enabling the love addict

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Question: My friend broke up with her boyfriend for, I kid you not, the 14th time since January! Every time she is a mess and I skip dates, or things I want to do to go and console her, and then no more than a week later they are back together. I want to be a good friend but I'm starting to resent her. What should I do?

Answer: Your friend is an addict and you are participating in and enabling her addiction by putting your life on hold for her melt downs. True friendship does not feed into an addiction it insists that your friend get into some counseling and work on her issues.

The real question is what are you getting out of this? You stand as the outsider of her relationship with her on again off again boyfriend, and clearly you can see it isn't healthy and she needs a change. Let me guess, she tells you, "but when things are good they are soooo good." I'm sure you just shake your head.

Let me ask you this, would an outsider looking at your relationship with her say the same things? Is your friendship great when things are good, when she isn't putting her boyfriend and her relationship needs ahead of you?

At the end of the day you put up with her BS the same reason she puts up with his, because an unhealthy relationship is better than being alone. When looking at her you can see she deserves to be treated better. The same is true for you.

We train people on how to treat us. What you show her by dropping everything when ever her life is a mess is that you feel that her life is more important than yours. Your friendship makes her feel good about herself. What reason does she have to stop abusing this relationship. A true friendship has balance. Give your friend a chance to be a real friend by treating yourself as well as you treat her, she may surprise you by understanding.

We all get the relationships we believe we deserve and that includes friendships. Next time she and Mr. NotSoRight break up you do not have to ignore her, but you do have to go on with your life. You have to tell her how much it hurts you to see her continual suffering and that she owes it to your friendship to seek counseling. You have the right to stop putting yourself through the turmoil and working harder than she is to keep her from suffering.

I know that what I'm saying is simple, but not easy. These things rarely are, but every relationship worth having requires work and sacrifice and friendship is certainly no exception.