Dear Nekoshema:

You are welcome.

It seems like his girlfriend is suffering because of his behavior with you. I can’t think of any girlfriend who will not be troubled by their boyfriend hugging another woman for so long. Some changes need to be done so that she doesn’t suffer unnecessarily.

You wrote regarding your friends: “They do  not actively seek him out and don’t go out of their way to socialize with him”- my point is that if they believe he is mean, calculating and manipulating, if it bothers them to socialize with him, then they should go out of their way to not socialize with him.

Their job is to choose who  they socialize with and respect your right to choose who you socialize with. Even better, it will be nice if you (and your friends!) trusted your ability to evaluate if it is a good or a bad idea to have in your life.

To another topic (which you communicated to your friend): “If two people are screaming at each other I break down, so approaching my family and laying out all the terrible things they did, I know will result in them yelling at me, and I will crumble”-

– to me, this means that you should not lay out “all the terrible things they did”, because of course, you don’t want them screaming at you. I don’t believe that confrontations are necessary. For example, I chose to cut all contact with my mother but I did not confront her before I ended all contact with her.

I am wondering, when you are together with your family members who did terrible things to you (I wonder what those things are, but you don’t have to let me know), what is going on inside you, how does it feel to be in their presence?

anita