A guy is trying to emotionally manipulate my friend. How should I tell her?
Hi. I believe my friend has gotten herself into an unhealthy relationship - she has this guy friend who's constantly trying to be more than just friends, and this is stressing her out. She showed me some of their conversations via messages, and from what I've seen the guy is manipulative. For example, he tried to convince her to take a vacation from work, and when she refused, he got *** and blocked her for weeks. My friend believes it's her fault she's being treated this way, even though she's just trying to keep her boundaries intact.
This isn't the only red flag I've seen in those messages. Other examples include "prove me you care about me by doing this for me", or minimizing my friend's feelings by implying that no matter how bad she feels, the guy is feeling a lot worse.
My friend is fond of the guy despite how awful he's treating her. I don't think she understands she's being intentionally manipulated, she told me she feels bad for this guy and his issues and doesn't want to hurt his feelings. I'm worried that if this keeps up he's going to take advantage of that.
So, this is my question. What is the best way to tell my friend that she's being manipulated and should be careful? I already had a conversation with her where I shared my apprehension but I'm wondering if there's anything I can add that would be helpful.
I kinda feel that this is not my problem to worry about and yet I can't just stand by and do nothing when the red flags are so obvious from my perspective and not from hers.
Educate her.
Give her a compare and contrast situation.
For example, remind her of some of the ways this guy has been treating her, then compare and contrast that to the ways a guy/friend/ or potential boyfriend SHOULD be treating her.
You might have to also encourage her that she is more than this guy. That by being with someone like that she's shooting very low...dangerously......dangerously low. Because if he can get her emotions wrapped around his finger to where she's blaming herself for HIM blocking her and not talking to her 🤨🤨 o no no no. I'm talking from LIVED experience. I would hope that an example of comparing and contrasting her current "friendship"(even though he's not acting like a friend but ur r) with a health one would reach her. But if not, there's many case studies of crimes that went from friendships to...worse situations we shall say.
One quick example is, and I'm not saying her friend is a pi mp and ur friend is a "u no wht" by any means, I'm not saying that, but TRUST me, the way this guy is treating her is alot like how pi mps CONDITION a girl so they can wrap them around their finger emotionally. I won't ramble on that any further but yeah...not good situation here. Unhealthy behavioral patterns.
So in other words, to me, it sounds like u know what a healthy relationship looks like, but your friend doesn't.
I commend u for truly trying to help your friend. U r the true friend in this situation.Remember that, even if ur friend gets mad at u, remember u r truly helping. 🙂😉
And also, we can do our best for helping someone but at the same time we can't feel guilty for the decisions someone else made when we TRIED our BEST to help them. At that point it's on them.