[VENTING] My Friend, His New Girl & Her Baggage

Looks like you can't stop your friend from making up his own mind. Continue being a friend to him and be there to help him pick up the pieces when this relationship (hopefully) ends. This sounds similar to my best friend over 20 years ago. Problem is, he married the girl and she broke off every relationship he had with anyone prior to her. Very sad.

Based on the profile of your friend and this girl, I could play amateur psychologist and say more, but I won't.

 

These quotes are likely very revealing. Most people don't throw those sorts of things out there for sh#$s and giggles. I suspect your instincts are dead on, but you can't just attack her, you'll instantly put him on the defensive and alienate yourself from him. I don't know the best course of action, but I know that if you want to have an influence... you have to stay away from attacking her. I'd stay try to work an angle something along the lines of "his goals, aspirations, and future".
The last line would be to simply state your views on the subject and reject where she's going to lead him...
Good luck

 

friends can periodically get involved with people with excess baggage or someone you don't think they fit with at all.. seems like all you can do is let the relationship run its course. If he thinks it's right, then all the logic in the world from you isn't gonna change his mind...so it's not worth starting negative vibes over and hurting your friendship. There's a chance that he may have to learn a hard lesson.

So do your best to try and prevent him from rushing things at least...so that the repercussions are minimized if it's really a bad thing for him? Maybe you can get someone with the most influence in his life to give him an opinion if this lasts for longer than a month (i.e. parents often..)

 

Sorry, but all I could think about when reading this is..."Those poor kids".....

DD

 

Who cares.. they probably havent even been on a 3rd date yet. Obviously chick is crazy but your boy isn't in any kind of trouble yet.

 

I think a lot of the other posters are pretty on about how much you can persuade him. But what I'll try and take a crack at a way to 'reach' him.

The thing is, we can rationalize anything. And the way we rationalize is by accepting one little thing at a time and not stepping back and looking at the whole picture. Take cars as an example. Suppose Americans had been allowed to vote on allowing automobiles when they were invented, and they were told up front about the 'cost' of automobiles: That tens of thousands of people would be killed by them each year, millions of beloved pets would be massacred, people would lose days of their lives each year sitting in traffic, etc. A lot of people would have given serious thought about whether or not to allow automobiles. Now, if you proposed a national referendum on cars, people would look at you like you're batty. The point of the long analogy is that you have to either A) get someone to step out of their current perspective and look at it from another's, or B) overload them with all the costs at once so they can't deny it.

I don't know if your friend plays poker, but the analogy I always use when I talk my friends through a relationship is poker. I'm not any good at it, but I do know that to be good you have to kill that instinct inside that says the cards will turn over for ME. I know the odds are against it but I think I'm gonna hit this straight because, well, I'm ME. And I should win dammit. We think the same way about relationships. We don't like to believe we're in a bad one just like we don't like to acknowledge that the card odds are the same for us as any other player. We like to think we're special, but a lot of times we're not. Ask your friend what he would think if someone else was dating a girl like that. If he was looking at it from the outside, what would he think? Or, if before he'd ever met her, someone had slid her resume across the table and it had all the stuff you'd mentioned. Would he have agreed to meet her if he'd known all that up front? At the very least, you can easily get him to admit he could do a lot better.

I'll be honest, you probably can't get him to admit to it right away. I've been in some relationships where I've KNOWN myself it was dumb to be in it and I've still let them drag on. Ask those questions, plant those seeds of doubt. Don't wreck the friendship over it. Tell him you say it because you care about him and you think he could do a lot better. That's important. Let him know it's out of love and he'll swallow the medicine a lot easier. If you do that, he'll probably come around soon, and you'll have played a critical part in helping him do it...

 

I had a friend who was a dating a girl who had a kid. I warned him about all the possible things that could happen and I confronted him about breaking off the relationship. Although I was serious the whole time, the way I approached this problem was simply by a playing around a bit and just saying, "You need to dump that hoe", etc etc. Just to at least put on his mind. At times it was serious, at times I was playful.

They kept messing around a bit, but eventually he broke off the relationship for the very reasons I had told him. I've known my best friend since kindergarden, so he has always respected my opinion a lot more than any broad he has dated.

 

Umm, your friend has got some serious issues, too. Anyone who would do this with guests over:

After pic taking, they both left to the bathroom to "mess around" for a bit. I questioned my friend about doing this with not only guests over, but kids in the next room awake. His only response was that he stopped it before it got anywhere. Wrong. I knocked on the door and I stopped it

Is, how do I say this politely, rude, offensive, inconsiderate, etc. And that's trying not to be judgmental, as well. What the heck is wrong with some people today? I'm not even going to go into half the stuff you mentioned about her, but I'm very blessed in that my friends and I can be very frank with each other without ruining the friendship. And they would let-me-have-it over a situation like this (actually, they did over someone who did 90% less than what this woman did wrong).

