1 of 111

Write now Article Tools

It's heart-wrenching to see a friend you care about suffer the worries and humiliations of a relationship that appears to be bad for them. Good friends wish to "do something", and sometimes doing something is just what's required.

But there is no simple, single answer to whether you should interfere and how. The right course of action depends on the relationship in question, the relationship between you and your friend, as well as your own and their personalities, situations and vulnerabilities.

Before deciding whether some kind of intervention might be needed and appropriate, it's worth considering several issues: What makes you believe the relationship is unhealthy? Is your friend aware of that? What can you do?

IS THIS AN UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP?

What makes you believe it's an "unhealthy relationship"? Does your friend agree with you? Does she or he seem unhappy? Is there anything that other people would also be concerned with?

Evaluate your judgement carefully and be honest with yourself. Often times people react in a negative way to a new relationship their friend might form (be it a romantic association, friendship, religious conversion or even a new job) because it is somehow threatening to them.

We might feel threatened in our own relationship with the person in question: losing our friend's time, affection or undivided attention. Such worries might colour our perceptions - make sure it's not the case here. There are also personal preferences.

Just because you don't like your best friend's new boyfriend, it doesn't mean he's bad for her.

The new relationship might signal a change in the friend that is more subtly threatening. Such a change might implicitly question one's own values. A friend who decides to give up her job, get married and become a housewife is likely to be a challenge to somebody who sticks to the emancipation ideas of her student days. Friend's religious conversion might make one question one's own comfortably vague spirituality.

A change doesn't have to be for the worse, and even if you can hardly recognise your friend under the influence of the new relationship, it doesn't mean the change is bad for them.

We also tend to impose our own value systems on others. Each relationship is a trade-off, a give-and-take of compromises. None are perfect. It's very easy to judge a relationship that would be unacceptable to us as "objectively unhealthy", but it's important to remember that people are different, and a situation that

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Should you interfere in a friend's unhealthy relationship??
We want to hear your view. Write now!