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Can you call a witness for a pre-hearing at the Employment tribunal?

How can I keep this friendship, and should I even try?

  • What to do about a close friend who seems to have become an alcoholic--and cemented his new status of "repeatedly gets so drunk he black-outs" in my mind by telling me details of his sexual fantasies involving myself and his wife (my former best friend)? Bonus features: super long background story! I know this might seem really simple, but it's been a month since the latest incident and the apology email he sent, and I still don't know what to do. My profuse apologies for the length. Ellen and I were best friends for 8 years but she is ridiculously bad about staying friends with anyone non-local, so we drifted apart in college, then when she moved back into the area, we got close again, culminating when she asked me to be maid of honor for her otherwise-family-only wedding. I even had the privilege of signing her marriage license to Nate as a witness. Nate's overall a great guy, seriously. When I met him, I told Ellen that he was perfect for her because "he's basically me, except a dude." In my MoH speech, I joked that Nate and I probably were meant to be better friends than Ellen and I ever were--one of those jokes that is especially funny-in-a-wincey-way in hindsight because it came true. Once Ellen and Nate moved to the coast three years ago, she lost touch, once again, being far more of an acquaintance than a close friend. Nate, however, was seemingly adrift. He couldn't find a job, and because he was home all day for the first year after that move, and I'm still a student, we started talking regularly over IM and we've talked quite a lot over the last three years. If you had asked me 6 weeks ago, I would've called him one of my closest friends. He's a great listener, a laid-back guy, and he respects it when I call him on his shit, as well as being able to provide a perspective for me (sort of the "typical American dream" of getting married after college and getting ready to have kids) that most of my friends aren't living. His drinking was a problem while he wasn't working, but he blamed it on not working, and from what I know, he did majorly cut down again once he got employment. Problem is, it crept back up. At the beginning of this year (at least a year since he started work) he told me that he was drinking 6+ beers every night, hiding the empties so that Ellen wouldn't see them, and much more than six beers when Ellen wasn't around. I tried a few things to get him to see where his problem was heading, some of which were way dumber than others, including one night in April where he admitted (while drunk, of course) that he was attracted to me and we talked about it fairly openly. But, aside from his initial confession (which was pretty explicit, altho I never returned the sentiment), it was not in a sexual sense, more in a "what do you feel like you'd get from cheating on Ellen that you're missing right now" sense. I guess I was hoping that he'd take that idea of "whoa, I just contemplated cheating on my wife with the woman who was her MAID OF HONOR" as a rock bottom-type moment. (Spoiler: He didn't.) I actually threw up because of the intense guilt I felt afterwards, so I explained, and he agreed, that talking about any attraction was a boundary line I could never feel OK crossing again. (I continue to feel super guilty about this-- I'm not entirely sure why, I didn't WANT him to be attracted to me, I haven't been flirting with him, I didn't agree to cheat with him in person or encourage his fantasies... so I don't know.) I'd been single for a year and a half while all of this was going on, but about 6 weeks ago I started an exclusive relationship with a new guy, Justin, who I'm really excited about. (And continue to be! He's awesome :D) I told Nate about Justin pretty much immediately, earlier in the day of The Incident, and we talked about Justin for awhile, at least half an hour. Then I left to go do something else, and got back to my computer around 10pm Seattle time. Nate was around again, and he started messaging me, complaining that he was really uncomfortable and he felt incredibly guilty. I was really worried because I thought maybe they'd had a fight, and asked him what was wrong. He said that Ellen was gone, that he was lonely, that she was never around. His messaging style was Very Obvious Drunk, and then he started talking about how he was lusting after me and he thought [x body part] of mine was my best quality, things like that. When I told him that I thought he was UPSET, not horny, and that I didn't want to hear about that stuff, he ... attempted to change the subject by saying he wanted to have a threeway with Ellen and me and he knew I'd be into it...? Yeah, I got nothing. So then I reminded him that I was in a relationship and that also this kind of stuff is Not Okay, he ... congratulated me on my new relationship, like we hadn't spent half an hour earlier that day (when he wasn't drunk, granted) talking about it. That's when I got really fed up and blocked him, at which point he texted me repeatedly. I ended up trying to call Ellen (who was "out with friends") because I felt like I needed to give her a heads-up that, hey, your husband is black-out drunk alone in your apartment, you might want to check up on that-- whereupon she said, after ten minutes, "I know, it's a problem" and nothing else. Direct quote, btw. So obviously it's not entirely smooth sailing and happy days for their relationship. (This was the first time he's talked to me and been so obviously drunk while alone--I'm in no way anyone's mother, certainly not Nate's, but the quantity of booze & hard liquor he'd told me he'd consumed was staggering and I was honestly worried about him, even though he'd really skeeved me out with the explicit I AM HORNY info, which is why I didn't block him as soon as he started with the sex stuff.) He sent me an apology dripping with apparent sincerity two days later, saying he's cut out drinking entirely until December and he realizes he has a problem, blah blah, all of that great stuff. That's great, and I'm really happy for him IF he manages to pull it off, but ... what the fuck, dude. You basically treated me like a sexual vending machine the last time we talked (bisexual woman = 3some apparently), completely disregarding the boundaries that I set as necessary for the friendship, and ... I have no idea where to go from here. It's been over a month since he sent me that apology email, and while I miss him as a friend, I don't miss that asstastic douchebag of a drunk that thinks it's totally okay to basically textually assault me. I'm worried that he'll keep drinking, but more than that, I'm worried that I'll get overinvolved again (because I'm the only friend he talks to about this shit! Maybe I have a DUTY to stay friends with him?) and worse than even that, what if I can't maintain the boundaries that make me feel OK with being friends with him? (That's my fault, right? Should I have just blocked him to begin with, back in April? Should I just never talk to him again? But I care about him!) What kind of boundaries SHOULD I be setting?! He's supposedly an adult; even if he's fucking shit up, I can't fix it for him, no matter how much I want all of my friends to be happy... right? I keep going back and forth on all of this. For the love of a plate of beans, help me find some clarity here. (If for some masochistic reason you want even more details, alcoholic.overshare at gmail can hook you up.)

