Sometimes you can never do enough for your needy friends. While that statement is true for your men and women friends, this article is mostly about the relationships you have with your needy women friends. The main reasons most needy people are needy is because they tend to make bad decisions. And more often than not, they blame other people for their bad decisions and the resulting conditions in which they find themselves. As a result many women fall into the trap of accepting responsibility for their female friend's difficult situation even when they are not responsible for the situation in which they find themselves.
Your survival and happiness--as well as the survival and happiness of your children--require that you stop letting women who contribute very little or nothing to your happiness and well being make you feel responsible and/or guilty about the bad decisions they choose to make.
You must protect yourself from your needy friends. In an effort to be a friend, many women ignore the signs of abuse from their female friends. One sign of potential or ongoing abuse is the friend who asks for your advice and "honest opinion" but get angry with you when you give it. Asking for "honest" advice or opinion is often a fatal trap from which your needy friend will never let you escape.
The most obvious sign, however, is when you are clearly a better friend to her than she is to you. Listen to their language and their declaration of friendship. They call you their "best friend" when they are in need, but find convenient ways to ignore you when their need is diminished. When their needs are not imminent, they have convenient ways to ignore you or phase you out of their lives via any excuse. You are out of sight and out of mind when they have no need that they want you to satisfy. In the absence of survival needs, their best friend is someone else. More often than not it is someone with whom they share their idea of fun, which likely not consistent with your idea of fun. But when their need approaches overwhelming or even merely difficult, you suddenly become their best friend again.
Sometimes you have to accept the fact that the women you desire to help cannot be helped without letting yourself be used and abused or without putting you and your children lives, happiness, and well-being at risk.
The following is an example of an all too common scenario. A single mother with two small daughters had a friend who was in dire straits. Her friend had no job, no savings, and no where to go. So this single mother invited her broken friend into her home. But there were four conditions to her invitation. She stipulated:
1. I will give you up a month or two to live here for free.
2. During that time you must actively look for a job.
3. When you get a job you must save your money so you can get your own place.
4. If you have or get a boyfriend he can come over to pick you up but you cannot entertain him in my house. And to be sure that there are no misunderstanding, he absolutely cannot come in and stay overnight.
Her needy friend was incensed. She angrily declared that she refused to stay in a place where she could not come and go as she please nor do as she please.
Who is the real friend here? Some will say that a real friend will not place those kinds of restrictions on a friend in need. But most assuredly, those people likely do not have children, especially young daughters. Likely, they also have no respect for anyone's happiness and well being beyond their own. But, children or not, any one who lives in another person's home must live by the rules of the owner of that home.
In the final analysis you must not let needy friends make unhappy. You must free yourself from friendly abuse. You must not let your false friends make you feel guilty or responsible for the situations they have created for themselves. Nor should you give them any power in defining the conditions under which they allow you to help them. Most of all you must not let your female friends or anyone else who do nothing for you influence how you live your life. You especially must not let them make you feel guilty about how you live your life.
