<p>I do want to help her, simply because… shes a human being, and I can see her pain does that mean I’m trying to fix something within myself as well???</p>
<p>Having said that.</p>
<p>After almost two weeks of silence from her, do I assume she no longer needs/wants my friendship, or do I initiate a contact just to see how she’s faring. </p>
<p>She’s either resumed her life as it was with him, and for the time being is content…
or she hasn’t and could use a friend.</p>
<p>ADad had it right, too much/too little, now/later, walk toward/walk away…</p>
<p>Well, do you want to hear her obsess about this relationship all over again while you realize that she isn’t listening to anything you or her therapist is saying? If you want to be friends with her you need to find something in common that is completely separate from her relationship drama. If you don’t have anything in common beyond that then I don’t see how a friendship will work.</p>
<p>Incidentally, it makes me really mad that she has tried to break off the relationship more than once and the boyfriend won’t leave her alone.</p>
<p>Our friendship came about when I responded to her Craiglist ad for a “walking partner”. In an effort to improve my health/ lose weight, I started actively walking about a year ago. Mostly walking my dogs around the neighborhood. The dogs no longer walk fast enough/long enough for me (thats a good thing). So I responded to her ad, we met, walked, talked had many enjoyable conversations and I greatly enjoyed her company, I believe the feeling was mutual for her. Anyway, that was before she shared her “secret”, but prior to that, I had noticed a change in her ability to plan ahead, and would usually get a last minute phone call saying “want to walK?”. I think that marked his reinvolvement in her life. She wanted to be available for him, which meant she could not commit to far ahead of time to our walks. Since she told me about the affair, our conversations changed mostly revolving around her relationship. I don’t want to be an enabler</p>
<p>Pea: I couldn’t agree with you more. I would like to punch him in the face, and I am NOT a violent person. But why would the jerk leave her alone. I guess she makes him feel pretty special, she’s a beautiful 43 year old, and hes a nasty 55 year old!</p>
<p>I volunteer at a listening hotline. We do not give advice. We listen, reflect feelings, help the person think things through, ask if they have considered X or Y. </p>
<p>We do get callers who don’t seem to really want to change, who “use us”, if you will, to vent while not making changes in their lives. These people are “stuck”, and though we may challenge them, we are okay with listening to “stuck” people. We do limit the time we spend with any particular caller who is not in crisis. </p>
<p>What we do on the listening hotline, though, is a social service, not a friendship. </p>
<p>A relationship with this particular woman apparently is inevitably going to have a “service” aspect to it–she will vent about the man, and you will somehow need to both accept and limit that if a friendship, rather than a listening service, is going to be possible. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Do you like her as a friend? What if she were not involved with this man…would you want to be her friend, or is she maybe just “okay”?</p>
<p>Do you miss her now…or do you mainly want to know if her pain has ended?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Again: do you want to treat her as a friend? What would you do if you had not heard from other friends in a (comparatively speaking) long period of time?</p>
<p>If you want her as a friend, also ask yourself what she wants from you. Is she looking for a friend or a listening service? </p>
<p>Maybe she is looking X% listening service and Y% friend. Can you kind of figure out roughly what sort of mix she wants, and is that something you would want too? Or maybe she could agree to a different sort of mix that you might propose?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Her unresponsiveness suggests that she does not want to have this model of friendship. Do you like her enough as a friend to try for a different model of friendship?</p>
<p>If your listening to her was “enabling”, then your absence would tend to cause an end to the affair. Is that actually the case? </p>
<p>How would you handle such a situation with other friends? Another friend tells you about a problem she has, something you don’t approve of and that she knows is bad for her. She talks about it a lot. What is your response? Do you tell her “things she already knows”, and allow your friend’s nonresponsiveness to that to end the friendship?</p>
<p>I enjoyed her friendship very much, BEFORE
Someone mentioned that I was enabling her by listening, allowing her to offload on me instead of him…
I’m always there for my friends, when they need me. Even if I disagree with them, however, I’ve never dealt with this situation.<br>
I told this friend I’m here for her. However she needs me to be. I put no conditions on the friendship, other than to express my feelings about the relationship. I haven’t heard anything so what does that mean?<br>
I can also share that she did share some of our discussion/my feelings with her boyfriend, so I’m guessing he’s not going to encourage her to talk to me.</p>
<p>Last text from her two weeks ago:
“Hi. Thanks for the text. Doing well and miss our walks. Not sure if I can see you. Heart is committed to see things through to the the end with XXXXXXX. So I feel torn. Can we let some time pass? Not nice. I know. Have though about festival this weekend and how much I would like to go with you. Can’t do it right now.”<br>
I responded via phone call that I was willing/able/available to help her in any way I could, she just needed to let me know.<br>
Thats the last conversation we had.</p>
<p>She sounds nuts. She isn’t even busy, just waiting for her married boyfriend to get in touch with her. After that kind of blow off I would initiate no more contact. If you hear from her down the road at that point you can decide then if you want to have anything more to do with her.</p>
<p>I’ve done this with friends, after some weird scene that they initiated I didn’t get in touch with them again. They didn’t get in touch with me either and the friendship just faded into oblivion without much fanfare.</p>
<p>Considering the text message that you shared, I’d be surprised if it were her intention to end the friendship. If you want to be her friend, why don’t you contact her and see what is up?</p>
<p>Always, she laid it out quite plainly in her text. She doesn’t want your insight. It sounds to me like she knows you “have a (good) point.” But she doesn’t want it.</p>
