How to deal with lovesick friend

[ShadowBall]

I admit sometimes I am absolutely not in the mood to deal with him being emo...like I might be in a bad mood myself and I'm not feeling particularly cuddly (verbally). I will be pretty blunt with him and basically talk at him. Not because I choose to, but because I'm too pissed off about something or another now and then to give a crap about someone else's mood swings. Sometimes I may go to bed having said very little to him and he might still be feeling 'bleh' the next day.

I guess it's just hard for me to see him as being intentionally manipulative and obsessive when I'm kind of convinced he's lonely and possibly there's depression or BPD or something underneath that makes him act like this. I really want to try and make our friendship work because he does mean a lot to me. I think he'd do well to be back on happy pills, but he has no insurance, so that'll never happen. Also, I think if he were just being a jerk, he'd have tried to talk me into leaving my BF by now. I think deep down he wants to, but he realizes I'd probably quit talking to him if he did, and I imagine someone with such reservations can't be a complete manipulator. My ex did everything he could to make me stay with him and went so far as to threaten to kill people and himself if I left for my now-BF.

I'm confused as to why he will call himself out on his own behavior, though. Like he may say to me, "I'm sorry I'm being such a selfish asshole" or something like that. I kind of recognize this as self-loathing because I've talked like that before too out of sadness, but maybe it's him trying to get me to just say, "No, you're not a selfish asshole." Who knows.

And blargh, he went and did it again tonight. Read a post my BF made on my Facebook and is all bent out of shape now. I've got the flu and I just am not feeling too sympathetic right now, so I'm just kind of talking to him normally while he's being Emo Ben.

I thank everyone for the advice, and I understand the concern about breaking off the friendship, but I really want to give him another chance. If it reaches the insane point my friendship with Emotional Vampire Ex-Friend reached, I will call it quits.

I wonder if it would help if I spoke to some of his friends about this. I have gotten to know a couple of his closest friends and I wonder if I could talk to them about him. I've also done the "I can't deal with this and I'm getting offline for a bit" thing - he would basically contact me in every way possible and apologize. I would get back online eventually and he'd usually be just normal...not happy and not sad.

Honestly, I think I just want to be in a really bad mood one day and I can tell him how I really feel about his behavior. Being in a good mood will make me too worried about hurting his feelings, but being pissed off will make me a lot more likely to be honest.

Sorry if some of that made no sense - my head's kinda spacey right now from being sick.

[Kheldarson]

I guess it's just hard for me to see him as being intentionally manipulative and obsessive when I'm kind of convinced he's lonely and possibly there's depression or BPD or something underneath that makes him act like this..... Also, I think if he were just being a jerk, he'd have tried to talk me into leaving my BF by now. I think deep down he wants to, but he realizes I'd probably quit talking to him if he did, and I imagine someone with such reservations can't be a complete manipulator.

Actually, he can still be a complete manipulator. Him being all nice and avoiding the real issue is keeping you in his life. And he figures, someday, he'll find a way to talk you into dating him. Since, you know, he's been such a pal and been there and everything.

I'm confused as to why he will call himself out on his own behavior, though. Like he may say to me, "I'm sorry I'm being such a selfish asshole" or something like that. I kind of recognize this as self-loathing because I've talked like that before too out of sadness, but maybe it's him trying to get me to just say, "No, you're not a selfish asshole." Who knows.

It's to get you to affirm that he's not a selfish asshole. And feeds into his idea that someday you'll like him as more than just a friend.

I thank everyone for the advice, and I understand the concern about breaking off the friendship, but I really want to give him another chance. If it reaches the insane point my friendship with Emotional Vampire Ex-Friend reached, I will call it quits.

I wonder if it would help if I spoke to some of his friends about this. I have gotten to know a couple of his closest friends and I wonder if I could talk to them about him. I've also done the "I can't deal with this and I'm getting offline for a bit" thing - he would basically contact me in every way possible and apologize. I would get back online eventually and he'd usually be just normal...not happy and not sad.

