How to comfort a friend?

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combining medicine with either alcohol or an empty stomach is never a good idea (save some that require an empty stomach though), combining with both is even worse, i wouldn't recommend trying.

if, however, you can get him to eat something, then take the valium, that should be safe; he apparantly trusts your judgement in this area, so perhaps you should insist he eat to make him feel better; if you have something prepared at the time you tell him this (preferably his favourite), this will be easier to accomplish.

other then that; if you happen to know what language your friends mother speaks, and know someone else that also happens to speak that language, it might be an idea to let that friend inform the mother. i know i would, eventually, love you for trying that

I think he talked to his mother on the phone already. He's just getting off Skype with his sister now. This is now the fourth straight day of uncontrollable sobbing. However, yesterday I did let him have some valium, which calmed him down a lot and even got him to eat a little bit. He spent the night with a friend again and he says they got him to eat a nice dinner, and someone gave him a sleeping pill so he got plenty of sleep, which is good. However, today he's not really any better. I guess the breaks between the uncontrollable sobbing fits are a bit longer than they were.

I know this is mostly a matter of time. Now that he's eaten I'm less worried about his physical health. He promises me he's not going to do anything that would endanger him, he knows that this will be okay in the end and he's not going to give up on life or anything. He even said he will try to go to work today, although he's not sure if he'll be able to do any actual work. Even just being in a normal situation with his colleagues as they go door-to-door in a village selling phone/tv/internet contracts ought to be good for him I think. Fresh air, something to occupy his thoughts for a while.

I have to admit I'm amazed at how well he's doing at this point. Even as he's crying and writhing in emotional pain, he tells me that he knows that it will be okay in the end. He has faith that there is some higher reason why this has happened, and in the end something good will come of it, he just needs to see what it is before he can really get over it. Once he finds the reason why it happened, the good thing in his life that will come as a result, he'll be able to leave it behind him.

I wish I had his faith. I don't believe in any force of fate or higher power, but he does. I do believe that he'll be okay with time, but I think it's a very good thing that he believes everything happens for a reason and good will come of it in the end. It will help him get through this.

I'm glad he talked to his family and he is doing so much better. All you are saying sounds very nice (the eating, the sleeping, the things he says).

I have never being in such a horrible situation, but I've heard people needs time, support, and something to keep their mind from thinking on what happened.

He is a very lucky guy, because he is surrounded by people who love him (specially you). You are a very nice friend. I think you have done a lot and have being great through all this situation. Just keep supporting him, giving him space and trying to think in stuff you can do together that will keep his mind busy (maybe video games? watching a movie (nothing depressing or romantic, PLEASE)?)

I do not believe in fate or a higher power, but I do think that all happens for a reason (every action has a reaction?), and I think that what something good will come of what happened. Actually two good thinks came out of it: 1) he found out, on time, what a b**ch his girlfriend was (before getting engaged or married to her), 2) he found out what a piece of c**p his "friend" was that betrayed him with that s**nk. It could have been worse. He could have found out who his friend really was in a worse situation (one that involved a huge amount of money -which happened to a friend of mine-).

Well he did really well yesterday, even got up and got breakfast when he woke up and then went to work, but when he came home late at night (2 or 3 am I think) he came in my room crying and woke me up and asked to talk. He took a sleeping pill and we sat and talked until it kicked in and he went to bed. He was upset because he hadn't felt the need to cry since morning and then suddenly on his way home it hit him again. He thought it was finally behind him and under control and the emotion blindsided him. Of course I told him it's normal, each day will be better but it will take time, and he has all the support he needs until he's finally really okay again. I'm really glad to know that he would wake me up and ask for help if he needed it.

