Scarleteen

Recently, one my friend and I’s friendship fizzled out
This is due that I confronted her that the relationship—more importantly— her actions were very toxic.

You see here, my friend always comes to me, or my group of friends, for sexual advice.

The problem is;
- One: most of our friends aren’t straight
- Two: she won’t listen to our repeated advice (use contraceptives, find a capable adult to deal with these situations)
- Thee: Her boyfriend isn’t being cautious either... resulting them having unprotected sex frequently
- Four: Not only does this make us uncomfortable with our friend talking about explicit situations, it makes feel invalid that we’re only seen as her local gynecologist nowadays.

I told her anything relationship-wise makes me feel uncomfortable and awful, which emotionally drains me. She avoided my boundaries.

The best thing I told her was:
- Take care of you: Find a talk-therapist, or the school councilor, to talk and handle these stressful sexual/relationship issues one-on-one. Find your wants.
- We need space: The best of us to revaluate this situation ourselves, and take care of ourselves.
- Find an adult: Due to this friend constantly being paranoid of pregnancy or precautions of unprotected sex, and her boyfriend ignoring both of their well-being, finding an adult who’s open to helping you


She said I was being heartless, but I care for her well-being. Although with the repeating advice, I feel like she ignores it.

But, now I feel like a enabler, due-to-the-fact that she’s isolated with no friends besides her boyfriend. Most people backed away from her due to ignorance to listen to variety of situations that continue to hurt her and her friends.


Is there anything else I can do for this?

Hi nonsequitur,

This sounds like a tricky situation, although it also sounds like you tried to handle it with a lot of compassion. It can be frustrating when you feel like someone keeps asking for advice only to ignore it. You're allowed to set boundaries with your friends, and that includes saying things like, "friend, I care about you, but I feel like a broken record. The advice I'm going to give hasn't changed, and this is actually a really uncomfortable topic for me. Can we talk about something else?"

Too, it doesn't sound like you were cruel to her. In fact, a lot of the advice you gave was encouraging her to find other help, the kind of help that might be better suited to helping her address what's going on.

I do want to check, did you get the sense she had looked into any resources about evaluating the health of a relationship? I ask because I'm seeing some red flags in her boyfriends behavior, and sense you may be as well.

Somewhat—

Since she’s with a very strict family, she gets very iffy if there’s no confidentiality. The best recommendation I gave her was the school counselor, since everything discussed will be held with confidentially.

I visit the only school psychologist weekly, and form the previous visit, they didn’t said anything after recommending her to them.

Honestly, and sadly, she’s aware of the red flags but enjoys being in the relationship nonetheless. There’s not much I can do.

The only thing I just hope for now, is she experiences an eye-opening situation that’ll aide her that’ll she change her ways.

Got it. It sounds like, then, you've done a lot to encourage her in the direction of additional supports.

In terms of your friendship, is this a friendship you want to maintain to some degree? Or do you want to be done with it entirely?