How much is too much?

[MoonCat]

I spoke to my boyfriend this morning. Turns out she currently has family members staying at her place.

He told me that he received a call from her last night at 11:30 stating that she missed the last bus that drops her off at the apartment complex both of them live at, to meet her at a grocery store nearby, & to walk her home.

He did not know why she was out that late or where she went to.

What I do not get is why was she out that late alone considering what happened to her & how she feels?

Why did she call your BF to walk her home if she had family at home? Couldn't she have called one of them to come out and meet her at the store?

I ask because it sounds like she is becoming increasingly dependent on your BF to help her with everything. Or am I misinterpreting the part about family members being at her place?

[snugglegirl05]

Why did she call your BF to walk her home if she had family at home? Couldn't she have called one of them to come out and meet her at the store?

I ask because it sounds like she is becoming increasingly dependent on your BF to help her with everything. Or am I misinterpreting the part about family members being at her place?

You are correct. Family members were at her place, & they could have picked her up. I hope she does not become increasingly dependent on my BF.

[Greenday]

Why did she call your BF to walk her home if she had family at home? Couldn't she have called one of them to come out and meet her at the store?

I ask because it sounds like she is becoming increasingly dependent on your BF to help her with everything. Or am I misinterpreting the part about family members being at her place?

Just speaking from personal feelings, I prefer talking to friends over family because I feel family has to be supportive and it cheapens it. Not so much with non-relatives.

I'm with Jester. Sexual assault is sexual assault. Just because she didn't say no doesn't mean she said yes. "He/She didn't say no" is not a valid defense in a rape case. I don't have much experience on the legal side of this so I don't know how well a case in court would go.

[Jester]

Greenday, based solely on what the OP said about the situation, legally, it would probably not get very far. However, forgetting legalities, as I said earlier, if she considers it an assault, this should be a sign to her to NOT HANG OUT WITH THIS TURD. She may not be able to prosecute, but she can certainly not put herself in a similar position with him again in the future.

That may sound weak to some people, but the truth is, sometimes you have to be pragmatic about things, and strive towards the best outcome realistically possible under the circumstances.

[MoonCat]

Just speaking from personal feelings, I prefer talking to friends over family because I feel family has to be supportive and it cheapens it. Not so much with non-relatives.

Yes, I see what you mean, as far as advice goes. But in this case, it was a simple matter of calling somebody to meet her at the store and walk her home from there. If you have family staying at your house, you should be asking them to come and get you (didn't one of them have a car? OK, maybe not, but I just wondered). You shouldn't call an ex-boyfriend for stuff like that. Unless, of course, the family were people you couldn't reasonably expect to do this--too elderly, physically unable to do it, etc.

I know that sometimes people stay on good terms with their ex and can even be friends. To me, though, the dealbreaker would be if he spent more time dealing with her crises than being with me. This could just be because I'm dealing with a couple of people at work that expect me to fix all their problems, so I might be a bit biased here.

[snugglegirl05]

Update

I spent time at my boyfriends place while I have been on vacation since last Friday. The university I work at as a contract visitor parking attendant has it's winter break from 12/23/2011 through 1/1/2012. So I use my paid vacation from work to get paid.

The topic of the mutual female friend came up while I was spending time at his place. He told me this is the first time she has ever been on her own. She lived with her parents for a while, & then she lived near her parents. Her parents were always there to help her.

She spend time with her mom for a couple of days. He does not know if her parents are divorced.

The apartment complex they both live at has a walk in gate, & you have to have an access card to open the gate. The mutual female friend lost her access card. You have to pay $25.00 to get a replacement one. Instead of spending the $25.00 to get a replacement one, she either texts my boyfriend or calls him to let him know she needs him to come down to the gate to let her in. She calls at any time during the day or during the night.

He wants to help her become independent. He wants to help her to learn how to be assertive so an incident like the one that happened between her & my boyfriends male friend does not happen to her again. Or even a worse incident. He told me she did not see it coming. She wanted him to come over to her place to talk while I was over at his place, but he told her he had company. That was yesterday. She thought she would get home sometime yesterday, but she called him today while I was still at his place, & she asked him to come over to her place to talk to him when she got home. She got home around the same time I left his place today.

[snugglegirl05]

Another update

I spoke to my boyfriend this morning. He told me he spoke to the mutual female friend last night. She told him she had a long talk with the male friend of hers. She also told him that the mother of her male friend is a school counselor. She told my boyfriend she will speak to her about the incident.

[Jester]

The apartment complex they both live at has a walk in gate, & you have to have an access card to open the gate. The mutual female friend lost her access card. You have to pay $25.00 to get a replacement one. Instead of spending the $25.00 to get a replacement one, she either texts my boyfriend or calls him to let him know she needs him to come down to the gate to let her in. She calls at any time during the day or during the night.

He wants to help her become independent.

One thing he might want to do to help her become independent is, oh, I dunno, tell her to PAY THE FUCKING TWENTY FIVE BUCKS TO GET HER OWN FUCKING GATE CARD. So she doesn't have to rely on him to open the gate for her EVERY TIME SHE COMES HOME. You know...so she can be independent.

Fucking twit. (Her, not him.)