I'm a bit worried about some new issues that he told me about last night. He hates his telemarketing job and until now, he and his group in the company have been kind of screwing the company by giving customers better deals than they already have. The company has a policy of charging older people more money for their contracts than younger people, for example, sometimes more than twice as much, because they know older people don't know any better (and they're used to paying whatever the company demands after so many years of communism). His group goes out and gets these people to sign new contracts at fair prices. They save these people money and get their commission for each new contract signed, but they cut into the company's profits. Now the company has discovered what they're doing and is putting a stop to it. In order to continue his job and continue making enough money to pay back his massive debts (much of it to his family and friends, including me, and much of it to the government), he will have to become a typical telemarketer who lies to people and screws them over. He is the most honest person I've ever known and he can't bear the thought of lying to anyone or hurting them in any way. He doesn't know if he can continue with this job (it seems to physically pain him to deceive people), but on the other hand he'll never be able to make this much money in any other job he might be qualified for, and his debts are not going anywhere but up if he doesn't pay them. (Obviously I don't care how long it takes him to pay me back, but he's borrowed money from his mother and several other friends who need the money back soon because of their own expenses, plus he owes the government a lot of taxes and social security and insurance money.)

I think he also mentioned something about his mother being in the hospital last night, but he was slurring a lot from alcohol and sleeping pills and I didn't catch it. Part of me wants to ask him what's going on, but on the other hand I don't want to upset him by reminding him of even more stressful situations. I'll wait until he brings it up again.

I am also glad he decided to wake you up and talked to you when he was in need. Talking is better than trying to handle things yourself. And you are a very good friend for being there for him. All you said is true. There is a saying: "Rome wasn't built in a day". All takes time, and a broken heart takes a long time to heal. It is great that he was able to go through a whole day without feeling the need to cry. That's a great sign, but he is far from leaving it behind. It will hurt for a while. But he will get better eventually. And if he continues talking about his feelings he will get better faster.

I think you should not worry about his work situation. I am impressed they even gave him a chance. If it was my company he would be on the street right now. What the company does is not fair, but he accepted the job knowing the conditions. He accepted the terms, and then he cheated. He was disloyal to his employers. That is not good. What the company is doing is wrong, but what he did is also wrong. If you do not like your working terms you can always resign and work somewhere else. He is not as "honest" as you say. He might have a good heart, and good intentions, but what he did is not honest.

Anyway, you should let him be. He is not a little boy. He is a grown up. He will have to work it out himself. I know you are worried because you care for him, but what he did is not your responsibility. He needs to work it out. If he does not want to continue working there he will find another job. Even with the economy as it is you can find a job in telemarketing pretty easily. If his new check is not enough, he will have to find a second job or do something else. And I imagine his friends/family will have to wait a little longer to get his money back. Don't push him on that. He is going through too much right now. Let him take his decision about that issue, and you just concentrate in helping him better emotionally. And if he asks for your help try to give him the best advise you can. If it was me, I would tell him to accept the follow the company's terms, and start looking for another job, one with higher standards and where he feels comfortable.

Okay, I need to vent/ask for feedback again. It's 3 weeks after this happened now. The "friend" and ex-girlfriend have already split up. After over a week of taking care of my friend, watching him sob and drool like a little baby and repeat over and over again, How could he do this to me, How did this happen, This isn't happening, How is this possible, watching him drink and drug himself practically into a coma and spend loads of money he didn't have trying to drown out the pain, suddenly today he met the "friend" for a beer. The guy said there was something important he didn't know. He had apologized countless times, and naturally my friend told him too bad, you messed up, we're done.

Well today he met him for a drink for a few hours and then came back home. He hasn't yet told me what they talked about, but he says it's fine, no more problems, they're okay. All seems to be forgiven, forgotten. Just like that.

Now I feel betrayed. After all that. After all that I did for him, the sleep I lost, the money I lent him, the emotional turmoil I went through along with him, he just forgives him like nothing ever happened. I told him that this bothers me and he shouldn't just let this guy get off scot free like nothing ever happened. He told me to mind my own business, it's his decision whether he forgives him or not and I have no say in the matter.

So all that was for nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm so angry and upset I want to just scream at my friend. How dare he just forgive him just like that? I've never seen a man in the condition he was in, and it lasted for over a week. He had finally gotten past it and back in control of himself, started working again, no more emotional outbursts, everything was okay, just moving on with his life minus this bastard, and now they're just making up like nothing ever happened. I feel like I'm going to puke. Am I expected to just babysit him whenever something goes wrong and then sit back and watch him get himself back in the same situation? Is this normal? I seriously feel sick.

