Untangling a complex relationship

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Hi people,

Sorry if this is long, but I want your opinions and I need to explain so you get the picture.

I'm angry about this but I also recognise I'm sensitive and might be taking it out of proportion. I'm trying to work if it's me or if Mum's just getting it all wrong.

My friend Jenny is a disabled Mum with very low self-esteem and a poor memory, and her lad is an autistic kid who also has very low self-esteem, but a great memory.

The lad is a trans lad called Jack (with autism and ADHD), so born a girl, and has gender dysphoria. Add to that crushed self-esteem from all the knock-backs from mainstream school (teachers & kids), but also learnt it from Mum of course. He's mid-teens.

It's about Jack's school-friend's mum Viv, who is a conservative Christian and refuses to accept Jack's non-binary gender dysphoria. When the Christian mum was finally told that Jack identifies as non-binary, she refused to accept it, although her daughter could still remain friends. Initially Jenny carried on talking with Viv (even though Jack said her words had negatively affected his mental health, and he now hates her), until I pointed out that stopping friendship with her would be her opportunity to stick up for her child, in a way that her parents never stuck up for her.

Jenny then decided this was a good idea and she broke off friendship with Viv, stating that she can't be friends any more, she has to put her child's health first.

After about a year, she's started being friends with Viv again. I put it to her that this might be damaging to Jack's mental health, as his self-esteem is already seriously rock-bottom. Mum asked him if it bothered him, he said he didn't care what she did. But he would, wouldn't he, as his self-esteem is so low, plus he's already emotionally very detached from Mum - through her neglected childhood she doesn't have much of a clue how to be a supportive parent - and he hardly talks to her, says it's because he doesn't trust her (Jenny, his mum).

So because he says he doesn't care, Jenny says there's no problem with being friends with Viv again. But I feel and argue that it's both reinforcing his low self-esteem, and distancing mum and lad even more. I'm concerned Mum doesn't realize the damage she's compounding in her kid.


I'm not sure if this helps, but I'll add this example of what their relationship's like. Quite a few times I've heard her voicing more concern about her dog than her lad. For instance, we were out for a long drive. We'd earlier agreed to go shopping to get food for Jack on the way home. Back in town, Jenny says we need to hurry home to let the dog out of it's cage, and I have to remind her about Jack not having any food for tea. She reacts annoyed and says 'But the dog needs to be let out. No, were going straight home'. I then reminded her Jack had no food for tea. She replies, 'Alright we'll go shopping cause you say we have to', in an annoyed attack at me. Jack's in the back hearing all this.

Later on when we talked it through, she admitted it sounded like she was putting the dog first, and regretted it.

Sorry that's an awful lot, but I find it hard to work out if I'm being over-sensitive and over-protective of him, or whether Mum's making an unhealthy problem worse.

Any and all thoughts gratefully received!

First rule is the airplane oxygen mask rule: help yourself first, without it, you won't be able to help anyone. It is true with oxygen masks and it is true with mental health.

You and each of your friends needs to work on improving their own mental health first. Then, improvement of relationships may or may not follow.

Key question: Have Viv's attitudes changed at all? Is Viv now more willing to accept Jack's gender identity, or at least to be more polite about it (e.g. by using Jack's pronouns)? Have either you or Jenny made efforts to persuade Viv to be more accepting, or at least more polite?

I wouldn't tell Jenny she can't be friends with Viv, but I do think that, if Jenny does choose to be friends with Viv, she should draw some boundaries with Viv regarding Viv's behavior toward Jack, e.g. regarding pronouns.

But, in any case, it's really not your place to tell Jenny who she can and can't be friends with, or how she should deal with Viv if she does choose to remain friends. You can give her advice, but don't insist and don't persist.

Personally I've always hated it when someone tried to tell me who I could or couldn't be friends with. When that happens, I usually respond by breaking off my friendship with the person who was trying to dictate my friendships, rather than with the person they were trying to get me to break off with.


Are you sure he literally would not have had "any food," or perhaps just not his favorite food?


Next time you and she go out together, I would suggest that the two of you (or whichever one of you is better at this) plan a more detailed schedule in advance, to avoid ending up in situations that look like a choice between Jack and the dog. For example, if a plan involves shopping on the way home, then the plan should include what time you need to arrive at the store in order for her to arrive home in time to let the dog out, and hence also what time you need to leave the previous activity in order to arrive at the store on time.

Obviously, she has responsibilities to both Jack and the dog, and she needs to find (perhaps with your help, in some cases?) ways to fulfill them both.

But it probably won't be possible to eliminate all situations where she has to choose between Jack's needs/desires and the dog's needs/desires. In those situations, the decision needs to be based not just on who is more important, but also on who has the more urgent need. And sometimes it may legitimately be the case that the dog has a more urgent need.


If you are going to be critiquing Jenny's parenting style, I would strongly suggest that you do so out of Jack's earshot. Doing so in Jack's presence just further undermines Jenny's role as Jack's parent. In most situations, unless you are witnessing severe abuse, it is probably not a good idea to intervene immediately. The longterm parent-child relationship is more important than the immediate situation.

Personally I get the vibe that you are, at least in some ways, over-controlling in your relationship with Jenny. I think it would be good if you could direct your controlling tendencies into areas where they would actually be helpful (e.g. by planning schedules for your outings with Jenny), but, otherwise, it seems to me you need to accept that Jenny's parent-child relationship with Jack is out of your control and stop trying to control it. By trying to control it, you may well be doing more harm than good.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 07 Sep 2023, 11:24 am, edited 7 times in total.

Hmm, I think this depends on the nature of the mental health issue. What you say above is probably true for psychosis and severe mood disorders, for example. But for some other kinds of mental health issues, e.g. some personality disorders, the very nature of the issue has to do with how one relates to other people. In that case, examining how one relates to other people needs to be the primary thing.

Not really - setting boundaries so the relationship does not make your mental health worse is the crucial part of e.g. living with someone with BPD.
My experience with people with complex trauma (giving cluster B-like symptoms) also confirms that caring for myself first and learning that I'm not responsible for mental issues of other people was exactly what I needed to improve our relations.

Someone might or might not be helped but good-natured people are prone to unintentionally feeding problems by their codependent-like behaviors, e.g. taking the burden on other people's mental/relationship problems on themselves.

We might be misunderstanding each other, then. I think of setting appropriate boundaries as an aspect of improving the relationship.

^ Then we agree that setting boundaries is the first step for healing relationships, I think

!	magz wrote:
	Some posts have been removed. Please, keep discussion on PPR controversies confined to PPR, to prevent derailing of other threads.

Maybe not in absolutely all cases, but certainly in many cases, including probably the one described in this thread.

EDIT: As I understand it, setting boundaries doesn't necessarily mean ignoring the other person or refusing to help the other person at all (even in non-problematic ways). It does mean establishing mutual respect for each other's autonomy on important personal matters. And it does mean taking care of oneself rather than routinely sacrificing oneself in vain attempts to help others.

I think I misunderstood what you said earlier as saying that one should completely ignore others' needs in favor of one's own mental health. A person with very severe mental illness might conceivably be so unaware of -- or delusional about -- other people's needs that completely ignoring them might be such a person's least bad option. But that's a more extreme thing than setting boundaries, and it doesn't seem to me to be a good idea in less extreme cases.