  • Answer:

    No, you have no 'duty' to solve this problem. I would suggest that you bow out of your relationship with him, and perhaps with his wife, 100%.

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I joked that Nate and I probably were meant to be better friends than Ellen and I ever were This made me think of "mirroring" -- I only found good hits on it by searching on "psychopathic mirroring", and I don't mean to imply that Nate is a psychopath. But it's something to think about: http://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/the-psychopaths-mirroring-effects/, http://psychopathfree.com/showthread.php?250-psychopathic-mirroring.

endless_forms

Rule to live by: If your friends husband tells you he's attracted to you, you are no longer his friend. Period. He is not treating you with respect like a friend should. I'm the only friend he talks to about this shit! Maybe I have a DUTY to stay friends with him? Would you feel safe alone with this guy while he's drunk? Would you trust him to respect you? Is he really your friend at all?

fshgrl

I'm sorry to say it but your friend has been bodysnatched by, as wolfdreams put it, an alcoholic perv. I disagree that this won't be a huge loss to you. It is a huge loss. You had a friend, now you have an alcoholic perv. Sorry to have to say it, but that's basically what he's being right now. I also think it's worth noting that he may be lying about how drunk he is so as to excuse his continuing to perve over you. Which doesn't mean he isn't an alcoholic anyway, in fact you should assume that he is. But if he weren't - how low do you have to sink if you think that pretending to have a serious addiction will bring you some kind of advantage? Something very important about active alcoholics - it doesn't matter all that much whether they're drunk at any given moment. Their minds are affected *all the time*. In fact they're worse when they *haven't* had a drink. You have to treat an alcoholic as if they're drunk *all the time* because until they get a good stretch of sobriety behind them, they might as well be drunk all the time. Another thing, the first rule of dealing with alcoholics, is don't deal with it. You have to give back the problem. You cannot do anything for him, and you must not neglect your duty of care towards yourself when he behaves badly towards you. Next time he says anything to you, no matter how innocuous, you say "I told you to cut this out. Don't talk to me again until you can show me your one-year sobriety chip," and then block him. Don't get sucked into any arguments or discussions, because you've had plenty of those already and they only make it worse. If he tries to contact you before one year is up, you ignore/delete without reading, because he can't possibly have his year's sobriety chip yet. (No, no whining about how AA is for religious sissies can be tolerated. No drunk wants to go to any meeting that involves getting sober, so religion is really the least of their worries.) I realize that with every fibre of your being, you will not want to do this, but if you don't, I think that what will happen next is that Mrs Perve will name you as co-respondent in their divorce. So, it will help to have IM recorded proof that you told him to quit perving on you. Finally I really am sorry, once again, to be so harsh with you. Maybe after he gets sober Nate will be the guy you used to know, and you can reconnect then.

