Dear Anna,
My best friend of 23 years is in another toxic relationship. Ever since we were kids he’s been in long-term toxic relationships with unavailable women. In high school he chose not to go to college with me but instead move to California with his new girlfriend (of two months) and her child (the girlfriend had just broken off her engagement with her fiance/baby daddy a month prior to them dating). I was really distraught that he made that decision a week before we were to leave. I remember yelling at him until I was blue in the face that we had planned this for three years and that he already signed up for his classes and that this girl is using him to get over her fiance. He told me that this is what his heart wants to do and then I felt bad because I was being selfish and sad cause my best friend and I were moving apart.
Throughout our mid-20s he continued to date recently divorced women with children that would leave him for their next boyfriend/husband. He would get in these relationships and stay for months if not years at a time. I know that in a way I am an enabler due to the fact that I always try to see the good in his relationships even though I know that these women are just temporary. When he called me with problems, I would help him work them out even though in my head I’m screaming, "Get out of this relationship." Hell, just date someone that hasn’t recently ended a divorce or relationship for a change. So now we are 34 and he has been secretly dating an older married woman who has kids the same age as us AND is his boss.
If I’m spending the weekend with my friend (we do gaming every other weekend, we’re nerds) then they don’t hang out unless we have to go over to the girlfriend’s house and hang with her and her husband. It’s so freakin’ awkward! It’s like they don’t even have a relationship. They just hang out and try to sneak away to go kiss ‘cause there isn’t much time for them to do anything else. What’s worse is, I always try to include or invite the girlfriend to hang with us on our friend weekends. I mean, she is a nice lady (excluding the cheating on her husband and dragging my friend along emotionally) and I want to support my friend even though this is a train wreck waiting to happen.
I just want to be a good friend and help him move forward in life. What should I do as a friend? Or should I just continue with the “support him no matter what”? Please help me. — The Enabler Friend
Dear TEF,
You’re not an enabler. You’re trying to be a supportive friend to a person who makes spectacularly bad dating (and life) decisions. It’s possible you’ve been a little too supportive, in that you’ve been afraid to give your friend the whole, frank and unpleasant truth. Starting now, you should absolutely tell him your brutally honest opinion and outline the ways in which dating a married woman secretly is a terrible idea, as is changing his life (AGAIN!) for someone who won’t change a damn thing for him.
But don’t expect him to listen or actually heed your advice. The world is run on people making horrifying relationship mistakes, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.
That said, though you may not be able to change your friend’s mystifying and destructive behaviors, you can (and should) set some boundaries for yourself and your involvement in his life. You don’t have to include the married lady in your friend hangouts. You don’t have to be around the “freakin’ awkwardness” of her husband being around while your friend and her lady pretend to not be banging each other. You can be a caring and supportive friend without getting emotionally caught up in his situation.
Remember that, in the end, your lives are separate, and if your friend’s bad decisions are upsetting you, you don’t have to be around it. This isn’t to say you need to cut him out of your life, but you can scale back, stop conversations that are about affair-related gripes, and to be mindful of how you’re feeling. Don’t be shy about extricating yourself from any particularly uncomfortable scenarios. Tell your friend that you love him and want him to be happy, but that it’s hard for you to see him making the kinds of decisions that will only hurt him, and then let whatever happens happen.
People will always do what they want. The best we can do as friends is try not to let other people’s problems interfere with living our own lives. It’s a struggle though, especially when we care deeply about people. But it’s not insurmountable.
Here’s wishing you infinite patience and compassion (not that you don’t already have it in spades).
Dear Anna,
My wife and her friends like to talk about each other’s sex lives. I get that. But lately, they have been more detailed than usual, going as far as showing their husbands’ dicks to each other and even plan on making a silicone mold of one to use as a gag gift for a party coming up. I can’t believe I have to say this, but I’m not comfortable with my wife seeing our friends’ husbands’ dicks. I’m not sure how to handle the situation because I’ve already told her I’m not comfortable with it and she dismisses me and my concerns and is now taking greater pains to hide it from me. What do I do now? I know I can’t control her or force her to stop talking to her friends, but I’m concerned about where this is going. — Done Interpreting Callous Kinky Photos, I Care
Dear DICKPIC,
Your wife’s (and her friends’) behavior is definitely a cause for concern. From a privacy and consent perspective, sharing photos of other people’s genitals without their permission is harmful, and in some states, is considered a form of intimate partner abuse.
Also concerning is your wife’s dismissal of your feelings and nonchalant air about the whole thing. It’s clear she’s not seeing the potentially negative impact that her and her friends’ actions are having on you and their husbands. That said, manslaughter is still manslaughter, even if the person who committed it didn’t have malicious intentions.
So what can you do?
You can firmly state your concerns and boundaries again. For one, make sure she knows she does not have your consent to share photos of you with her friends. Let her know that this careless disregard for others’ well-being (her friends, supposedly) is causing you stress, unease and doubts about her motives and character.
You can talk to the other husbands in question. They might not know what’s going on and be none too pleased to find out their genitalia has become a gag gift to amuse people at parties.
And you can also ask your wife to consider how she would feel if the situation was reversed and you and your guy friends were passing around your wives’ nudes to each other — and making molds of their body parts for “fun.”
I hope one or all of these suggestions is enough to get her and her friends to reconsider their actions.
