Can You Ever Tell Your Friend What You Really Think About Their Relationship?

Hands up if you have sat, sympathetic look on your face, trying really hard to say something comforting to a friend who is dealing with what, the way she describes it, is a relationship problem as catastrophic as the sinking of the Titanic and as historically important as September 11?

The first couple of times this happens, you do actually care, and you will happily sit up at three in the morning, trying to decipher her words through the sobs, and you do try to contribute something helpful, something supportive and something with definite anti-male undertones.

The next few times, your patience is wearing thin, you are inwardly fighting the urge to shake some sense into her, slap her a few times, and scream ‘Wake up sista!!!!’. Instead, you calmly question her, ‘if he treats you so badly, why are you still with him?’, now obviously less comforting, but you believe anyway, more constructive.

When that falls on deaf ears, and the next week she is right back with him and crying to you again, you try to tell it to her straight. You tell her that even though you might love him, you fight all the time, you are always crying, or angry, or hurt, and no, a box of chocolates, or a bouquet of flowers, should not be enough this time, regardless of the fact that it is imported Swiss chocolate, or your favorite long stemmed roses. You believe, with the overwhelming amount of evidence to support your theory, that they are not right for each other and you think that finally, you have gotten through to your friend and she now feels the same, and is on er way home to once and for all end the drama. (Continue Reading)