Friend is making me paranoid!

[Catatonic]

I have a friend who is going through a rough break up in her life. She is a good friend and so I want to be there as a sympathetic ear for her. The problem is, she has developed a very pessimistic attitude towards men even before this break up. She has had this attitude for several years now.

 

Basically, she thinks:

 

1) Men are sleazy and will try and get away with anything they can.

2) You have to always stay detached and keep an eye out for better man because men do that too with women.

3) You can never fully trust a man or anyone for that matter.

 

She actually treats her men very well but have always been let down which led to her attitude. I understand where she is coming from but it is extremely hard for me not to be affected by her words because she is a trusted confidante and also she says I am just naive with things.

 

I find that I feel insecure and distrustful with men after my friend talks to me about men. I force myself to trust but sometimes it is very difficult. I feel that her frustration and problems are spilling over into my life but I don't want to cut her off when she is going through a hard time.

 

Help? Thanks!

[bulletproof]

You don't have to cut her off completely, but you could start saying that you don't want to talk about it that way. You could start off gently by telling her that it's totally understandable that she feels that way, but not every guy is bad. Do either of you have male friends that are good guys? Maybe cite them as an example. Or, you can listen to as much as you can take and then steer the conversation another way, and just keep doing that. You can still be there for her if she wants to talk about her feelings about the breakup itself, but cut it short when it becomes about men in general.

 

I've found that for myself, the best things my friends could do for me when I was going thru a bad breakup was to talk about other, more positive subjects. Even though I really wanted to obsess and analyze, they talked about fun things coming up in the future, work, other people we know, anything. You could also suggest fun things to do so that there isn't so much of an opportunity to have a b***h session.

[Entropy Smith]

Here are your options;

 

1)Be around her less.

 

2)Develop a defense against her negativity. Now that you recognize, take it a step further and challenge her on it. Not arugumentaviley but if she's a friend she's open to disagreement. Let her know that she is generalizing.

 

Occasionally one of my friends gets racist. And i noticed a few others in the group will start getting alittle racist here and there. Then i put my foot down and say something and maybe the one friend stays racist but the others quit following his lead. Socialization is a very powerful force. If you aren't able to defend againt her toxicity then you must remove yourself from the situation/being around her.

[Gratsy]

If I loved my friend, I'd tell her she was wrong and continue to do it. I tend to be annoying and opinionated, so she'd stop or leave or get a clue. I would say, "Listen, I know you're hurting...and for understandable reasons...but you're handling this incorrectly. This is why_______"