Where the hell do they find these losers?! *Update*

[golddust]

I have an issue with my friends new boyfriend. He was a crack addict for 17 years and has already displayed behaviors indicating that he has issues with respecting people's boundaries. He's been off drugs for a little while, this is his first relationship with a sober person while he too was presumably sober, but I've never seen someone with that kind of a severe addiction ever fully recover.

I've explained to her that I don't want him in my house until I think I can trust him because she asked if he could come over with her this week. I don't want to sound so judgmental, but we're talking some serious shit here and a little judgment would do her a world of good. I don't know the guy at all and actually, neither does she. He wasn't honest about his problems. My skills for finding information about people led me to that bit of information, as he simply told her he "did alot of drugs but hasn't in a long time." She didn't know it was 17 freaking years until I told her, and she brushed it off as no big deal because she believes he's not currently using and thinks that is all that matters. Nevermind that apparently, some of the addict psychological behavior patterns are still ongoing. 

She simply thinks by default I won't like her boyfriends. The last one was an abuser and a mooch that sucked about $15,000 from her trust fund and she damn near married him knowing what he was. I have very valid reasons for not liking them. They're fucking losers. But I'm not dealing with her drama again like I did with the last one. I was nearly ready to come over at 2am with my baseball bat to settle his shit once and for all. But she hasn't learned her lesson and there's not enough baseball bats and cracked skulls to change that or her. I tend to be very protective of people I care about, so my question is this... where do you walk the line between being a concerned friend and staying out of her dumb shit with these loser guys?  I try to detach and just say it's not my problem, but before you know it, I get a phone call with her crying and the loser du jour has gone and done something and my instinct to crack open some heads kicks in and I get involved anyway.

And my second question is, does anyone honestly think I'm overreacting about the long term addict thing? My husbands eyes bugged out of his head when I said "he's been a crackhead for 17 years!" and someone else said "holy shit, how is he still alive?" But hey, I am judgmental. I follow my gut instincts and they never lead me wrong even if they do offend people sometimes. I get into trouble when I start thinking "Well they have these problems but they seem decent otherwise...maybe I shouldn't be too hard on them, they're trying..." So I want some input from people living in reality. Am I just being reactionary and judgmental? Or smart?

***

I'm quite happy with the direction of the thread. Now most of you know my plans for detaching and setting boundaries. Well, let me tell you! All I did was assert a few logical boundaries, like how she can make her own decisions but I don't have to allow anyone in my life I don't want to and how I get to choose what to respond to and how others needs aren't more important than my boundaries... well any of you on my Facebook know what I'm talking about, you saw the note or could easily find it. And I didn't direct it at her, I spoke it to the general population of Facebook. Then I wake up this morning to a very, very long message on Facebook where she went into painful detail of why my boundaries were selfish and unfair and how they would effect her badly and how it doesn't make me a good friend because what she wants is important and I'm not being supportive. One of you said she was a narcissist. 

I wrote back, asserted my boundaries again and stated they were not up for debate and I didn't need to justify myself. According to everyone else in my life I'm being perfectly reasonable. I said I was not going to argue and anyone who couldn't respect it was welcome to leave. No response, but her crackhead boyfriend called me a bitch. 

So I'm certain you all know the ending to this story. 

Thank you all for your no bullshit responses. I appreciate it. 

[Broil]

Don't hang out with her in person, and don't reward her with attention when she talks about the problems she's having.  If she talks about the fall flower festival, get all excited and pump her for information.  On the other hand, if she complains about how the boyfriend maxed out one of her credit cards while he was away for 3 days, say "oh that's too bad, I've gotta go now and buy some pumpkins before they're all gone."

See?  No rewarding her for stupidity by paying attention.

[golddust]

... and then she promptly gets on Facebook and writes how no one cares about her. Which also gets ignored.

She is an attention whore for sure, you nailed that one.

[mtlouie]

You know, golddust, one of my favorite books is '100 Ways to Simplify Your Life,' by Elaine St. James.

One of the best entries in the book is, 'Cleaning Up Your Relationships.'  She talks about a friend she had that she spent months and years trying to help fix her life, which was a mess.   She said she worked and worked and worked at getting her friend to see how she could fix her life.  One day she said she "woke up."  She realized her friend was going to fix her life when she got good and ready, and not until.

After that, she stopped trying to do anything, and the "friendship" went away. 

