Anonymous asks:

My best friend appears to have lost the plot.

She is going through a separation from her husband and has started sleeping with a number of men she’s met online. 

She has three children with her husband who she was with for 13 years; she barely sees them anymore and appears to have no interest in them. 

She has now decided to move to Belfast, after she spent a wild weekend away there last weekend. 

She wants to take a job and leave the kids with her husband. 

I have no idea what to say to her anymore, she hasn’t actually told me of this plan, she’s told a mutual friend. 

I don’t know what to do, or what to say. 

She isn’t being herself and I don’t know how to make her see sense. Please help.

 

 

Rachael Lloyd from eHarmony says: Hi there,

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Firstly, let me say you sound like a lovely friend. You are genuinely worried about your friend when you could simply be judgemental and mean-spirited. Indeed, it does sound like your friend, who is presumably relatively youthful, is having the equivalent of a Matrix moment. In other words, she’s no longer willing to plod through her previously routine existence and is wondering what the hell life is for.

Raising three kids is no easy task, and perhaps she feels her life has been too much like hard work and drudgery without any highs. Perhaps her relationship with her husband has become boring and monotonous, and their original chemistry has given way to the practicalities of running a busy household and juggling jobs. I suspect she has been feeling trapped and unhappy for some time; these things rarely come out of the blue. However, it certainly sounds like she has taken things to an extreme and may come to regret her hurricane of hot-blooded behaviour. She could do untold damage to her marriage and, more critically, her kids’ welfare without fully realising the full implications of her rebelliousness.

That said, it’s her life, not yours. We cannot control other people, all we can do is share feedback when asked, and support them where appropriate. We can also choose to remove ourselves from situations that cause us too much stress.

If it were me, I’d sit down and talk to your friend. I’d open up about the rumours I’d been hearing, and tell her that much as loved and cared for her, I was worried. Use gentle language, beware of shaming or patronising your friend, it will only backfire. Either way, you may get dropped for taking this risk, but then at least you’ll know you tried. What you mustn’t do is wade into her marriage and speak with her husband. Their marriage is strictly their business and if it’s really over, then nothing anyone can say or do will change that. Good luck.


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