that you can get yourself out of this horrible situation." Signpost her to women's aid if it's an abusive relationship. And a therapist. And just keep repeating that.

I’ve been in this situation and anytime I needed anything she shut me down. I also witnessed some of his appalling behaviour and it left me feeling uneasy for days. I ended the friendship in the end. She had always said I couldn’t come to the wedding cos I didn’t like him (I didn’t but mostly because of the stuff she told me which was very damaging to the kids she kept having with him) I didn’t want to be around all the drama especially as i am a single mum so anyone around me is around my kids- furthermore having got myself out of dysfunctional situations of my own - I didn’t do that just to have to witness it and let my kids witness someone else’s dysfunctional relationship. It’s a hard situation. She totally didn’t understand why I had to walk away. I think previous posters have made very good suggestions of boundaries to apply but it won’t be comfortable for you to do as there seems to be a very established dynamic and she doesn’t seem to recognise how hard she’s making it for you.

I’ve done all of this, I’ve told her he is abusive, I’ve told her he’s done this 100 times, he won’t change, she says it’ll be hard being a single mum 2 kids I’ve told her it’s going to be harder to stay with an abusive person and marry one

@Britneyfan I do think that was a great and very insightful post from you (Today 13:19).
I hope you're ok now 🙏🏻💗

I've just had to tell someone who seems to expect me to be her therapist that it's all too much for me and I'm going to take a break from her. She's been on broadcast only for months and I'm expected to be listen only. It ceased being a proper functioning friendship some time ago. At the start of the situation I suggested she seeks professional help, which she has chosen not to do. I don't feel guilty or bad about it at all, it's a huge relief. Hope you manage something similar, OP.

Eventually when my life was on the up , they dropped me ..

They were probably relieved they didn’t have to listen to you trauma dump anymore and could take a step back!

It sounds like you’ve done everything you can. Ultimately she can either listen to you or not. By the sound of it, I doubt she’ll leave him and will be stuck in this endless loop forever. You need to make yourself less available to preserve your sanity.

I think you and the responders to this post need to think about what the right course of action would be, and how much blame should be assigned to her, if she is being coercively controlled. It sounds like an abusive relationship and the cycle of nearly leaving then losing your resolve because he’s convinced you he can change and things can be better is very normal. You wouldn’t say someone just loves drama if it was known they were being abused.

Maybe this is just a generally toxic relationship. but the same difficulties of low self esteem and nasty power dynamics that make it so very hard for abused women to leave abusive relationships still apply in a not-quite-abusive but pretty toxic situation.

It can also be terribly dangerous to leave a controlling relationship even when there has been no previous physical violence. You don’t know what’s going on deep behind the scenes. Worth trying to find out.

Op your support is just enabling her to never awfully fix things...and by fix things I mean the many ways she could effect real change in her life. Eg. Have some real counselling...address her issues in why she is addicted to the trauma cycle...what's stopping her setting real boundaries.

You actually aren't helping her. Would it be easier to see that you can and should step back and stop letting her waste your brain space and dump her trauma if you saw it as in her benefit too

If you love her you need to be honest with her.

Tell her you find the on off cycle and constant trauma dump difficult. Tell her he is toxic and she needs to find real counselling and help to move forward.

Then start reflecting back...okay sorry I know this seems unkind but id like a day off talking about bill as I also find it upsetting and it seems to go round in circles.

I’d say, ‘friend - I care deeply about you but this is all we talk about and nothing ever changes. I’ve reached the point where I have nothing new to add that I haven’t already said. So, when you start to bring it up again, I’m going to talk about something else. Ok?’

She may well be trapped by his abusive behaviour but she is an adult and a parent. If she keeps just talking round and round and not listening she is going to give her kids trauma as wrll.

A good friend needs to start being honest with her about it. Be serious and tell her you dont support her going back to him again and again.

Probably…..and I respect that.

I think you need to set a boundary before you next see her so expectations are clear. Then she has time to decide if she wants to continue with it - saves awkwardness when you're there. You want a drama-free visit so all talk of kids, husbands, work to be left at home. Then if she brings it up, a cheery "come on Jane, we agreed this was drama free. Let's get another cocktail!"

Then after the trip you can say it made you realise how much time her relationship has been consuming in your friendship and you really want to get back to having fun together.

As others have said you're inadvertently enabling her to stay by being a listening ear. She's a grown woman who can make her own decisions but she doesn't get to impose the consequences of those on her friends all the time.

I’ve known people like this. It’s exhausting. I’d just have to tell her “if you’re not going to leave him then I don’t wanna hear about how shit he is anymore.”

OP I have a friend a bit like this and I have had to be honest with her. I said it nicely and worded it well (IMO) she listens for a while and then it slowly creeps back in.
I get texts quite often with her telling me how pathetic she thinks she is and how her life s going nowhere etc and I’ve had to start being blunt with her as she has been saying this to me for years and nothing I say helps. I even get texts that just say things like “I’m really anxious” and no other context as she expects me to drop everything and talk her through yet another anxiety attack. I even sometimes get shitty responses if I don’t reply within half a hour. It’s draining. You need to be more honest with her.

I had a close friend like this, it was exhausting. She fell out with me over something completely different she thought I’d done but hadn’t, she wouldn’t listen to reason. After I got over the upset I realised how much less stressful my life was. Sometimes losing a friendship is totally worth it.

Oh and 20 years later she’s still married to the husband she hated and was splitting up with 🤷🏻‍♀️

Despite her making friendly moves towards me in the intervening years I’ve never been tempted to be more than cordial acquaintances as I’ve no wish to be sucked back into her drama.