Perhaps that is the direction your friendship is going.

[golddust]

I'm truly trying to not play fix it. Maybe I'm not doing a perfect job at it. Maybe my protective side goes over into fix-it territory without me realizing that's what it is. I just want to be a good friend without any drama or someone vampiring off me. I mostly looked up his info because he was a stranger that wanted in my house and so I wanted to see what I could find on this joker. What I found was beyond my imagination.

The friendship has gone away before. A number of times actually and for that exact reason. But months later, she gets in contact with me again. We have fun when we go do things, and she's not a bad person, she is not malicious, she's just a messed up person with alot of problems and remains ignorant of such. I have never seen another person so good at manifesting the damnedest of problems and then integrating them forever as a piece of her identity. But keeping the friendship restricted to just being activity buddies is work and and of itself. She always wants to veer off into victim mode and talk about her problems. She's a psychic vampire of the highest degree and she refuses to ever acknowledge it. All in all, I've done rather well with it. I'm not nearly as involved in her life and unconsciously allowing her to feed as I was a few years ago. Not even close. But sometimes she shakes the tightrope I walk between just being a friend and not getting involved in the drama and letting her vampire off me. Knowing she's in a relationship like this worries me and that gets me involved. Especially when she wants him to come to my house, then it really does involve me. But I'd be worried if she were a stranger, honestly. I don't like watching that shit.

I think I like the idea of just truly detaching, letting whatever protective feelings I get happen without acting on them, and letting her drift off to other hosts to feed on if that's what she wants to do. I can honestly say, after experiencing it before, I probably won't be too upset about it should the friendship dissolve. I care about her, but in the end, I don't think the feelings are reciprocal. Not in a healthy, functional way anyhow. She has the understanding and emotional aptitude of a 10 year old when it comes to relationships so she can care for people, but not in a mature, adult manner.

[ArmaGoof]

One of the many inconsistencies that drove me away from religion was "Judge not, lest ye be judged."  Allegedly spoken by someone representing a God whose strongest selling point was Judgment Day - where you find out if you get to go to heaven or languish in hell.

We make judgments every second of our lives. Usually, they involve activities of our own, but are also significantly concerned with the actions of others.  That's an important distinction - to judge actions, not people themselves.  I've always believed that if one had lived another's life completely, one would likely behave much the same way.  A given concoction of hereditary tendencies and life experiences should always produce the same results.

I believe that people do the very best they can every minute of their life to take care of themselves, based on the sum of their current beliefs.  Of course, a belief is something only the believer can change.  It's not likely that anything another says or does will change a person's beliefs.  They are a result of internal argument, based largely on input from completely personal and unique emotional and physical circumstances.  We all share many beliefs, but even our best friends believe things we find utterly irrational.

Many years ago I read "To Love Is To Be Happy With" by Barry Neil Kaufman.  I strongly recommend it.  The book will provide you with many options for dealing with situations like you describe - not only for yourself, but for everyone with whom you decide to interact. The Option Dialogue is an amazing tool that I have incorporated into my conversations with people and have found that it helps them to understand just what exactly it is that they believe - and why.  Sometimes, after considerable examination, they actually DO dispel long held beliefs, or conversely, become more committed to beliefs in which they were not really certain.

I would urge you to back away from the situation  and educate yourself a little about the dynamics of what is happening.  Explore what YOU want from the relationship and, if you decide to, help your friend and maybe even her boyfriend explore their own beliefs.

People tend to believe things without really understanding how they came to believe them.  Often, their beliefs are based on imaginary fears - ultimately the most popular of which is "I must put up with peoples' problems so they'll put up with mine and I won't die unloved and alone." 

You'll do what you'll do in this situation and I, for one, have no interest in judging YOU. 

[golddust]

I would urge you to back away from the situation  and educate yourself a little about the dynamics of what is happening.  Explore what YOU want from the relationship and, if you decide to, help your friend and maybe even her boyfriend explore their own beliefs.

Unless you see something I don't, the only dynamics I see is that I'm dealing with a psychic vampire. And all I want is a friend that I can hang out with and just be friends with. I don't want be sucked dry, I don't want to be her therapist, I don't want to be her savior. I don't mind helping someone, but I mind being taken advantage of. I don't mind being a protective person, but I don't want to fix her life for her. I don't mind being close friends, but I don't want to be the host to her parasitic ways. I don't mind imperfect people or even people who're a bit nutty, but I have a problem with potentially dangerous people like she tends to end up with and then I end up exposed to by proxy. I don't mind being a good listener, but I mind being treated like the women's crisis hotline.