At the same time I have another friend who's been asking me advice about a stupid situation he got himself into. He keeps coming to me when something goes wrong and demanding that I listen to his problems, offer him advice, comfort him, stand by him, but every time he does something that makes the situation worse and I tell him he's making a mistake, he gets angry at me and tells me that as his friend I should support him and not criticize him and let him make his own decisions.

So being a friend means I let my friends hurt themselves, then take care of the fallout? This is BS. There's no way this is normal. Please tell me this is not how a normal friendship works. I can't be responsible for everyone's problems but also be expected to just let them create more problems. It's not fair.

I am sorry, but your friend is right. It is up to him to forgive or not "his" friend, and you have no say in the matter.



When you help someone you do it for nothing. You do it because you want to. You do not expect anything in return. What you are saying here is that because you helped him now he needs to do what you want. That is not right. He has the right to live his life whatever he wants.



You are not expected to do anything. If I remember correctly he was trying to avoid you. You were the one insisting in "helping" him. Maybe he was trying to avoid you because he knew now you were going to act like this. You are trying to control him, and that is not good, for any of you. Next time he screws up you just mind your own business and let him be. Unless you want to be a real friend and help him without expecting anything in return.



People need to make mistakes in order to grow. You cannot try to avoid them the pain by telling them what to do. People do not learn like that. We do not learn by "not doing". And you do not "need" to take care of the fallout. A good friend will just listen to you and be there for you (like in be there for emotional support, to listen to you, to cry with you, to hug you), but you do not expect him to "do" things for you. If you were big enough to fall in the hole you need to go out of it yourself. That's why I do not have many friends and I choose them carefully.

As Ilka mentioned, you did these things because he's a good friend, and you didn't want anything back. Careful of the fine line between "I can't believe he's just 'okay' with this after all the s**t this put him through" and "I can't believe he's just 'okay' with this after all the s**t this put me through."



Doesn't matter that he's a man and he was wailing like a little girl for a week. People will do f****d up s**t once in a while. This sounds like one of those whiles.

But also bear in mind you're not really in his head. Also when he had other friends putting him up for the night, you weren't there to hear what happened, and it's not directly your business.

For what it's worth, how your flatmate behaves from here will determine whether he *does* expect you to babysit him when he f***s up. He's your flatmate and it sounds like this isn't quick to change so one way or another you'll get to observe.



It's not how normal friendships should work all the time, but sometimes in a normal friendship this sort of thing happens once in a while. Be mindful of you much of this *you* can take for your own good and do what you should to stay clear of that limit.

He pushed me away from physically comforting him, but he made extensive use of my emotional, as well as financial, support. I lent him a LOT of money that week, most of which has not been repaid yet, which I knew he was spending mostly on alcohol, and I did so willingly because he seemed at the end of his rope and I was seriously concerned that he would do something desperate and crazy and wanted to do whatever he needed me to in order to get through this horrible situation. This is in addition to talking with him whenever he needed it, even when he woke me up in the middle of the night and I had work the next morning, which again, I was happy to do because I wanted to support him. Now I feel like if he can just get over it this quickly and forgive the guy like nothing ever happened, it couldn't have been that bad to begin with, and all these people (myself included) who spent many hours and lots of money and all of their energy taking care of him really didn't need to do so, not if he can simply forgive the guy three weeks later.

And yes, I think it is fair for me to count what this "friend" did to ME as well. This situation was not 100% about my flatmate; it affected other people as well. Obviously I didn't suffer anything like what he did, but it was most definitely the week from hell, for me, for him, and for all of his friends who were taking care of him. The only time any of us got any rest was when we passed him off to another friend, or when he was passed out drunk. My flatmate is a good person and he absolutely deserves to have such a loyal network of friends, but to simply act like nothing ever happened, after so many people went through all that, really frustrates me.

