My friend has been having problems with his girlfriend for a while now, and has been looking to break up with her, but she has been clinging to him for a long time. He has been dating her for about 9 months and finds he has many conflicts with her, and for various reasons wants a breakup.
He has recently suggested this to her and she has not taken it well, she has gone for a day without eating, threatened to cut herself and tells him that he’ll be responsible if she gets hurt, he’s obviously in a sticky situation and wants to know the best way to end this.
Anyone else been in a similar situation or can make good suggestions? Any advice appreciated.
Thanks
My high school boyfriend reacted like this when I broke up with him. I broke up with him without any warning first - we hadn’t been having arguments, I just wasn’t feeling anything for him. Consequently, he had never threatened to harm himself if I broke up with him, and the whole thing blew up in my face out of the blue when I did. I broke up with him before class at college. He was waiting for me after class, to tell me that he’d taken a whole bottle of pills and that he was going to die and it was all my fault.
He said he’d only go to the hospital if I agreed to take him back. When I tried to drag him off to the nurse’s office, he punched the wall next to my head. Then he tried to tell me he was just demonstrating that nothing hurt him anymore because of the pills. I flagged down a campus security guard and had him call an ambulance to take him away, and they did. Then I called his mom to tell her what had happened and to let her know which hospital her son was being taken to.
Your friend’s case is a little different, in that the girl can see the end of the relationship coming and is threatening to harm herself to prevent it. I agree with the others that he should call her parents and let them know what’s been going on. If she doesn’t have parents nearby (although she sounds young), I hope she has a close friend or roommate who can talk her through this.
She certainly needs professional help, and she needs someone around her to make sure she gets it. Her boyfriend, however, is not the right man to take her to the hospital. He is not responsible for making sure she doesn’t harm herself in the long-run. He is, I think, responsible for letting someone else know what is going on, and making sure she has someone who will know what she’s going through and check on her. She shouldn’t be left alone, but that doesn’t mean he has to stay with her.
You know, I bet if he called the non-emergency police number, the operator would be able to put him in touch with the appropriate people to call. I bet they’d rather hear about it when she’s only threatening self-harm than when she’s already doing it. They would certainly know who is in charge of stuff like this, from when they deal with people who’ve already done it. They’d have the resources your friend would need.
