Sounds Like It’s Soul-Searching Time

One of my friends was obviously feeling rather down, so a group of us decided to get together and have a day together to cheer her up. It seemed to be working, and we were having a great time. Then, the topic of conversation shifted to how she and her boyfriend were doing.

Immediately, several red flags started popping up. Her boyfriend was upset with her for not leaving work on no notice to hang out with him. Her boyfriend had refused to touch a meal she’d prepared specially for him and had gone and gotten a takeout burger instead. Her boyfriend had gone through her closet and thrown out several of her clothes items that he didn’t like.

It went on and on. We, as a group, quickly started assuring our friend that that wasn’t normal and that his behavior was what was wrong, not her. We shared what a good relationship should be like, and we encouraged her to either sit down to have a serious talk about boundaries or simply to move on from him and find someone who would treat her right.

She did end up breaking up with him, and is much, much happier now.

While we were having that discussion, another friend got very quiet and was visibily rather upset. She ended up leaving without saying a word to the rest of us. At the time, I just thought she was upset for our friend.

However, after talking with some other mutual friends, I found out that she was actually offended at us for describing the boyfriend’s behavior as wrong, because it very closely mirrored how she treated her own boyfriend, and she was upset that we were indirectly calling her a bad person for acting that way.

Sadly, her response to this was to choose to minimize contact with us until we apologized for offending her rather than taking it as a wake-up call and actually improving her behavior.