Talking to his friends is up to you, as is staying friends with him. But he seems to suffer from "Nice Guy Syndrome" so he'll do whatever it takes to make you his as he sees it should be...complaining all the while about whoever else you're with.

Personally, I'd tear him a new one next time you talk to him and see what happens.

[blas]

Shadow, I had a somewhat similar experience not too long ago with a guy at work.

Only difference is, I'm dating him now.

Some people would give me flack for it. And looking back on how he was towards me when I was dating my ex, I've often wondered what'll happen if things go sour between us.

Dude is over the moon in love with me. I'm not being full of it. This guy has been in love with me since the first time he ever saw me. But, apparently, was outraged and angry when he found out I had a boyfriend. And even told me he was not going to stay on our current shift anymore because I wouldn't date him, meaning he didn't want to have to see me. That made me feel like a piece of shit.

Things changed and I broke up with the bf and gave him a chance. Obviously it's a lot different than your situation, but yes, it SUCKS when someone tries to make you feel bad when you cannot or will not reciprocate the feeling.

[Eireann]

Shadow, you're doing exactly what many people in your situation do. You're ascribing to Ben the things that you would do and say if you were in his situation. But you're not; you're not Ben, and he's not you. You keep saying, "I think" and "I imagine", but you don't know. You want him to be a great person all the time, so you keep making excuses for him, thinking that in so doing, one day he'll turn around and be sweet and kind to you all the time, and everything will be all right.

Not only will this never happen, you're behaving as if Ben is your boyfriend and you're cheating on him with the guy who really is your boyfriend. Ben gets enraged when he hears your boyfriend's name; you aren't "allowed" to talk to him on the phone when Ben is around. This is highly unhealthy.

Furthermore, one of these days your relationship with your boyfriend - the healthy one - is going to end because of what you're doing now. This sort of thing is what breaks up relationships. You're being unfair to him and unfair to yourself when you allow Ben to jerk you around. One of these days, if you don't cut Ben out of your life, you're going to find yourself single, because you were holding on to unhealthy Ben rather than concentrating on your healthy boyfriend. And then Ben's possessive, stalker mentality will really kick into overdrive, because he'll see that his actions produced exactly the result he wanted, and he won't leave you alone until you get involved with him - and he'll exhibit the same behavior as he is now, only far worse.

EDITED TO ADD: It's not your job to figure Ben out, make his life better, make excuses for him, or live your life to please him. You weren't put on this planet to be Ben's savior, cheerleader, or therapist.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

And anyways, why should you be the one to be aggravated and uncomfortable? "You don't want him to feel bad." He sure doesn't mind making YOU feel bad, does he? In fact, that's his MO.

It's not you setting him up to feel bad, it's him. If he can't handle it, he always has the option to walk away from you, but he's not doing that.

I hope you don't think talking to him is going to change anything. It's not like he's unaware of what he's doing.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I'm confused as to why he will call himself out on his own behavior, though. Like he may say to me, "I'm sorry I'm being such a selfish asshole" or something like that.

Because this is what abusive types do. They say and do things that hurt someone (whether physically or emotionally), then they apologize and cry and make the person feel bad for them because they didn't mean it, they act all contrite and are nice for a little while, then they go right back to being who they really are. It's a vicious circle and unless the person is really motivated to change, it won't end. When the target finally walks away, they just find a new one. If you did get into a relationship with this guy the way he wants, I would be afraid for you.

[Imprl59]

If you are really this guys friend and have no desire to date him then you need to cut out these visits with him for his own sake. He is clearly having some issues separating fantasy from reality here and by visiting and pretendng you don't have a boyfriend you are enforcing his fantasy. He's never going to be able to move on and have a real life when the pretend life he wants so bad is standing right in fron of him all cute and comforting and available. From reading what you have written I really think he should get a little proffesional help with this.