I don't know that I want to help her with her beliefs. I'm pretty certain I'm not interested in helping her boyfriend. Helping her with her beliefs in an effective way results in the same thing as doing it in an ineffective way; I am still working on her life for her and playing therapist. She can have a screwed up life if that's what makes her happy in her sick and twisted way of being "happy", but I don't want to be drawn into it repeatedly because she's playing off my natural instincts. She may not realize that's what she's doing, but subconsciously she knows which buttons get a reaction out of me. Most psychic vampires are gifted at knowing how to read people and knowing how to play people like a fiddle. They know no other way to have their needs met by others than to take it from someone by unconscious emotional manipulation. And that is all attention whoring amounts to. It's a very piercing definition of vampirism, which is why I like the term. Cuts like a razor blade to the point and is hopefully mildly offensive.  It is an offensive thing to do people.

Lastly, I appreciate that you say you're not interested in judging me, but I have to say I judge actions and people. People's actions say alot about who they are, sometime moreso than what they say if they're doing one thing and saying another. Like I said, I'm going to offend people with it because our culture now has swung to the other extreme where any judgment at all is bad and I just don't agree with that. I don't want to be overly judgmental and be judge and jury over every transgression of another, but I don't want to turn off my brain and pretend I didn't see anything bad about someone either, effectively combining dishonesty and willful ignorance. I want to be balanced. I have yet to be wrong when I follow my instincts about someone. I can see the good and the bad in everyone and it's up to me to decide when I can take the bad with the good and when I can't. Sometimes the good wins me over and I wind up in a crappy situation. Sometimes the bad prevents me from having relationships with some people at all and I keep them out of my life or remove them if they are already there and perhaps miss out. Or maybe I don't. It's all a judgment call.

People tend to believe things without really understanding how they came to believe them.  Often, their beliefs are based on imaginary fears - ultimately the most popular of which is "I must put up with peoples' problems so they'll put up with mine and I won't die unloved and alone."

I put up people's problems because there's no such thing as a perfect person and because I think it's important to be understanding and patient with people I've chosen to be friends with because if it were me, that's how I'd want to be treated. I've never thought seriously about dying unloved or alone, just dying without having lived a really adventurous, viscerally rich, satisfied life is all that has ever bothered me.

[Deckard1973]

GoldDust,
  I can relate.  I have a friend who makes the same mistakes over and over again.  Then when I have tried to point out her mistakes, she is so stubborn she defended the idiot she was involved with and he was a complete bag of ass. 
  Recently I have instead lead the conversation, used examples, and not confront her directly.  I am sure she saw through my attempts, but it looks like it has finally sunk in. 
  Naturally she is dating a guy (she serial dates, even when she should not be dating at all and take time to be herself by herself), who actually seems like a good guy . . . and she is only so-so interested in him. 
Go figure eh?

[jmhpolar]

She obviously has boundary issues, and it sounds on the surface like she may suffer from borderline personality disorder (or may be the child of a borderline parent).  Although I would definitely suggest you do some research this disorder, it is very important to understand that you simply cannot "fix" her even if you wanted to.  It would be like trying to cover Jerry Rice in a fly pattern - you simply do not have the tools.

These are serious issues - not just for her, but also for anyone who tries to maintain a relationship with her.  Without being overly dramatic, she should be getting psychiatric help.

Because she has boundary issues, you have to be firm with your own.  Unfortunately, without psychiatric help for her, this change will be something with which she may be unable to cope, and may bring about the end of your relationship with her.  However, if she is in fact borderline and is not receiving help, you run the very real risk of damaging your own mental and emotional help by continuing the relationship as it is.

FYI I'm definitely not a shrink, but I have a LOT of direct personal experience with this particular area....

Good luck to you.

[nicekitty]

You have already decided that this person is trying to suck you dry ('psychic vampire')...my question is:  why would you keep that around you? 

Is there anything about the relationship that you value that makes it worth tolerating vampiric behaviors?  Personally, I tend to get rid of people / relationships that are damaging to me or my family...including people who take more than they give.  It sounds like this woman has introduced a series of nasty people to your life...She doesn't sound like much of a friend, to me...

