I have a friend with a very misguided sense of charity. I’ve made pit threads over a couple years about the difficulties I have had with my best friend. This isn’t intended to be a pitting of him, which is why this is in MPSIMS. I’m not trying to whine about the situation, I’m just frustrated at the fact that despite us both feeling that we are really good friends, this is the big dividing line that splits us.
In summary, my best friend has been living with his ex-girlfriend. She is extremely emotionally needy, and I really feel he wastes a large proportion of his existence on this planet by being a crutch to her. I can’t help but feel that he has this Pygmalion-esque fantasy going on- that he will get some personal validation turning an emotional wreck of a person into a functional human being. He does this in the name of being a ‘good friend’. Since none of her other friends will stick their necks out as far as he does, it kind of makes him feel like he is doing a Very Good Thing. I, on the other hand, think that he has a metric ton of wool pulled over his eyes about the issue.
I do not have a problem with him being friends with her. I have a problem with him living with her. People who see them together ask me if they are both an item, because she acts very affectionately around him (hugging, kissing, etc). As a result, it is so surprise that my friend has been single since he broke up with her. Under his roof, she lives in a world where life has no reprecussions, since he will bail her out of anything that goes wrong.
And he stoutly refuses to follow any of my suggestions. He feels that because I had dated her for a little while (*ten years ago * :rolleyes: ) I still carry a little bit of jealousy and bitterness, and that is dictating my opinion. Far from it, the reason I am so vocal about it to him is because I see what she does to him. Its like a bizarro friends with benefits- there’s isn’t any hanky-panky going on, but she acts as if he is a surrogate boyfriend (doesn’t stop her from flirting with other guys of course, since technically she is single). I think it puts him in a really unfair situation, and I really REALLY wish he would just listen to me.
Back in high school we stopped being friends for a while over a girl he was dating. At the time I felt that I couldn’t convince him the girl was a conniving, lying, backstabbing monster of a person, and it was just too painful to watch what she did to him while he kept refusing to heed my advice. So I moved on. We became friends again after he broke up (2 years later) and now I see a repeat of the same situation. I feel disappointed that despite how much he claims to have learned from that previous relationship, my advice still means squat. Obviously the option to split is still there, but I kind of feel that being mature adults we should be able to get beyond high-school drama.
Sigh.