tel3path

You have a duty, to yourself and to your friend, to cut this guy off. He's got you tangled in this sense of responsibility for his disease. And, frankly, I think that the inappropriate conversation was partially engineered to create a secret to divide you from your friend. It may even be a subtle move to isolate your friend. It's not that I think he's done it deliberately, but I think that deeply dysfunctional people manipulate others as routinely as they breathe -- they think it's normal human interaction. Friends fantasize about friends all the time. But most of us have the good sense to shut the hell up about it.

endless_forms

I think it's pretty simple - don't talk to him anymore at all. I agree with others that he's not such a good friend to you. His wife knows he has a problem, so you don't even have to alert her or anyone else to this known problem. Just let him go entirely and continue your friendship with the Mrs. -- you know, your real friend here, the one with whom you had a real in-person friendship, the one who doesn't perve on you and bring you into the alcoholic drama -- as much as you feel comfortable. If it were me, I'd give the pair wide berth, though.

stowaway

Call me old school, but up until the drunken sex messaging, you were essentially providing some of the same emotional support and intimate friendship a wife is supposed to provide (and vice versa). While you may have been clueless, your friend was definitely engaged in an emotional affair with you, and, in light of the brief text you had from his actual wife, he wasn't being honest with you at all about why he continued to connect with you - you likely provided an emotional lifeline that he did not have at home. So you need to re-evaluate the nature of your friendship, and determine if in fact you were really and truly friends at all. I think it was an unhealthy relationship from the perspective of your friend, and walking away at this point might be a good idea. Your friend has a wife who is supposed to look for him and his alcoholism. You let her know. She let you know she knows. The only thing you can do is say goodbye, after first encouraging your friend to get some help.

KokuRyu

If anything, start positioning yourself to remain friends with the wife after their marriage finally breaks up. The 10+ year friendship with her (even if intermittent) is worth preserving.

99percentfake

Kind of a skew on the topic - a successful alcoholic is charming and manipulative. From your description this fits Nate pretty well. You can, as a friend, move Nate, but you will not change him. He needs to change on his own accord and having you around won't help him (or Ellen, for that matter). You have lots of reasons to leave these two alone while they grow up, the most important part is you have to look out for you . Your current relationship carries a lot more value than the personal history you've achieved with Nate and Ellen for the foreseeable future. Guilt really doesn't need to be invited to this party.

ptm

If I were the wife, I'd be EXTREMELY upset with you. You had an emotional affair with the husband, having the kind of emotional intimacy that he should have been having with his wife (as KokuRyu said). You should not be engaging with a married man in this way, at all. It's not good for you, and it's especially bad for his marriage. Now that it's gone to a sexual level, it's even worse. I think you should tell his wife everything that has been happening, ask her forgiveness for being involved in this, and encourage them to get help. I bet she has no idea the extent of her husband's alcoholism and (attempted or real) cheating. I don't think you are the only person he is doing this with. The reason she does not know this is that he is LYING to her. If she is your friend, you need to tell her everything you know so that she can figure out what to do in her marriage. That is the loving thing to do. That is the DUTY that you have. She will likely be very upset. This is actually a good thing. She should be upset. Her husband is lying to her and trying to cheat on her. I feel very strongly that because it has gone this far, you not only need to walk away from the husband, but you need to make amends to the wife, by giving her the gift of knowledge she needs to make good decisions about her life.

3491again

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