Might have lost my best friend

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2005
Might have lost my best friend
11
Mon, 07-03-2006 - 8:20pm

I've been best friends with someone, I'll call her Amy, for 14 years. I love her like a sister. In the past few years I've been really worried about her.

She's been in this emotionally (mutually) abusive realtionship, always seems sad, and has money problems. Her relationship is very stormy and has started to become physical...minor things so far like pushing and slapping. (again, mutual). She has no job. She has lived with a few other people for the past few years, never in a healthy situation, and hasn't had a full time job in several years. (Neither do I, but I'm job searching and she's not.)

In the past six months she has menitioned suicide twice. When I asked her about it she said she didn't mean it. But I've been so scared about everything. Recently she and her bf broke up again. But since she has no money, I'm scared she will go back to him. I think that's the reason she stayed with him so long...although I KNOW she's not purposely using him, he makes her miserable so I think if she could leave financhially, she would. She has a family member she could live with though, so it IS possible, just not ideal.

Up till now I've been supportive, and not broken out the "tough love". But things have gotten so explosive lately, and she's mentioned some things that she's consdering that really scare me, so I wrote her a "tough love" email. I oultlined the self destructive pattern I saw, and I said I was worried she would try suicide, I asked her not to go back to her bf, and I encouraged her to be independent. I said she was too good to need or dependent on anyone.

I also gently asked her to focus on getting a job and being independent instead of always and only thinking about her bf, and making him her life. I know she'll never be safe or happy unless she is indpendent. In fact she is in a really dangerous situation right now financhially, and I"m really worried about her.

Well, she's really upset at me now and probably not speaking to me. Although I said a lot of loving, positive things in the email, she only saw the bad. I've never criticized her before, and I wasnt' trying to now but I am so worried about her.

I feel like she is stuck in a bad pattern and if she doesn't stop, she'll get hurt bad or killed. I thought she would respect me enough to listen to me, but she seemed to blow it off and just say "You're being mean." instead of listening. Other people in her life are, I'm guessing, "Trying to be nice" and won't bring up this stuff, so I had to be the bad guy.

I felt like I had to say something or my best friend would kill herself, get into a serious physical fight with her bf, or do something really self destructive. At the least, I felt like she might take her bf back. So I felt like I HAD to say something. No one else did it. But instead of helping her, she's now upset with me and maybe our friendship is over.

Did I do the wrong thing? What should I do now? I don't think a true friend can only say positive things all the time and keep thier mouth shut while their freind is drowning.

Her response to me was basically, that I was trying to point out all her flaws and she only needs to hear positive things right now and I am really mean. I didn't even use the word "flaws" in my email, and I said a lot of positive things...but she didn't see them.

I just don't know what to do now.




Edited 7/3/2006 8:27 pm ET by bluerains

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iVillage Member
Registered: 02-12-2004
Tue, 07-11-2006 - 10:07pm

Hey Allie,


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