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Friend put us both in danger of assault. Should I be mad?

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prynne

MyPTSD Pro
Recently, my friend and I went out of state together to go see a concert. For both of us, this would be the first time that we were planning a trip and traveling, on our own. We’re both 20 y/o. We both have PTSD from sexual assault/abuse. We’ve been friends for more than a decade. My friend made some stupid decisions that put both of us in a dangerous spot, and I’m angry with her, but I’m not sure what I should do because the situation was much worse for her than it was for me.

I decided not to go to the concert because of some health issues I had the previous day. I was nervous about my friend going alone, so I made her promise to take an Uber back to the hotel (1 mile away, 20 min walk) or walk with other people who had gone to the concert. The concert and hotel are in a scary part of San Antonio where there’s no one around and there are really no streetlights.

The concert lets out at about 1 am. Uber is so busy that my friend can’t get a car, so she decides to start walking to the hotel. She heads in the wrong direction and gets even farther away. She meets some girls from the concert who are going to Circle K and walks with them because there’s a Circle K by our hotel. It’s the wrong Circle K. She is now 40 minutes away from our hotel, alone outside of a closed Circle K, with a dying phone, and no ride, in a skimpy outfit (I wish it didn’t matter, but I know realistically it attracts weirdos). She calls me and tells me what’s going on. We seem to have no other options, with no car and Uber being dead, so I start the 40-minute walk to her, alone.

It was terrifying. My hands are shaking thinking about it, so badly that it’s making it hard for me to type. I know San Antonio isn’t the worst city out there, but this was a bad area and we’re both from the suburbs. It is super dark and there is NOBODY outside. It’s been long enough at this point that almost everyone from the concert has made it home. I had nothing to protect myself since I had to fly to this city. Some men in a white van drive past me slowly and one of them yells at me.

I’m almost to my friend and she calls me talking about how a man is walking towards her. I can’t convince her to call 911. I have to listen to them talk on the phone. He is being a creep. I tried to run, but I was so exhausted already. I think holy shit I’m about to listen to my friend get raped or murdered on the phone because I couldn’t get there 5 minutes earlier.

A couple in a car notices what’s going on and picks her up. I just hear her crying over the phone and thanking them and telling them about what’s going on. They pick me up, too, and take us back to the hotel.

My friend keeps talking about what happened and I don’t know what to say. I want to be supportive, but to be honest, I am angry that this happened. It’s not her fault that the creep approached her, but she made a lot of stupid decisions that got her (and me!) into that situation. She never showed any gratitude for everything that I did to try to help her. She texted me this morning talking about how she has bruises on her wrist from where he grabbed her. I feel even shittier because I didn’t know that he touched her. Part of me feels like it’s all my fault that this happened. I don't know how to respond. I've been ignoring the message.

This is driving a wedge between us right now, and I want to say something, but I don’t want to make her feel worse than she already feels. Our relationship already tends to be one-sided when it comes to emotional support because she never seems to be in a good enough place to reciprocate my help. I think if I say anything about being upset that this happened, she will withdraw and never talk to me about it again. Which means she won't be talking to anyone about it. I don't want that to happen.

I would be grateful for any advice or thoughts that you guys have on this.
 
I don’t know about advice you know what they say about advice being like assholes.

But what I personally would do in this situation is reply to her text saying I don’t want to leave you in read, I’m quite triggered by what happened I wish I could be there to support you but I can’t right now. I’m going to take a couple of days to process and decompress. I hope you can understand.

Probably leave it a few days to process your emotions. It’s fine to be annoyed at her but expressing that to her right now mightn’t lead to the best results. You’re probably still quite activated right now and maybe you don’t want to end up saying something you’ll regret. She’s probably triggered and upset and two upset people communicating can go sideways quite easily.

If this sort of thing is the usual for her I’d probably not go to things like this with her again. I used to find myself in situations like this when I was younger looking back it was probably trauma recreation.

If it was a one time deal then I think it was just an accident we do do stupid things. Especially after even a good stressful situation like a concert she might’ve been a bit dissociative and confused after being in a big crowd. Or something like that who knows.
 