I agree 100% with Eireann that this is eventually going to be the end of your relationship with your real boyfriend if you don't do something about it. I've been know to put up with more than my fair share of crap in relationships but if I knew my partner was doing what you are doing he would be out on his ass so fast he wouldnt know which was was west.

[Seshat]

So you're talking online and he gets in a funk over a mention of the bf. You say, "Sorry you're upset, but you know I'm happily taken. I'll come back later to see if you've calmed down." Then stop talking to him. Repeat as necessary until he's capable of addressing the fact that you're taken in an adult manner.

Every time you do something he doesn't want you to, he has a tantrum.

What do you do with a toddler who's having a tantrum? You put him in time out. Stick him in a playpen where he's perfectly safe, has his toys, and wait him out. Have him get zero attention from you until he's ready to behave like a well-behaved child again.

What do you do with an adult who's having a tantrum? You put him in time out. You walk away, refuse to respond, redirect his calls to voicemail, his emails to junk mail, etc, for two hours. Check the next contact he makes. If it's the behaviour of a reasonable adult, respond. If not, put him in timeout for another two hours.

My wife taught her father to stop having tantrums around her. She would visit, he'd throw a tantrum, she said "Thank you for having me around. It was good to see you both. I'll come back another time when Dad's feeling okay." And she left.
It took about three visits. Once he realised she /meant/ it, and was /never/ going to put up with his tantrums, he stopped having them around her.

It wasn't a trivial exercise, either. It takes her about an hour and a half to drive to her parents' place. So the first time, she spent three hours driving for a ten minute visit. But it's been soooo worth it.


This might work with Ben. But even if it never does - even if he still pulls the tantrums and depressions - keep it up. It is NOT your responsibility to put up with his emotions. You're not his carer. Heck, neither I nor my wife (who have neurochemical issues) let the people who ARE our carers have to put up with our emotional dreck! We take what emergency emotional meds we can, and we take ourselves to our rooms until we can be adults again.

Ben is being unreasonable. Don't tolerate it.

[Becks]

It's not your job to figure Ben out, make his life better, make excuses for him, or live your life to please him. You weren't put on this planet to be Ben's savior, cheerleader, or therapist.

Exactly what I was thinking, only much more to the point.

[trailerparkmedic]

Sometimes I may go to bed having said very little to him and he might still be feeling 'bleh' the next day.

Too bad, so sad for him. If I get in a fight with someone and can't work it out with them immediately, I suck it up and act like an adult until we have the opportunity to talk. I don't pout and act like an emo 14 year old and whine about how unfair life is.

I guess it's just hard for me to see him as being intentionally manipulative and obsessive when I'm kind of convinced he's lonely and possibly there's depression or BPD or something underneath that makes him act like this.

You can be manipulative AND mentally ill. This was one of the first lessons I learned in my semester at the psych hospital.

I really want to try and make our friendship work because he does mean a lot to me.

But does he want to make it work? Love alone isn't enough to sustain a marriage (no matter what 20 year old me insisted at the time). Same principle applies to most any relationship, including friendship.

I imagine someone with such reservations can't be a complete manipulator.

Maybe he doesn't have reservations. I'm guessing he thinks that if he did that, you'd drop him and he'd rather have you around. He doesn't feel guilty, he just wants to keep you and does what he can to do so.
Manipulation, like most everything in life, runs on a continuum. Just because your friend isn't on the most extreme end doesn't mean he's not manipulating you. For example:

"I'm sorry I'm being such a selfish asshole" or something like that. I kind of recognize this as self-loathing because I've talked like that before too out of sadness, but maybe it's him trying to get me to just say, "No, you're not a selfish asshole."

It's the second. He's manipulating you into saying what he wants.
How do I know? If he was really sorry, he'd stop being a manipulative asshole. At times both my husband and I have said "I'm sorry I'm doing X. I plan on stopping it because I know it's important to you that I stop." And we're not perfect, so we slip up, but we get better over time. This conversation has happened in every healthy relationship I've been in, and was strikingly absent in my unhealthy relationships.

