CAROLYN HAX
ADVICE WITH ATTITUDE & A GROUNDED
Hi Carolyn: My boyfriend has seemingly no good friends. He used to live in a house with the people I’d call his “good” friends, but they all moved out and into their own places ... without telling him, which tells me they didn’t want to live with him anymore.
He’s friends with the guys in my friend group, but they’ll go on guys trips and don’t invite him.
I can see why people might not want to get too close to him. He can be intense and has a tendency to snap at people, me included.
So my issue is: I sometimes feel so anxious and scared for him. And then I get very overwhelmed.
I’m planning a girls’ trip soon, and I’m so nervous he won’t have any plans that weekend that I’m tempted to invite him.
It makes me sick to think people are friendless. I hate thinking about breaking up with him, because then he’ll be VERY friendless. — So Nervous
Dear So Nervous: Oh my, oh my. You are with someone who is very unhealthy emotionally, and you all know it. But instead of keeping your distance the way others have — appropriately — you have assumed responsibility for him as if he is wounded wildlife for you to rehabilitate.
He is not. He is a fully realized human who doesn’t treat other humans well.
Someone who is intense and “has a tendency to snap” and renders you a nervous wreck does confer responsibilities on you: to take care of yourself, and to recognize you have to protect yourself from people
SET OF VALUES
who snap at you and use other forms of emotional abuse — by breaking up with them.
You have a responsibility to choose people who treat you with love and respect. Not most of the time, not when things go their way, not when you say the right things to them — always. Always with love and respect.
And you have a responsibility to your friends not to invite this person out of guilt. It’s not your place to add a guest to a group party, or to be social coordinator for an adult who can muddle through a solitary weekend himself or, even better, get some counseling.
If he winds up absolutely friendless, then he will have to solve that — by self-evaluation, circulating more, therapy, pastimes, passions. As in, what all of us do when we wake up and say, uh oh, I have no one. I can’t imagine you’d want, in that situation, a boyfriend you treated badly but who stayed with you only out of fear and pity.
Re Bf: People get through weekends without having plans. What do you think will happen? If you think he will harm himself, call a suicide hotline and ask for advice.
Short of that, I recommend you look into your own codependency. Taking someone’s lack of friends onto your own shoulders is not a healthy response. That’s work you need to do on yourself regardless of what happens with this particular boyfriend.