And I probably wouldn't be so upset about this if it weren't for the other friend I mentioned. For a few months now he's been doing something that I will refer to as simply The Very Stupid Thing. Before he started doing this thing, he approached me and asked my advice. I told him the very idea sickened me and he shouldn't do it. He got angry, said that as his friend I should support him, and did it anyway. Then he came to me and said Oh no, Oh no, I did this Very Stupid Thing and now things are going wrong. I said well yeah, stupid, of course they are. What should I do? he asked. STOP doing the Very Stupid Thing, I replied, and added that this thing upset me so much that I did not want to hear anything else about it. My only advice, I told him, is and always will be to STOP doing it. There's no point bothering me with it if you're stupid enough to do it anyway, because I have no sympathy and it upsets me even to think about it. He got angry, told me that as his friend I should be supporting him, and a week later, whaddaya know, here he comes saying Oh no Oh no it's worse now, what should I do?

This has been going on for months. At least once per week, often more, he comes to me and says things are worse and worse, what should I do? I tell him STOP doing the Very Stupid Thing and he gets angry and says I should support him and so on and so forth, you get the idea.

So I now have two people in my life who get angry when I offer my advice (even if they've asked for it), get angry when I'm honest with them (even though I never actively interfere with their final decisions), but when things go wrong, I'm expected to take care of them. My list of friends is very short, so if two people are doing the same thing, I have to wonder if this is normal. So as I said before: please dear god tell me this is not normal, because it's making me crazy and I can't take any more of it.

Well, forgiveness isn't just based on how bad a person hurt you.. I mean its forgiveness because it bothered/hurt you in the first place.

That said if he gets screwed by the same friend again, you know what to do.

Most interpersonal relationships in my eperience have a certain amount of crazyness attached to them. Your friend is a really good guy and now you're seeing the part of them that isn't so good. (Or at least requires some tolerance)

If I may, it sounds almost as if you're unsure whether or not your flatmate was completely out of his mind, or was somehow calculating his reactions. I'm afraid I've no advice for this.



(escapades of Idiot #2 elided for brevity )

It's certainly natural to feel indignant about how things have gone.... Just as before, be mindful of how much of this *you* can take. It is *not* okay for a friend (or anyone) to lean so hard on you that it compromises your own wellbeing.



It sounds like you need to set better boundaries for your flatmate and yourself. If he's in any way self-responsible (and I hope he is), he must know what a strain he's been for those around him. Also starts to sounds a bit like both of these fellas want someone to be sympathetic to them rather than actual assistance and advice.

A friend of my sister was running a bakery for a time. This friend roped her younger sister into helping out for several months to help keep the place running. Even so, one day the younger sister stepped back, realized that her life had been on hold for those months, and she had to tell her older sister, "look, sis, I love you, and I want to help, but I can't do this anymore."

Yeah, the problem here is getting friend #2 to take NO for an answer. I'm considering starting a new topic to ask for help about him actually, but for now I'll put this here, as succinctly as I can.

The guy is one of those super-charismatic types who can basically get whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He spent many years simply coasting along on this charm, not even working. Now he has a job teaching businesspeople English and he does nothing but complain about it. He can't just quit like he used to because he has a child now, and this is the first time in his life that he's had to do something he doesn't want to do for an extended period of time.

When I'm around him and my other friends, he's fun and entertaining, but when we're alone, he has designated me his unpaid therapist, and he unloads everything on me. Hours and hours of nonstop complaining about how miserable he is with the state of his life. He rejects any advice I offer, but if I say nothing he demands that I tell him what to do (THEN rejects my advice and demands that I be a better friend). If I try to talk to him about MY problems, he just tells me to shut up and stop complaining because his problems are bigger. On the other hand, if I tell him about good things happening in my life, he gets even angrier because I'm finally sorting my life out while he's stuck living a life he doesn't want. The other day I told him that with the new job I've managed to get for myself, I'll finally be earning something close to average salary (rather than far below, as before). He scowled at me and told him if I'm making so much money, I have to start buying him things, and somehow browbeat me into buying his dinner.