I wonder if it would help if I spoke to some of his friends about this. I have gotten to know a couple of his closest friends and I wonder if I could talk to them about him.

I wouldn't do this, just because it seems a bit sneaky and passive aggressive. Tell him to his face that he's being an asshole and screwing up your relationship and that your BF is more important to you than him and if he doesn't stop, he's going to be the one to go.

I've also done the "I can't deal with this and I'm getting offline for a bit" thing - he would basically contact me in every way possible and apologize. I would get back online eventually and he'd usually be just normal...not happy and not sad.

I think this is a sign that he can be "trained" into not acting like an asshole. Whenever he acts like a dick, ignore his attempts at contacting you and talk to him on your own time frame.
This will sound mean, but I've gotten great results from training my dog this way. She acts like a fool, I ignore her, and she calms down. Now she acts like a fool less often and for shorter periods of time, so I know it's working.

Honestly, I think I just want to be in a really bad mood one day and I can tell him how I really feel about his behavior. Being in a good mood will make me too worried about hurting his feelings, but being pissed off will make me a lot more likely to be honest.

Be selfish and think about your feelings and tell him. Being selfish is awesome.

[ShadowBall]

I guess I always just kind of saw this behavior of Ben's as just something you accept. Living with controlling people my whole life makes me less able to identify them, I guess. I always kind of compared Ben to someone another friend of mine knew named Dan. Dan is epileptic. It was totally normal for Dan's friends to say, "Dan's having a seizure. Let's go make sure he doesn't die." Basically, something that he can't help and is just part of who he is.

Ben's behavior isn't a sickness like epilepsy, but can you understand the comparison? I always thought of him like, "Okay, he's a fucking emo when I mention my boyfriend who he's known I've been with since he (Ben) and I met. This is who he is and I just gotta deal with it."

Unfortunately, leaving during visits with him would not work because I have no way to leave - Ben picks me up from my friend's house that is an hour away. The most I could do is say to him is, "I'm going to leave the room until you calm down" and then go upstairs or go for a walk outside. Or I could call my boyfriend in front of him and deal with his two-hour sadness.

It's just hard to think about cutting someone out of your life who actually means a lot to you. When I quit speaking to Emotional Vampire Ex Friend, I was at a point where I fucking hated him and it was very easy to simply sever all contact. I guess I can just wait until I reach a point where Ben makes me hate him and then I can sever the friendship if need be.

I know I probably sound crazy, but I really do want to use ending the friendship as a last resort. And I also want to tell him somehow that even if I were single, I'd never be with him because of his obsessive behavior and his jealousy. It'd be my ex all over again...only with the added bonus of him being able to potentially kick my ass (black belt).

Ugh, why can't I be friends with sane people? I swear I'm a nut magnet. I have one guy friend who I know loves me very much and at one point said he wanted to marry me, but he actually accepts my relationship and has even spoken to my boyfriend before. Emotional Vampire told me he loved me too, but he was also a player and would hop from one woman to another. WHY Ben is so focused on me I will never know. If I ignore his obsessive behaviors, he and I actually have almost everything in common.

I digress. Anyway, thank you all for your advice and suggestions. Honestly, I think I've got enough help to last me two lifetimes. If folks want to keep chatting about this, then by all means go for it, but I think I really have nothing left to add to this (unless I eventually have an update of sorts).

[Flying Grype]

The comparison between epilepsy and depression is not quite right, somehow. If someone is in an epileptic seizure, you go make sure he doesn't die. If a depressed person is suicidal, yeah, you intervene, either personally or by calling emergency services. Random bouts of overwrought emotion, coming from someone who won't even bother to take care of himself by getting proper help for his illness and who treats you badly the rest of the time? Why do you even care? It's not your responsibility to give him a shoulder to cry on, and he won't die, so don't waste your emotions.

I'm saying this as a person with a medicated mental illness. It's up to me to take my meds so that I'm healthy and so that I don't act unfairly towards people around me.

