Struggling to support friend stuck in bad relationship

[lounellie]

Hi all, I am starting this thread mostly to vent and hopefully receive some good advice on how to best support my friend.

My best friend has been stuck in a bad place for the last 18 months. She is in a 5 years long relationship, but she fell out of love with her DP a couple of years ago. The relationship is very clearly over from the outside, no intimacy, no love, mostly just getting on as flatmates and friends.

She is 36 and desperate for DC and she fears this is her last chance for a family. This fear has caused her to struggle immensely with making the decision to leave the relationship and move on to find a more suitable life partner. This has been grinding her down to the point that she is now clinically depressed and under the care of a doctor. She is now a shell of a human tbh. She seems to be unable to make the decision to leave the relationship that is causing her so much anguish, and she is getting worse and worse every month that goes by. She has lost a ton of weight and hair and is starting to really look unwell now.

As her best friend, I don't know what to do to help her. She comes to me for support, we keep having the exact same conversation, and then she feels unable to make any changes and just mumbles on. This has been going on now for 18 months and I am so worried about her.

I am of course always there for her to listen and support, and I haven't pushed her at all so far for fear of making her feel criticized or unsupported. However I wonder if I should be more direct with her about my thoughts and concerns?

It is so hard to support a close friend going through a bad situation that has a clear solution, watching them break down a little bit more every day while being unable to do anything about it

It's ok to reach your limit.

Someone has to reach their limit here, and if that's you, maybe it will make her realise that it's a choice of leave or stay.
But staying in limbo and agonising over it isn't a forever thing.

Personally I'd kindly find her some helpful resources. Stories of women who have dealt with her dilemma before (there are threads on here), or books, contact details of suitable therapist.

Give them to her with a 'you know I'll support you through thick and thin but I'm not going round in circles with you anymore...
Please check these out and know whatever you decide to do I'm still your friend, but I don't want to discuss this again until you've made a decision'.

Tough love for someone caught on the horns of a dilemma but who won't get off the fence.

Thank you for your advice. I think you might be right, clearly my current approach hasn't been that helpful so maybe drawing some limits will be better for both me and her moving forward.

I'm sure you have been really helpful in terms of her emotional support!
But she sounds 'stuck' and some people stay stuck forever unless a trigger / catalyst breaks their indecision.
She is afraid, but her time is only getting shorter and if she had a child with this person she'll only get more miserable because raising a child with someone you don't love is ghastly.
Who wants to accept that it's all wrong when the dream was so close!?
He sounds stuck too, he must also be pretty miserable but is settling or can't be bothered changing his life if it's ticking along undramatically.

Do them both a favour, bow out of the dance, with care.

From a purely practical point of view, how does she plan to have a baby if there's no intimacy?

Why is it that she's not ending the relationship? Is it because she feels guilty? Is it financial? Because I have been you in this situation with SIL. And the truth was, we all knew he was a bit of a prat, but we didn't fully appreciate how he was controlling and manipulating her so that she wouldn't dump him and how he controlled her emotions, and basicaly guilted her into funding him. And you know what? she DID have a baby with him and the behaviour, of course, got worse, and now they are finally broken up but she's had YEARS of hell and he will never be out of her life.

If she had left the relationship a few years ago, she might have met someone by now. She's wasting her life, making herself ill and actually wants to bring children into this mess.

I would suggest therapy and a visit to the GP for a chat about medication. She obviously not looking after herself, so encouragement to cook nutritious meals and perhaps get some multivitamins.

I'd also start changing the subject if she brings it up. Sometimes we act as a crutch that keeps someone stuck.

You are absolutely right, they are both totally stuck. He loves her so he hopes things will magically improve and the relationship will continue into marriage and children. She doesn't love him romantically but thinks he is a good guy and is too afraid of missing her boat if she leaves.

Thank God she knows not to bring children into the relationship otherwise she would have done so already. She has been in therapy for years but it doesn't seem to be helpful at this stage.

I am fully aware that I'm projecting and I have some unresolved issues because of how damaged my SIL was by her ex. But honestly, this gives me the heebie jeebies. exBIL was just like this. "I love her and this is it for me" even though actually, she was clearly miserable and unhappy. I mean, there's a point at which if you have any self respect and your partner is clearly not happy, you should move on becuase clearly you are not happy.

But exBIL LIKED it. he got to play the victim, his absolute FAVOURITE thing. "oh, well, I'd love to get married but [SIL] isn't ready. Sigh." or "I just want ot make her happy" but it was bollocks because the things that made her happy were things like going to the gym or meeting up with friends but if she did those things he'd feel all sad and alone and she'd feel obliged to cancel.

She knows she is wasting her time, she knows the relationship is over, but somehow she can't pull the trigger. It doesn't make any rational sense but I appreciate she is not thinking straight at this stage.

What else does she feel she just can't do because of him?

He doesn't seem controlling at all based in what she says. He comes across as a little immature and passive, happy to put up with this "acceptable level of unhappiness" for the sake of being with her. I think for a long time she was hoping he would break up with her because of the lack of intimacy but clearly this isn't happening.

Would it help if she recognised that she’s actually hurting him by staying with him? Maybe not in the short term but in the long term. If he’s a decent guy, he will find someone who loves him back. At the moment, because she’s hanging around, she’s stopping him from moving on and meeting someone else. She’s actually being really cruel with her indecisiveness. If she knows it’s over for her - and she plainly does - then she owes it to them both to move on.

Well, he's guilt tripping her into staying for a start. "I will just do anything for you, because I love you, even if you're mean to me and don't love me." It's very unlikely to even be conscious on his part, but....

When she's out with you, is she feeling bad that she's not home with him?

Does she say things like, "Oh, I can't do that thing becuase I haven't spent any time with Dave this week"?

Or perhaps, "I can't stand action movies but they're Dave's favourite and I feel so bad that I'm not really doing anything with him that I'm watching them every friday night."

All seem like perfectly reasonable things on the surface except they're not - she's doing something she doesn't want to do.

Ask her to be 100% honest... what does she think will happen to her, and to him, if she breaks up with him? Emotionally, financially, mentally, practically etc.

It does sound like she is stuck in a freeze response.
You wrote she is already in therapy - do you know what kind of therapy?
Perhaps you could encourage her to explore a different, more somatic based therapy with a therapist that understands nervous system regulation.