[Candyes]

Warning: prepare for a long, frustrated rant.

So I have this friend that I met at work almost 2 years ago. She is the nicest person I’ve ever met, and I consider her a really close friend now. She’s had the same boyfriend for about 4 years – more if your count their online relationship. I really don’t think he’s right for her, but I’m not sure about approaching the topic, especially since we all live together (college struggles).
Before we all moved in together, there were several fights between the two that would put her in a terrible state of mind. She would come over to my house in the middle of the night, near tears and ready to binge eat 2000 calories worth of greasy fastfood (she got really sick because of this once. It terrified me because I was worried for her well-being and made me so mad at her stupid, uncaring boyfriend). This happened a few times, and every time I never really knew what to do other than be there for her and listen to her vent.
Now that we live together, I get to experience their fights first-hand (yay…). From what I’ve observed, while she can sometimes be a bit over dramatic, the main problem is that her boyfriend refuses to communicate. He’s locked himself in his room when they’re in the middle of a fight and she wants to try to talk things out. If she tries to coax him into talking, he always just tries to push the issue away and “talk about it later,” though he never gets around to actually talking about it. He makes it seem like he’s the victim of some god awful thing she did to spite him (example: he misplaces his keys a lot, and if he can’t find them right before he leaves for work he starts blaming her for them being lost even if she never touched them. Believe it or not, this fight has occurred MANY times since before I moved in with them). I’ve heard her apologize for things she had absolutely no control over, or anything to do with, more times than I can count. They’ve broken up twice in the last 6 months alone that I’ve lived with them (that my friend told me about), and she always goes crawling back to him, full of apologies and ready to take any excuse he gives her (typically, their breakups go as follows: he does something stupid or hurtful toward her. She tries to talk about it. He ignores the issue. She gets mad and says that if he doesn’t want to talk about it then maybe they shouldn’t be together. He… Ignores the issue yet again! Then, she apologizes for getting emotional and they get back together… Fantastic conflict-resolution…).
Now, I’ve mentioned to her before that I don’t really like her boyfriend, but I’ve never pushed the matter very far. During the harder times, like when they’re in the middle of a fight or “broken up”, I let her know that I’m there to help if things end badly – I’ve told her I’m more than willing to move into a place with just the two of us, but she just brushed that off. I don’t want to come off as a b-word who’s always insulting her boyfriend and telling her how much I think they need to break up – heck, I’ve given the guy a multiple chances to prove he’s not a total d-bag, but living with him has made me 100% certain that I really dislike him, she’s way too good for him and he’s not going to change.
My friend keeps making excuses for why she shouldn’t break up with him, though. “Oh, he just has a hard time expressing himself,” “He’s under a lot of stress with work and class, so I can’t get mad at him for treating me like that,” “We always treat each other like this (insults, name calling, etc.), it’s just how we communicate.” “We’ve been together so long, I feel like that time would be wasted if we just broke up.” “He moved away from his family to be with me, I can’t just break up with him, I owe him.” (Just a handful I remember off the top of my head) She also told me that I shouldn’t judge him by the way he treats her, only judge him how he treats me (ignoring the fact that he treats me like a burden to his existence…)
But, how am supposed to like someone who makes my friend so upset on an almost regular basis? Someone who makes her feel like she’s not good enough for him? Who makes her cry? Makes her feel like she’s too heavy? Too emotional? How am I supposed to not hate him after I’ve seen and heard how awful he is to her??
I know I can’t make the decision for her, she has to decide whether or not she wants to break up and do that on her own. But it’s so frustrating, watching a piece of her soul die a little after every fight. Seeing her usually bubbly demeanor crumble into an emotional mess. I can’t just watch from the sidelines any more while she suffers over and over again from the same petty crap. She deserves so much better than this jerk!

How can I help her see that he’s not good for her? How can I negate any petty excuses like “I owe him so I can’t break up with him”? I may not have ever seen a health relationship before, but this can’t be what it’s supposed to be like, and I just want my friend to be out of this awful loop she seems to be stuck in…
I’m on the verge of a breakdown myself, I’m tired of trying to deal with all of this on top of everything else I have to worry about in my own life. I’m open to any advice at this point!

