Need Advice Bigtime

[CapeKat]

How to tell my story briefly... developed a friendship with a guy over a year's time. A really great smart guy. He worked on a boat for 7 years, he is 30 years old and finally settled in a city to work (work is where I met him). Two weeks ago he calls me and he is on a trip he didn't tell me about. He has gone to "pit-fight" to earn some money but really to get away from me. He tells me that he loves me. I'm married and only care for him as a friend. He tells me that I have been the one thing that has been positive in his life. That I have been the only person that he developed relations with and the longest and it was not sexual at first. He opens up and tells me about his coke-addicted mother and being sexually absued by his two aunts. He ends the friendship because it hurts him to much to be around me. With his "pit-fighting", I don't know if he is dead or alive for a week. I finally get a call from him. He was in a really bad car accident and was in a coma for 5 days. He is now in a different state with some family healing. He still does not want any further communication with me but agrees to let me write one letter to him. I've been doing a lot of reading about adults who were sexually abused as children. It explains a lot of his current behaviors: promiscuity, feelings of worthless and low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior, etc. I have come to terms with us not being friends anymore but I still want to help him. He is a good person and deserves peace and happiness. Should I or should I not write this letter? Main themes of the letter is recommending a therapist and why, what he meant to me as a friend (cause he claims he doesn't understand why I ever was friends with him), and keeping my communication lines open to him when he is ready to have the support of a friend, etc. Any advice as to what else or what not to put in the letter? Some of my friends say write, some say not cause it may do more harm then help. Help.

 

[EGL]

CapeKat - Having been through sexual abuse myself as a child, if you were to write me such a letter I would cherish it and you the rest of my life. Most people who have been through SA have a very, very difficult (if not impossible) time making friends due to issues of fear and trust. I'd say write the letter.

 

[jaywho]

I am not a survivor of SA; my husband is.

He tells me that I have been the one thing that has been positive in his life. That I have been the only person that he developed relations with

coke-addicted mother and being sexually absued by his two aunts

If you are the only one he has ever found as a friend, someone he can trust, even love. If all the other women figures in his life were shitty then if you don't write what are you saying?

He needs your help or he wouldn't have told you these things, they are to personal and he knew with you being married; it was a chance. It was a chance he was willing to take. If you are a true friend this "letter" would be a chance to take as well . . .

Good luck! Jay

 

[SAR]

CapeKat,

I think sometimes people are afraid or ashamed to continue friendships with friends who've seen them at their lowest and most vulnerable. Sometimes the friend becomes a symbol of the bad times and breaking the friendship is a way out of the bad times... sometimes the emotions of friendship are just too intense and scary for people who've spent a lot of life being numb.

In any case, I don't think we forget the people who've made us feel strongly-- especially if those feelings are few and far between. Your friendship, including whatever you do about this letter, will have a lasting impact on your friend. I would write it and I would tell him every good thing I could honestly tell him about himself.

SAR

 

[lucentny]

I think that you should definately write out a letter to him. My bf and I recently broke up and he is going to therapy for the first time and I wrote him a loooong letter telling him how proud I am of him, what a worthwhile person he is, how much I care for him and continue to think of him. He was very touched by it and he told me he carries it with him in his work bag

Kind words of encouragement, and support should NEVER be left unsaid if that is what you feel in your heart. Please write to him and let him know....it can't hurt.