Urge Friend To Seek Help For Problems
“I dream for a living.”
Steven Spielberg
Dear Jennifer: I am writing to ask your advice about a friend I have been close to for many years. She has been in a string of unhealthy relationships with men and I don’t know how to deal with it.
By “unhealthy” I mean men who are married, drug users, chronically unemployed and emotionally abusive. She thinks I am being overly critical or telling her what to do. Now, I just don’t say much at all but that doesn’t feel right. My friend is a wonderful person and she deserves the best.
- Kelly
Dear Kelly: As you know, this is a tough call. You can carefully point out again that she is hurting herself and deserves more and try to encourage her to get counseling. During the conversation, whenever she tries to turn the problem back to you, just repeat (like a broken record), “I cannot stand by caring about you and watching you do this.” She may get angry, she may decide to seek help. It takes courage to confront someone you love.
Another choice is to ask her to stop talking to you about problems that come out of these unhealthy relationships or to just tell her you need to withdraw (take a break) until she takes better care of herself. It is potentially dangerous for you to be associated, even by friendship, with these men.
Good friendships go through ups and downs, times of close contact and no contact. Sometimes we just have to let a friendship go completely rather than be drawn into situations that hurt us. Your letter indicates a loving and thoughtful person. Do what you can and take care of yourself.
- Jennifer
Dear Jennifer: I found your New Year’s column somewhat difficult to understand. Perhaps this is because of the wide range of issues you addressed in so small a space: the future, intelligence, evolution, environment, population control, the pope, etc.
As long as we are conjecturing about the future, I believe that history will remember Pope John Paul as one who spoke courageously in a time when society was painfully birthing a new age. His life and circumstances have granted him a global voice and he has used it. As with most public figures, his opinions are not always popular.
Thank you for hearing me out. Blessings in the New Year!
- Cathy
Dear Cathy: Your letter was so eloquent and thoughtful I wish I could have printed all of it. You are right that a column space is so small that I try to put too much into some essays and they are confusing. Sometimes I am just thinking out loud as I seek answers. The basic issues of that column are actually a book that I have just finished writing that is 400 pages. Lucky for all of us, the newspaper limits me.
I do not wish to pick on any one group or spiritual leader. The Catholic Church is a strong positive force in our world. The pope was noted because Time chose him as Man of the Year. As he finishes another tour, I remember that when he was first chosen I had very high hopes. He was young, he was Polish, he understood the pain of Soviet domination and deprivation. He was smart and he wanted to travel the world talking about real problems and offering hope. I rejoiced. I agreed with him on many of the moral messages he offered and I still do.
Gradually, over the years, I became disenchanted as I saw him expand some of the worst elements of a conservative papacy.
He policed and attacked decent cardinals and archbishops (like Hunthausen). He shut down Catholic academics and theologians by intimidation or firing. He told women to stay in their place and priests to keep quiet regardless of the abuses that surrounded them. He joined with Islamic radicals to defeat population choices and contraception education for Third World women and he ignored the sexual abuse problems of Catholic priests until there was literally an explosion of lawsuits.
I can still see the good that you write of in your letter and the heroism of his continued willingness to speak out for his interpretations of morality. It just is not enough to counter my belief that at a time when we so needed a visionary pope we got a reactionary. The pope is not God, he is not a democratically elected leader. He is the head of a very old lodge.
As I write this I wonder, “Who do I think I am” to even discuss the pope. But, like all of you, I try to read and listen and think about everything. I try to synthesize enough information (and a lot comes from your letters) to reach an understanding of what would help our country and how I can be a good citizen.
- Jennifer