Problem with a friend or is she a friend?

[RugbyRugby]

I was in a relationship with an emotional abuser - the sort of situation where he seems like Mr Right, sucked me in and then it spiralled down and ended up telling me no other man would want me and making me feel like that to my core.

I am no contact with him and have been for 8 months now. It's been hard work to get over, I'm not really but its a day at a time for me.

My friend doesn't know the whole story of the vile stuff he said to me but she knows I was in love with him and he was a bit cruel sometimes.

She met him several times and is friends with him on Facebook. He has his privacy settings set high and I'm no longer connected to him so can't see his photos. I saw her today for work and she showed me a photo of him on his Facebook - supposedly it was to show me he was looking a bit miserable to make me feel better.

I told her I wasn't interested and have asked her to de-friend him. She said she didn't want to because "knowledge is power".

I left it alone and didn't make a fuss because I didn't want her to know how much it upset me.

What should I do?

Part of me wants to say to her "either you de-friend him or this friendship is over" but I get that I can't control her, she could just lie to me anyway - I'd never know and that alerting her to how upsetting it is for me may not be wise.

I don't have many friends as I live in an area where its difficult to meet people my age so I also am a bit jumpy about ending the friendship as to be blunt I need someone to go out with occassionnally.

It's made me feel pretty shit and I'm worried about why she is so insistent on staying his friend. He is a serial womanizer and I suppose I know this is daft as why should I care I'm worried she may be trying to get with him. It all feels wrong and upsetting to me and I don't know if I'm being irrational because of my triggering reaction to him. If I even hear his name it upsets me and sets me back days and I start obsessively thinking aobut him again.

She obviously shouldn’t have shown you the photo at all — that was overstepping boundaries you have put in place for a good reason — but she seems to have meant to make you feel better by showing you him looking miserable, and it’s particularly understandable if you haven’t told her the full story. She thinks it was just an ordinary relationship that ended. Either way, I don’t think you can make her pick him or you, but you can (and should) say you don’t ever want her to talk about him or be shown photos again.

She knows there was a bit more to it than "an ordinary relationship" and she knows I am no contact with him. She doesn't know the full story.

I just find it really weird she'd insist on staying "in contact" with him when she doesn't know him in any real sense. Why would she do that when she knows I find him upsetting.

It's that (why is she so insistent on staying "linked" to a man she doesn't really know and she knows I find upsetting) that is niggling at me.

I think you have to accept that, for whatever reason (and really, she doesn’t need to explain that reason to you) she wants to retain some form of contact. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for you to tell her firmly that you don’t want to hear anything about him, though. If you can’t live with that being the state of things then I think you’re right in thinking you have to also stop contact with her. I do think though that sometime down the line when you’re properly over this man, you might come to regret having ended a (presumably otherwise good?) friendship over what will look in hindsight like a fairly inconsequential situation.

I’ll be blunt. Personally, I wouldn’t consider one friend’s poor experience with somebody a reason for me to have to end contact with that person, too. I have several friends and acquaintances who I think are perfectly nice people, but whom other of my friends dislike for whatever reason. It’s not my responsibility to manage or mitigate those relationships. Clearly things didn’t work out between you and this man and you’re entitled to have whatever opinion of him you like; but trying to force a friend to share that opinion isn’t really on and it isn’t her fault you start obsessing about him over the mere mention of his name.

OP, you asked her to do something and she doesn't want to do it. Her 'knowledge is power' nonsense is irrelevant to you if you feel she is not your friend. You don't want any connection to this man.

Just distance yourself from this friendship and start afresh. Life is too short for all this drama. She's weird.