[snugglegirl05]

New Information

I found out today from my boyfriend that his mutual female friend has autism. She called him Sunday night around 9 p.m. crying uncontrollably & asking him to come over to her place to talk. So he went over there. He did not get back to his place until around 11:30 p.m. She told him she was fearful that her male friend *the same guy my boyfriend knows* would hurt her even more. It turns our she went over to her male friends place twice after the incident. He told me she has the mind of a child. She is currently taking medication for her emotional issues. She also called him earlier today asking him to come over to her place to talk, but he was too busy. So he let her know that. She wants to live on her own. She wants to handle her problems on her own. She wants to do missionary work. She already turned in the paperwork to go on a church mission with her church.

[Seshat]

He told me she has the mind of a child.

If he is not her legal carer, he needs to consult with whoever is. If she is not fit to be on her own, he can be opening himself up to medical/legal issues by allowing her to become dependent on him when he doesn't have the appropriate rights of same.

And if he wants to become her legal carer, make sure he understands that it's pretty much the same thing as adoption: except that this 'child' will never completely grow up.

If he wants to assist her in becoming independent while NOT being her legal carer, he should be doing so in combination with her medical team and her legal carer. Otherwise all he's doing is hindering their efforts by allowing her to conceal dependencies from them: eg, her being dependent on him to get into the complex.

[Jester]

I question whether this autism is something she made up or something she has mildly but is exaggerating for sympathy and help from your boyfriend.

Mind you, I am not questioning the legitimacy of autism, lest anyone take it that way. I just question the legitimacy of anything this woman says at this point, until it is verified. As, I think, should the OP.

[snugglegirl05]

I talked to my boyfriend about what Seshat & the other customerssuck.com members said, but he still wants to do things his way.

Here is what he said....

• he has a gift helping others. His mom, who died last year, noticed this when he was younger, & she encouraged him to continue helping others. He wants to honor what his mom told him
• He realizes that he is not a professionally trained therapist, but he feels he knows how others think & feel, & since he has an empathetic/sympathetic ear, he wants to listen to other people's problems
• he wants to make a difference in other people's lives
• He wants to encourage others
• He feels that life is not worth living if he is not helping others
• helping others is what he does best

He told me that his mutual female friend called him a couple of nights after the incident where she was crying uncontrollably & asked him to come over. She wanted to talk to him about something relating to the incident between her & her male friend. She made dinner. She told him the following...

• she has hypoglycemia
• she blacked out during the incident at her male friends place
• she does not remember everything that happened

She asked him what should she do, & he suggested that she talk to her male friend. He told me he wants to help her during this tough time.

[Jester]

From all I have read, and without actually being there and knowing all the facts, this is what I THINK.

I have seen nothing that suggests the boyfriend is being anything but honest and honorable. As someone who often helps others myself, sometimes to my detriment, I cannot and will not fault him for doing so, as long as it continues to be altruistic and not for some as-of-yet unknown hidden purpose (like, say, getting in the girl's pants).

Now, either the girl is, in fact, a train wreck, or she is a manipulator getting him to pay attention to her.

If she is the train wreck, well, what are you going to do? Tell him not to help her? I personally think he should focus on helping her get herself back on her feet, rather than being at her beck and call all the time, as that is NOT helping her. As the adage says, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he'll never go hungry. And I reiterate my earlier comment....if she's serious about becoming more independent, she needs to suck it up and go get a new fucking access card.

If she is manipulating him for attention, which she may not even realize she is doing, or if she is doing so for some other ulterior motives, well, he needs to realize this and stop being her lap dog.

My personal belief is that she is starved for attention, for whatever reason, and is manipulating him, probably not completely intentionally. I do, however, find it interesting how many problems she seems to come up with that continue to keep him at her beck and call. She autistic. She's hypoglycemic. She's this. She's that. The one thing she continues to make herself is a victim. If she's serious about becoming independent and standing on her own two feet, it's time for her to stop making excuses about why she's always the victim, stop being a perpetual victim, and start being an independent person. Which right now she's about as far away from as I am from dunking on Shaq.

Whatever her deal is, she is clearly affecting his relationship with you, and he needs to realize that (A) helping people sometimes means NOT helping them, so that they can help themselves and become independent, especially if they say that that is their goal, and (B) he can help people and still have a healthy relationship with you, but if other people ALWAYS come before you, there will probably (and SHOULD probably) come a time when you are no longer part of his life. Clearly this whole thing bothers you, and I am guessing it is as much his time away from you as it is that he is helping this girl. Or maybe it's just the time away from you.

Helping people with their life problems does NOT mean subjugating your life to theirs. There's a thing called balance. He needs to realize that.

[Seshat]

<points to everything Jester said> All that.

My own 2c.

I'm disabled. And yes, I get hypoglyceamia (part of the PCOS). I have emotional issues. My best friend who lives with us is schizoaffective. Neither of us is ever likely to be able to be fully independent.

Do we whine about it? HELL YES!

Do we, despite having the occasional whinge, do our best to be independent most of the time? Yes, of course.

We do have a carer - a shared carer. My husband. We also help him, by caring for each other. (We actually took a week off just with each other for carers, over Christmas/New Years.)

My point is that few disabilities are 'get out of independence free' cards. The few which are, the disabled person should have a specific carer or care team - they're not the responsibility of the whole world.

If she has a care team, and the care team is trying to foster independence in her, he's making their job harder and working AGAINST her best interests.

[snugglegirl05]

Mutual female friend offer to clean my boyfriends apartment

Several weeks ago my boyfriend's mutual female friend asked him to help her clean her apartment because she had fractured her arm. So he helped her for free. To pay him back she offered to help him get his place tidy. She told him she would come over to his place on a Monday morning. She never showed up. Then a couple of weeks later she told him she would do a thorough cleaning of his place, but he would have to pay her $35.00.