[TLR1138]

I'm kind of an intuitive empath and I get strong "vibrations" from people right away. My gut feeling about a person usually (but not always) turns out to be right. I really try to work at giving people a chance and not judging them, but a lot of times I just get this gut feeling that says, "Keep away from this person." I don't wish them any harm, I just don't want to be around them.

[ArmaGoof]

Golddust - it sounds like you've just about made your decision and know yourself pretty well.  Now time to choose which way to commit.  All the best to you. 

[golddust]

However, if she is in fact borderline and is not receiving help, you run the very real risk of damaging your own mental and emotional help by continuing the relationship as it is.

FYI I'm definitely not a shrink, but I have a LOT of direct personal experience with this particular area....

Good luck to you.

She is Borderline and refuses to see psychiatrists anymore. She says they don't help so instead she has a whole shelf of books on the disorder and children of parents with the disorder. She just gets her medication from the general physician but I'm not seeing where it helps her at all.

[golddust]

Naturally she is dating a guy (she serial dates, even when she should not be dating at all and take time to be herself by herself), who actually seems like a good guy . . . and she is only so-so interested in him. 
Go figure eh?

I introduced her to a friend of mine who is a really great guy because I thought that's what she really needed in her life and she wasn't interested. She met another guy she was interested in, until she figured out he was a nice guy too and there would be no drama. Naturally, this likely wasn't her conscious thought process but it's what happened. I apologized to my friend and told him I'm terribly sorry I ever introduced her to him, and she's an attention whore who never gets enough so feel free to stay away and don't start feeling sorry for her. She is the cause of her own misery. He has kept his distance since.

You have already decided that this person is trying to suck you dry ('psychic vampire')...my question is:  why would you keep that around you? 

Is there anything about the relationship that you value that makes it worth tolerating vampiric behaviors?  Personally, I tend to get rid of people / relationships that are damaging to me or my family...including people who take more than they give.  It sounds like this woman has introduced a series of nasty people to your life...She doesn't sound like much of a friend, to me...

I guess to me I think that it's possible to be around one of those if you know how to properly block their vampirism.

When I sit and think about it, I don't know what I'm getting from being her friend. When she isn't wallowing in self-pity, we have a nice time just hanging out. When it goes beyond that is when the problems start and since she doesn't have boundaries and needs to draw people in, she doesn't know how to be a casual friend. She doesn't know anyone but completely neurotic people like herself, save for just a few and I notice they are not very involved in her life. They tried to be her friend, but pulled back.

I'm kind of an intuitive empath and I get strong "vibrations" from people right away. My gut feeling about a person usually (but not always) turns out to be right. I really try to work at giving people a chance and not judging them, but a lot of times I just get this gut feeling that says, "Keep away from this person." I don't wish them any harm, I just don't want to be around them.

I'm exactly the same way. I want to not be judgmental but it's hard not to be judgmental when I keep being right about my instincts.

Golddust - it sounds like you've just about made your decision and know yourself pretty well.  Now time to choose which way to commit.  All the best to you. 

Thanks,  ArmaGoof.

I do know what I need to do next.

[jmhpolar]

However, if she is in fact borderline and is not receiving help, you run the very real risk of damaging your own mental and emotional help by continuing the relationship as it is.

FYI I'm definitely not a shrink, but I have a LOT of direct personal experience with this particular area....

Good luck to you.

She is Borderline and refuses to see psychiatrists anymore. She says they don't help so instead she has a whole shelf of books on the disorder and children of parents with the disorder. She just gets her medication from the general physician but I'm not seeing where it helps her at all.

That's really too bad.  How long did she see a psych?  From what I've read BPD takes a relatively long time to improve, 2-5 years of therapy for demonstrable results is not uncommon.  I also understand it takes a good deal of effort, and if she's just taking the meds then it sounds like she's not 100% on board with helping herself.

IMHO it's entirely possible for you to continue some sort of superficial (not the best word, but "shallow" sounds even worse... maybe "small-dose"?  ) friendship, but as I suggested you will have to be firm with your own boundaries.  If she cannot accept this, then what will be, will be.

I hope this turns out well for you.  Dealing with BPD (and children of BPD parents) can be exhausting.  You really have to be prepared to call "bullshit" when you see it, and stand firm.