My advice to this guy? "Don't worry about how I feel, or my wife, or your sister, or your parents. Do what you feel is in your heart. Be comfortable with this decision to stick with her against all of our advice not to. Pride yourself on your decision to make an independent judgment. Pride yourself on your willingness to give her a chance, to understand that you may not know the real "her" and that she could turn out to be a terrific person. Give yourself kudos for being courageous to go with your gut instinct rather than listen to the masses and let others influence your life.

Then, when you're ready to "go with your heart" and give this woman a chance, act like a complete goofball and drop her anyway."

 

Obviously, you care about your friend a lot. That was an excellent post and probably difficult to write to a message board full of crazy folks like us. I really like some of the replies here, like those from lpbman and Bullard4Life, who had good takes.

This is one of those situations good friends can put you in that will drive you crazy. Your friend scarcely knows this chick, but is probably having some of the best sex in his life. A woman can be uneducated, mentally not all the way there, treat her kids badly out of selfishness, and still be a terrific lay. I think that's what is going on with your friend (based on what you told us). The sex is so good that he doesn't want to know anything wrong with this chick. He doesn't want to know that the kids are getting the short end of the stick, so he's simply not seeing it. He doesn't want to think about how he doesn't know her from Adam, doesn't really know her personal history, so he is simply ignoring it. He doesn't want to think about why she is in this predicament at a young age and how incredibly irresponsible she is (again, based on what you told us), because damn! He hooked up with a chick online and immediately had the best sex he can ever remember having! She must be a really cool and together chick because damn! She's such a great lay!

As you can see, I'm not as polite as you about discussing sex and relationships. You're friend is doing his thinking with his Johnson. He very well may ruin his life, should this go on long enough that he's sucked into this chick's orbit, and what you can do is extremely limited. You're in a tough spot. Years ago, I lost a good friend because he was doing something similar and I attempted to get involved, because I knew he was screwing up, bad. He was screwing up and he eventually figured it out, but our friendship was never the same. A different friend who asked my advice about a woman, because he realized he was quickly getting in deep with the relationship, heard my unvarnished advice, eventually broke it off, and later thanked me for saying something, so you never know. (my advice to my friends goes something like this... if you don't want to know what I'm really thinking about something, then don't ask. All my friends know about that and I remind them when they forget! )

Good luck. I don't envy you or your friend.

 

Hispanic?

 

I don't really have to add anything to the good advice already given in this thread, but this girl sounds like a lot of trouble of all kinds. Poor kids. You seem like a good friend who really cares about his friends. Good luck.

 

This girl =

 

You should introduce him to someone better or just tell him straight out that she's trouble. At one point I dated a girl similar to the one you describe. Early 20's, multiple kids, never married, and not really going anywhere fast. The kind that is looking for a guy to latch on to and"save" her so to speak. I asked my brother for his advice and he was pretty blunt with me about her being a ho and a loser. I was kind of pissed about it for a little bit but he was right of course and eventually I came around. Sometimes it's hard to get a good perspective on something when you're in the middle of it.

 

He is 26, been in the navy for how long?

I am sure all he wants is to just have fun and not to think about all these other nitty gritty mature issues that you think about because you are already married and have more experience in this regard.

let him be for now

start up another thread when he gets engaged to this girl

 

Link to her Myspace please so I can see if she's worth it or not.

 

Seconded. Could not care less what some dude does or does not see in some loony bimbo.

But she has kids. *shakes head*

 

Seems like your friend hadn't had any in awhile, so trying to be the "knight in shining armor" to a single parent who has made a ton of mistakes in life. That way he can be "helping her out" instead of just getting some from a girl who is easy. It is a total justification play by him.

The kids are the big losers here. Your friend will get involved in some drama with her soon and drop her. But those 2 boys she has are the future criminals of America with a mother like that. Hate to see that.

I have been in a similiar situation. Met a girl who was hot, gave up the sex pretty fast and actually was smart at times. I met her kids, she was a terrible parent, couldn't make a good decision to saver her life, no job and she had crazy mood swings. But she was hot and gave up the sex easily and pretty much anytime I wanted it. So I stuck around with her for much longer than I should have. I used the same justification I am sure your friend is using. Again, the kids are the losers. The kids in my relationship were the losers. Terrible grades, no discipline, mother never around, really bad situation that the mother makes sure she continues.

You should talk to your friend about her and such. Tell him how you see it. As a friend, you are obligated to say something and try to set him straight. If he doesn't care what you think, just let him do his thing. But I wouldn't be around that situation. No reason to go and hang out with him in that enviroment. Actually, the more he is alone with her kids and her, the faster he will smarten up.