I'm worried about my friend's new relationship

[Swatchdog]

And I don't know how to support her - whether to just be there for her or whether to try to open her eyes to what the chap is like, or even whether I'm reading too much into it.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday for the first time since she started seeing her new man around 2 months ago and she was offloading telling me a few things about him that got me really quite worried. All of them in isolation would seem quite innocuous, but when added together they rang alarm bells to me. I may be projecting as I was in some bad relationships when I was younger, but I am worried about her. Examples of stuff she was telling me include:

• he picks at her for being "cold" in messages to him, so she is required to be more effusive in texts to meet his standards of loving. Conversely, he will send closed messages on occasion and then berate her for not responding

• he calls her names and mocks her over her values. Example being that she's a snob because she has good table manners.

• he is very jealous of her making facebook friends with men and she gets the third degree about it, but women FB friends are overlooked

• he refers to her going out with male friends as "dates" and is snide about it

• if she is busy and can't see him he sulks and says stuff like "it's obvious how you feel" thus making her go running to make him feel better

• he complained about being cheated on in "every serious relationship" he'd ever had and thus uses it as a reason to not trust her

The relationship got quite serious quite quickly, and some of the stuff he's told her about his former job (in an area I know a lot about) just don't add up, so it seems to me like he's not being entirely honest with her about stuff that doesn't really matter!

Is there anything I can do to help her? I've been reading "The Loser" after finding it on another thread and he really sounds like one. Is there a way to get her to see that?

Uh-oh, red flag central!

Could you "share" some stuff on facebook about The Loser? So she'll see it but won't take it as a personal dig at her relationship? Or sign up to recieve the FB updates from baggagereclaim.co.uk and then share them every week!

Does she have children - could she be persuaded onto mumsnet for some totally unrelated reason?

The thing is that if you address it directly, she will probably get defensive. You could definitely flag up individual things to her that he's done in a kind of jokey "What? Are you being serious?" kind of way so that you're not normalising it, and then the other thing to do is try and give her lots of opportunities to stumble across things which will start ringing her alarm bells so that it's her decision she's making for herself, if that makes sense?

What was her attitude to the things she was telling you about the twat her new man?

Did she seem concerned or rueful that she's got herself embroiled with a controlling and abusive man, or is she seeing his jealousy and possessiveness as evidence that he has strong feelings for her - as in 'he's treats me mean because he loves me' or 'he's a tortured soul that only I can understand/heal/save?

Where did she meet this man? Has she met his friends/family/work colleagues?

You've said this is the first time you've seen her for a couple of months. Is she a close friend? Have you not met up with her earlier because of the demands he makes on her time?

I think if it's only 2 months in (rather than she's announcing her engagement or moving in together) you are still in the window of opportunity where you can legitimately say 'Swatchdog's mate... he's a knob... run'. She's telling you these stories precisely so that she can use you as a benchmark. She's not sure if this is OK behaviour or not so tell her it isn't.

'benchmark?' I think I meant 'sounding board'.

there is a topic here where people discuss early red flags in relationships. Everything you wrote is listed.

How good of a friend is she? Can you just tell her honestly what your concerns are?

Thank you for posting. I'm sad that I'm not overreacting, but glad at the same time.

I've looked up baggage reclaim on FB and joined it, great idea Bertie

I couldn't really work out her attitude, izzy, except that she did say that she didn't think it was going to be a long term thing and also kept saying "we're great when we're together, just not when we're apart". She also dismissed some of his behaviour as understandable due to low self esteem (the jealousy and the picking on her standards). So having typed that I can work out her attitude, she's being suckered into the relationship!

I think they met online, and it moved very fast (in spite of her saying they were taking it slowly) and they've met one another's families but I don't know so much about friends. I suggested a coffee one morning recently but was put off because he was round.

We meet every so often, to not see each other for a couple of months isn't unusual, but I hadn't heard much from her in that time which is. I did suggest after lunch yesterday that we make it a much more regular arrangement and hook up at least once a month.

I did try to say I was worried about things, but have a tendency to blunder in where angels fear to tread so was trying to be light about it - she's had a run of bad luck with men of late and I didn't want to make her feel like I was disparaging about her relationship, as I think she would reject too much criticism of the man at the moment. I did end our lunch giving her a big hug and saying I was at the end of the phone anytime if she needed me. It's hard not to go in too hard, as I know I would have been very suspicious of anyone criticising the "wonderful" boyfriends of my youth who I now understand to be abusive.

Did she arrange lunch this time? You see... like you, I am a blunderer in, and I find that's the part some friends value me for. They may not necessarily like what I say but they know that they'll get a warts and all honest opinion if they ask for one.

I hadn't thought about that, Cogito

Yes, she did organise meeting up, but only after I had suggested coffee last week, so I think we both knew we were overdue catching up but she was the one who made it happen.

Then my guess is she's not totally sure about him and wanted to sound you out. If she's gt a poor track record with men, her confidence in her judgement will be low and she may see you as a safe pair of hands. Next time you see her - assuming he's still around - I think the best approach is to replay things back and get her answering her own questions. On the value mocking, for example... 'He makes fun of your table manners? Are you OK with that? Don't you think that's odd? Does he make fun of other things you do?' The more you can get her to agree that she's not OK with it and she does find it odd behaviour, the less she can ignore it. And if he's bullshitting her about his former job, tell her straight that there's something wrong with his story. Con artists are very common.