I would be grateful for any advice or thoughts that you guys have on this.
I know a lot of people who get angry when they've been frightened. The classic example is a child doing something unsafe, and the parent rips them a new one ("Don't EVER do that again!") because they were frightened for the person's safety.

One of the big things with relationships is accepting where we end, and the other person begins. Your friend put herself in an unsafe position. She didn't actually put you in an unsafe position though, you could have stayed where you were and let her find her own way home. You had that choice, but with your values/priorities, you chose to go out on your own and get her. You made that choice, not your your friend.

The thing is? Your friend has her own priorities, her own values, and is on her own learning curve. She may choose to put herself in dangerous positions over and over and over again. There's not actually anything you can do about that.

Things you can control include (just as examples):
What you choose to do (or not do) to help your friend when she's in danger;
Whether or not you can handle a friend that doesn't quite have self-preservation in hand (that's reeeeeally hard);
What kind of support you provide to your friend after the danger has passed.

Right now? She's recovering from a bad fright. Hopefully she learns from that - but whether or not this experience helps her make better choices in the future is entirely out of your hands. The experience can help you make better decisions for you, though. Like, "Nope, doing that cost me too much personally, I won't do that again".

It may be easier to just be there for your friend while she works through the fright she's had if you can be okay with what is your responsibility, and leave her responsibility with her.

Healthy boundaries are hard work. Humans are complex, and while it's easier in theory to decide what we will and won't do, when we're in the heat of the moment it can be a different thing. Letting people we care about take responsibility (and deal with the consequences) for their bad decisions can be an incredibly painful thing to watch.

You are allowed to care about your friend, but not put yourself in dangerous situations to help them out. It's hard, but that's healthy boundaries.
 
One of the big things with relationships is accepting where we end, and the other person begins. Your friend put herself in an unsafe position. She didn't actually put you in an unsafe position though, you could have stayed where you were and let her find her own way home. You had that choice, but with your values/priorities, you chose to go out on your own and get her. You made that choice, not your your friend.
This made me really angry at first, but it's because you're right. If I had been in her position, I would understand if she had said no to coming to get me (probably after being very upset about it initially). She doesn't have to put herself in danger for my sake. I realize now that this is another manifestation of a problem I often have: helping people because I feel obligated to (like they're making me do it) and then beginning to resent them for it. And then getting super angry when they point out that I didn't have to do those things. Because it's true. I don't have to. I just feel like I have to, for some reason. I think it's time to reread that Codependent No More book lol
Letting people we care about take responsibility (and deal with the consequences) for their bad decisions can be an incredibly painful thing to watch.
I haven't figured out how to do this yet. It's horrible. Yet trying to fix people also gets me in a bad spot, too. Going to start working on it now that it's brought to my attention, again. Stuff like this happens frequently enough to be a reoccurring issue, but infrequently enough that I forget and do it all over again in a year.
 
I don’t know about advice you know what they say about advice being like assholes.

But what I personally would do in this situation is reply to her text saying I don’t want to leave you in read, I’m quite triggered by what happened I wish I could be there to support you but I can’t right now. I’m going to take a couple of days to process and decompress. I hope you can understand.

Probably leave it a few days to process your emotions. It’s fine to be annoyed at her but expressing that to her right now mightn’t lead to the best results. You’re probably still quite activated right now and maybe you don’t want to end up saying something you’ll regret. She’s probably triggered and upset and two upset people communicating can go sideways quite easily.

If this sort of thing is the usual for her I’d probably not go to things like this with her again. I used to find myself in situations like this when I was younger looking back it was probably trauma recreation.

If it was a one time deal then I think it was just an accident we do do stupid things. Especially after even a good stressful situation like a concert she might’ve been a bit dissociative and confused after being in a big crowd. Or something like that who knows.
I ended up asking her if she was going to talk to her therapist about what happened. She ignored that question and sent me something unrelated. Pretty typical of either of us when we're talking about something serious that happened to us. We both decide that we'd rather talk about something else now. I agree that I need some time to calm down and I shouldn't tell her how I'm feeling right now. Maybe she'll end up wanting to talk about it again later and maybe she won't. I am thinking about it a bit differently now after reading Sideways's comment
 
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