Remember that your behaviour is not the CAUSE of his depression. He may feel that your leaving causes him to be depressed. If he'd never met you he'd still find something or someone to be the target and perceived cause of his depression. So it's not your responsibility to do things that will make him feel better or avoid doing things that will make him feel worse. He'll feel the way he feels regardless, until he takes control and gets back on his meds and/or gets help from a therapist.

If you dpn't want to be a nut magnet, break it off with the nut. You need to keep yourself safe, and as it is Ben is not a safe person to be around. The more he's around you, the more his feelings will be directed at you, and that includes negative feelings or feelings of blame. Just get away.

[blas]

Well said, friend.

It took me a while to realize that you (general you) are NOT personally responsible for other people's neuroticsm or nutty behavior. People need to seek their own help or therapy, and not blame others, or make other people uncomfortable or awkward or, especially, make others feel like dirt just because THEY themselves feel miserable.

To add, I understand it's hard, if you're a generally nice person, to not take it personally or feel guilty. But you can't. It will eat you alive. It's gotten to me before. You can't sacrifice your own feelings and happiness because of someone else's problems. Especially when you're not the real cause of the problem. There's a lot of people out there who take advantage of how guilty that can make a person feel. This guy gets to you. Don't let him.

[Seshat]

I guess I always just kind of saw this behavior of Ben's as just something you accept. Living with controlling people my whole life makes me less able to identify them, I guess.

Ugh, why can't I be friends with sane people? I swear I'm a nut magnet.

WHY Ben is so focused on me I will never know. If I ignore his obsessive behaviors, he and I actually have almost everything in common.

It's all related.

Your home circumstances have trained you to be a victim. Manipulators and abusers pick up on that, and target you rather than healthier people who won't tolerate it.

If you want to be rid of them, and get sane friends instead, you have to learn not to tolerate it.

Unfortunately, leaving during visits with him would not work because I have no way to leave - Ben picks me up from my friend's house that is an hour away. The most I could do is say to him is, "I'm going to leave the room until you calm down" and then go upstairs or go for a walk outside.

Do that. Literally that. Go for a nice long walk. Or heck, take bus fare whenever you're at Ben's. And make sure you know the way - on foot - to the bus stop.

Independence is important. It's crucial, in fact, to being a sane, healthy person.

Even with my disabilities, I try to remain as independent as humanly possible. Unfortunately, I can't be completely independent, but if something caused my loves and current carers to become manipulative bastards (as if!), I have other friends who would take me in.

[Eireann]

Oh, this utter and complete passivity.

Kind of.
Sort of.
I guess.
I think.
If.

Things don't change until we do. Nobody's going to wave a magic wand and turn Ben into a great guy. Nobody's going to instill a backbone in you so that you don't wait until Ben is so evil that you finally kick him to the curb. (You say Ben has a black belt? I wonder how long it'll be before he gets physically violent with you, knowing that you have no way of getting very far.)

Things aren't going to get better; they're going to get worse. I really feel sorry for your boyfriend, because he isn't going to put up with this forever, and when he realizes that Ben is more important to you than he is, he's going to make a decision that will be very painful for both of you, but it will be the right one - because Ben is the focus of your life. No matter how many tantrums he throws, you put up with them and sweet-talk him for an hour or more, giving him a reward for being awful.

And you pretend you don't have a boyfriend.

I can just imagine how I would react if I were involved with a man who meant a lot to me, then found out he was willing to travel six hours to visit a woman who was thoroughly obsessed with him. That, in itself, would be enough to make me think seriously about ending our relationship. If, then, I discovered that he pretended I didn't exist, because she threw a tantrum at the sound of my name; that she didn't want him having any female friends at all; that she would go into a deep pout that involved him "having to" talk her out of it; that he remained in touch with her online; that he kept making excuses for her behavior, equating spoiled-child syndrome with epilepsy - all of this would have me saying, "You know what? Even if you don't see it, you would rather put up with this woman, and all of her shit, than spend time with me. I can see which of us matters more to you. She's all yours."