He does nothing but complain, but when I tell him he complains too much, he says he NEVER complains and demands that I give him a single example of when he had complained that day. I say EVERYTHING you've said was a complaint and he says no it wasn't, you were just misunderstanding me. However, he tells me that I complain too much and I need to be more positive around him and cheer him up, which is pretty much impossible.

We used to have fun together, but the fun is long over and every moment I spend with him is like work. It's clear that I'd be better off getting away from him, at least most of the time. But it's not that easy. I've tried many times to distance myself from him, but it's impossible. He completely ignores me when I say I don't want to see him for a while and carries on like nothing happened, calling and texting me several times a day. And we're in the same circle of friends - in fact, he introduced me to my flatmate - so he's always around. If I ask my flatmate to keep him away for a while, he follows the Czech cultural tradition of throwing up his hands and refusing to get involved with my problems. He says if friend 2 comes over, he comes over, and it's up to me to hide from him if I don't want to see him.

He's the kind of person that orders everyone around all the time, and if you try to say NO to him, he pushes all the right buttons to manipulate you into doing it anyway, and then makes you feel guilty as hell for ever having said no in the first place. He's driving me insane. He's also the only person who ever seems to have time for me these days, and he lets me use his shower (ours has been broken for months), and he knows full well that I need that shower (somehow none of my other friends will let me use theirs) and holds it over my head, along with the fact that he introduced me to all of my current friends.

He used to be really nice to me, always had something nice to say that boosted my confidence and made me feel happy and cared for. I'm now convinced that he used to be trying to get in my pants, because these days he just makes me feel like s**t about myself. For example, I told him I'm frustrated because people here never laugh at my jokes, but in America people used to consider me very funny and tell me I should be a stand-up comedian. His response: That's because Americans are idiots who will laugh at anything. I spent the rest of the night in a terrible mood feeling like s**t and he kept demanding to know what the hell my problem was because he wanted to b***h about HIS problems to ME, and no matter how many times I explained to him what he had said that bothered me so much, he refused to accept it.

I have absolutely no sympathy for the guy. We worked for the same company and did the same job for two years, and I had no major problems with it, while he never stops complaining. I think it's a simple matter of: he spent his youth doing drugs and squatting in abandoned buildings and never having to care or work or be an adult, and now he suddenly sees how the rest of us have to live and wants no part of it, but it's too late now. I've been working my ass off since I was 15 years old and I'm proud of it. I can't listen to this idiot complain about how HARD everything is and how he's gaining weight now because he never gets any exercise, just lies around in bed all day complaining and eating junk food and how he's not earning enough money because he refuses to accept courses before 11 am because he's PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE of getting up "in the middle of the night" like I do (6:30 am), and so on and so forth...

...and man, I didn't realize how badly I needed to vent about him. I'm willing to listen to any advice, but I'm honestly not optimistic about this situation changing in the near future.

I don't know. Friend number 2 doesn't really sound like a nice guy anymore with some of his annoying comments. How long does he stay at your place when he comes over? If its just an hour a day you could start making yourself scarce. Or maybe just put up with him long enough till you can get a place of your own and use your own shower.

Maybe when you reach that point where you don't care what you say to him, you give him an ultimatum to stop coming to you with problems when he doesn't want your advice in the first place. Or.. (if you don't mind hearing him vent) tell him he can vent to you about things once in a while but let him know that a vent is just getting it off his chest and not trying to ask for input and throw it back in your face every time.

By the way, does he know you don't like him anymore?

I have told him often and repeatedly that I don't like him anymore, but I don't think he recognizes that as a thing that can actually happen. He just carries on as though I hadn't said it. No matter how many times I say it.

Yikes. Yeah actually sounds like raging eejit #2 is your bigger problem Best of luck finding a way to manage him.

Guess it'd be pretty hard to avoid contact since he and your flatmate are friends. Also tbh as long as they are friends, he's not going to want to keep him away. Especially if he's the fun happy go lucky guy with him and the mopey depressed guy with you. He probably doesn't want to get between his friends after recent events