holding someone to ransom with threats of self harm

[tracky]

There's this girl I know. She lives with her ex-boyfriend still. She says she loves him, but as a friend only. There's a lot of history between them. But she says she doesn't want to be with him in a relationship. He still loves her and he still wants the relationship. Whenever it looks like she might find someone else, he starts going crazy. Like self harm crazy. And she feels like she needs to stay with him to stop him from doing that.

For example, last night me and the girl were going out to play some pool together. We didn't try to hide it from him or anything, but as we were driving off he started punching his car and stuff, so we went back to the party.

She tells me how when she moves out he starts cutting himself and stuff, so she moves back in. Personally I think he's a cunt for doing this. But I can also sympathise to a degree. It's a really messed up situation :(

[TurdBerglar]

let the shithead kill himself

[Bob]

i can see where he's coming from, in a way

still, if i were doing that, at least i'd know i was being a cunt

although i'd bet he does too

i dunno, not my business

[ms.peachy]

let the shithead kill himself
I'm with you there. I would be so pissed off if someone tried to pull this shit with me - this "if I hurt myself, it'll be all your fault" crap. There's not much in this world I like less than schmucks who don't take responsibility for themselves, and this is the ultimate in lack of personal accountability. How fucking dare he, you know?

[hellojello]

People who self harm might be doing it for attentoin and might not. It kinda sounds like this guys doing it for attention and its working,
anyhow I think you should just advise your friend to leave the dick because he's emotionally blackmailing her and to be honest I dont think he'd do anything as serious as he might be saying he'd do if she left.
But yeah if he dies or something
I never advised you to tell her that ok.

[tracky]

I think he does it in a "this is how much I love you" kind of way. And she does really love him too, like I said, there's a lot of history there. But just not in that way anymore.

What makes it worse is this guy has been a mate of mine for about 10 years now, but these days he's not the same person he was back then, and so I'm honestly not really that concerned to lose our friendship over it. I don't want to be associating with meth dealing meth junkies who can't even hold a job. Back when I first knew him he worked and was reasonably normal. But at the same time he is a genuinely good friend, in a got your back kinda way. I try to encourage him to get off this shit, get a job etc but he's got it in his head that it's all too hard or something. Or maybe it's all too easy. I don't know. There's a lot of issues there. I should probably just walk away and leave the whole situation alone but I really do feel for both of them and I keep letting myself get dragged back into it.

[hellojello]

yeah I had a couple of friends that kept dragging me into their sick and twisted relationship problems edit FOR EXAMPLE she purposely drove her car into a telegraph pole in front of his house after showing up there fucked up on drugs and finding him fucked up on drugs with some other chick there and then he comes to my house begging me to go to the hospital to see how she is at 3am in the morning when I dont even have a car and he does. I tried to tell him she won't want to see me , she'll want to see you, but he wouldn't listen so yeah I taxi-d it to the hospital...and waited in emergency 3 hours till I could see her...and you know what the first thing she said was 'where's chris?'.... then I got home and called him and told him what a ball-less ahole he was and he'd better fucking go and see her cause he's absoloutly fucking patethetic.
Anyhow after they got back together... after breaking up and getting back together and breaking up and getting back together I eventually I just said to them straight up - look I dont mind hanging out with you but don't talk to me about your relationship ok.

IT worked for a while.
But now I dont see them anymore.

[QueenAdrock]

People who self harm might be doing it for attentoin and might not.

He's DEFINITELY doing it for attention. You gotta be scared of people self-harming themselves when they DON'T mention it and you just accidentally see it one day. If they announce it to someone else, they're doing it for attention or a cry for help.

If he's over 18, there's not much you can do. If he was under 18, you could have him taken away and put under psychiatric care. If he's over that age, all you can do is suggest to him that he gets help and tell him how fucked up and selfish it is for him to hold her to this. She should tell him that if he TRULY loved her, he'd let her go and let her be happy, and his cutting himself does NOT make her happy nor does it let her be free from him; it just makes her upset and worry constantly.

[hellojello]

He's DEFINITELY doing it for attention. You gotta be scared of people self-harming themselves when they DON'T mention it and you just accidentally see it one day. If they announce it to someone else, they're doing it for attention or a cry for help.

If he's over 18, there's not much you can do. If he was under 18, you could have him taken away and put under psychiatric care. If he's over that age, all you can do is suggest to him that he gets help and tell him how fucked up and selfish it is for him to hold her to this. She should tell him that if he TRULY loved her, he'd let her go and let her be happy, and his cutting himself does NOT make her happy nor does it let her be free from him; it just makes her upset and worry constantly.
You can get over 18's sectioned here IF you can prove they're at risk of harming themselves OR others.
You need a doctor to back up your claim though.

[QueenAdrock]

For serious? I'm not sure if it's the same here. I know that you can pretty much do whatever to a kid you wanna do if they're under 18. I always thought over 18 you were just SOL.

Oh yeah, another thought I forgot to add to the first post: Self-harm and suicidal tendencies are two completely different things. A LOT of people do not realize this, and once they see the cuts they think "HOLY BEJEZUS this person wants to kill themselves!" Not so. Cutting = stress relief. How bad is his cutting? If it's just small scratches or cuts, I wouldn't be too concerned. If he has scarring up and down his arms, like SERIOUS gashes, then that is something to be worried about.

[hellojello]

I was going to say something but I don't think I will. I'll just put that annoying sentence in to piss everyone off and appear all mysterious and stuff when in reality I"m just appearing conceited.

But yeah, seriously it's true.

ps I only decided not to write it in order to respect the privacy of others.

[tracky]

We have discussed the cutting before, and yeah it does seem to be more of a stress release thing. But even so that's bad enough if you ask me. I'm going to try and have a good long talk with her in private. We have before but there's a bit more I need to say to her now, especially after last night's performance. She was meant to come round today but it's not going to happen now. Stupid girl took some feel good candy last night so she's crashed out in bed now. She's not an angel by any means, but she's got a good soul deep down. Same with my mate. Maybe I'm just too caring and shouldn't worry about it but it's hard.