[Ask April Masini]

You buried the lead. 😉 It’s not until the end of your post that you say you’re ready to have a breakdown from the stress this couple is inflicting on you, on top of the normal burdens a college student undertakes. 😥 And since you are the one who is writing for help, my advice is this:

1. Understand that this is not a healthy environment for you to live in. If you can break the lease, great. If you can’t, plan to move out when your lease is up. You need a healthy environment to live in so you can study, have friendships, date, and live a normal life. You can’t have it in this house, the way things are.

2. Use boundaries. Tell your friend that she is upsetting you, and that you don’t have the tools to help her make mature decisions. So, you’re going to only see her once a week for 2 hours at coffee or lunch. Other than that, you’d really appreciate if she didn’t lean on you or bring her drama to you. You need to live a peaceful life, and her drama is keeping you from doing this.

3. Allow your friend to take responsibility for her own life. Her decisions have repercussions, and she won’t make changes in her own life until she’s ready. When you show her that you’re getting healthy and imposing a boundary, you’re setting an example, and showing her one of the repercussions of her behavior is limited time with a healthy person like yourself.

4. Find super healthy people to befriend. Take a yoga class, join a healthy food or eating group, get together on the weekends with other friends in other parts of the campus where you go to college. Limit your time in your shared housing space.

5. And finally, use the emergency psych services that your college has if you feel you or anyone in your house needs them. If the fighting in your house (whether or not you are directly involved) gets worrisome, call psych services or the police. It’s not your burden to handle. You’re not equipped to handle it, and turning over problems that don’t belong to you, to those who can handle them, is the healthiest and safest way you can deal with this. If anyone in your house is binge eating, cutting, drinking excessively, using excessively or about to have a nervous breakdown or hurt themselves or anyone else, pick up the phone. You can call 911 or the campus psych office or local hospital and be anonymous, but you have a responsibility to pick up the phone — even if it’s an anonymous call to report behavior you’re not sure about, but feel concerned about.

You’ll get push back from this, but when you do the right thing, this happens. Life is fluid, and you have to find your way through it.

Let me know how things go for you…. and if you have any other questions, I’m here.

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[Natalie Noah]

It’s heartbreaking to watch someone you care about stay in a relationship that slowly breaks them down, and even more heartbreaking when you’re the one carrying the emotional weight every time they fall apart. What you’ve described isn’t just “roommate drama” it’s emotional chaos that you’re being forced to live inside of every day. And even though your intentions come from love and loyalty, you’re being pulled into a relationship that isn’t yours, yet affects you deeply. Anyone in your position would feel exhausted, helpless, and angry. That doesn’t make you dramatic. It makes you human.

What you’re witnessing isn’t normal conflict it’s a cycle. She gets hurt, he avoids responsibility, she apologizes for things she didn’t cause, and then nothing changes. People don’t stay in these cycles because they’re blind. They stay because they’re scared. Scared of wasting years, scared of starting over, scared of hurting someone, scared of being alone. So she keeps rewriting his behavior in softer colors just to survive it. But you can’t save her from that fear, and that’s the hardest truth. The only person who can end this is her, and she won’t until she is ready, not when it makes sense to you.

What you can control is your own emotional safety and right now, you’re losing it. When someone else’s relationship is consuming your peace, your stability, your energy, that’s a sign you need boundaries for your own survival. Not because you don’t care, but because you care too much. Distance doesn’t mean abandoning her it means protecting yourself so you don’t drown in a situation you didn’t create. You deserve a home that feels calm. You deserve friendships that lift you, not ones that drain you until you break. And stepping back doesn’t make you a bad friend it makes you a healthy one.

The most loving thing you can do now is to stop trying to convince her of anything and instead take care of yourself. Be supportive in small, steady ways, but not at the cost of your mental health. Create emotional space. Limit how much of her relationship mess enters your life. And remember this: when she’s finally ready to leave him, she will. And when she does, she will remember that you were the one person who didn’t try to control her just someone who quietly chose peace, and invited her to choose it too when she’s ready.

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