<p>Send her an anonymous copy of
Women who love too much
Unless of course you’re the only person she’s told then the gift would not be so anonymous.</p>
<p>Unless she’s being beaten or embezzled – stay out of it, b/c she’s going to need a shoulder to cry upon eventually.</p>
<p>If she’s been abused physically - speak to a local battered women’s shelter for advice.</p>
<p>Well, that’s the answer to that…she’s in it until he dumps her for real or until she marries him. What a colossal waste of time on her part…and a waste of time on your part to the extent you try to rescue her. She doesn’t want rescuing.</p>
<p>A friend of a friend spent more than 25 years being the mistress to someone who never got divorced. At age 50 or so, she finally opened her eyes. And boy, does she regret all the time wasted on the guy.</p>
<p>I think that you have invested enough in this relationship. You can’t fix her dysfunctional relationship with this married man. It’s time to walk away and let her live her life the way she wants to - even if she is on the path to some real heartbreak. I bet that you are not the first or last friend that she has lost over this tawdry affair. </p>
<p>You may think she needs you, but she only wants him. This is a one-sided friendship and you are on the losing end. </p>
<p>I don’t understand the angst over this particular friendship. You haven’t really known her for very long, she’s not your responsibility in any way. Why do you feel that she needs you, and only you? What can you do to help her that no one else can do?</p>
<p>I get that you feel sorry for her, but you can’t help her. She’s like an alcoholic with this relationship. You cannot make her change, she has to do that all by herself. She’s pushing you away because she’s not ready to change and you are making her uncomfortable by talking about it.</p>
<p>If you want to help someone, help her son before she ships him off to Afghanistan to get him out of the way for her “relationship”.</p>
<p>I was about to post the same thing. It seems like the OP has a lot of emotional investment in this relationship given she has only known the woman a few months. There are lots of people out there that I enjoy spending time with or would like to spend more time with but it doesn’t always work out for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are too busy, sometimes they don’t feel the same way. It’s a little sad because sometimes it feels like a rejection but that’s life. I would move on and try to find someone else to hang out with. This sounds like a dysfunctional relationship all around.</p>
<p>To the OP: She was pretty clear about her position via text. You responded with an open invitation to hep her in any way you could. She hasn’t pursued the relationship. I would drop it. For whatever reason, she’s not willing to continue on with your friendship at the moment. Maybe you will hear from her again, maybe not. It’s hurtful but that happens sometimes. Sounds like you are a wonderful, caring person with a lot to offer and will have no problems making other friends. Maybe you could post a flyer in your neighborhood looking for others who want to walk. Best wishes.</p>
<p>While it is true that I have not known her that long, I feel real sympathy for her. I do not spend my life trying to fix others… but every so often I meet someone, or hear about someone and their particular situation that pulls at my heartstrings. Is it called empathy?
Is that what caused me to register on the bone marrow registry when I heard a fathers plea for help for his leukemia stricken daughter on the radio - I waited in line for five hours to do that, or what causes me to donate blood to people I don’t know, or makes me sad to see someone dining alone? </p>
<p>But I get what most of you are saying… let it go cause you’ll only be pounding your head against the wall, and she won’t change. </p>
<p>In a spiritual sense, I believe in destiny, that things happen, and people move in and out of our lives for a reason. I’m guess I’m stumped on this one.</p>
<p>Who is to say that isn’t true for her and her boyfriend? Maybe he really will get a divorce, maybe they really will get married. I don’t think that is what will happen but it is possible. We don’t know and I tend to believe as you, that things happen for a reason.</p>
<p>blankmind said something that I think is really true</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>People who study addiction have found that romantic infatuation is addictive. The state of being infatuated activates our pleasure centers and is some of the most powerful brain chemistry we possess, it’s almost impossible to resist. Add to that the fact that your friend has not been with her boyfriend on a day to day basis so the drudgery that inevitably crushes our illusions about how wonderful this other person has has not been a part of this relationship. She is free to project whatever fantasies she wants on this other person without any dose of reality to squash them. It’s a really unhealthy situation and I don’t think a reasoned voice from anyone will make any difference.</p>
<p>If you can find other reasons to be friends with this person then maybe it would be worth it.</p>
<p>What is your goal: to make a new friend or to see/cause her to change?</p>
<p>If you want to make a new friend: you may want to consider how to protect yourself from becoming a social service agency rather than a friend.</p>
<p>If your main goal is to see her change: you may want to consider that whether or not she changes is beyond your control.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You are stumped because you haven’t been able to figure out the reason that she has moved into your life.</p>
<p>What if destiny isn’t the sole cause of everything that happens? What if you sometimes can create your own purpose? What purpose would you want to create in this situation?</p>
<p>Pea: I understand the addiction thing…I can see it in her resolve to continuue the realtionship. She can’t be getting much real pleasure having encounters in the back seat of cars…but the illusion she has created of a life with him, must make all the unpleasantness go away. </p>
<p>ADad: I guess my goal would be to help her see her life and it’s potential in a different light… that there are good, healthy relationships to be found. If I could do that and be her friend, thats great. If I could do that and not be her friend, that’s OK too… </p>
<p>My feelings on the subject run the gamut from feeling like a fool, to a feeling like a potential hero. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s just the start of menopause. Or empty-nest syndrome. Or some other affliction, I don’t have control of.</p>