I’m scared my best friend might be in a grooming relationship. What do I do?
I (23m) am scared that my childhood best friend (23m) is in a grooming relationship,
My friend, we will call him brad for this, is an awesome guy, he’s a nerd through and through, plays magic the gathering, he’s a gamer and our DM in DND, he recently moved out of his parents to Iowa, to a bad situation, I don’t know the exact details but he called me on the phone asking if I could house him and his new girlfriend, I didn’t have room and was going through stuff in my own relationship and didn’t want to move him from a bad situation to a worse one,so I couldn’t help, he ended up moving back to our home town and getting an apartment with his girlfriend, and I haven’t heard much, but Brad as of a year ago was a virgin. And I’m not going to lie to y’all he’s had really bad luck with abusive relationships. And then recently they made their relationship public, and she’s late 30’s, recently divorced and has two kids, first post up on her page was that she has fibromyalgia and does not do anything because of it, and I’m scared my homie is in a bad situation or getting groomed/used. Am I an asshole for worrying about this? How do I ask about this and let him know my concerns without being disrespectful? What do I do?
Also if it helps me and brad are both high functioning autistic, and have people pleasing tendencies from childhood trauma.
3 comments
There’s nothing much you can do…if you voice your opinion and talk negative about the girlfriend you can lose him as a friend…instead try being the best friend you can possibly be and gain his trust to open up to you about his situation…be a friend that he can come to you to vent and feel safe with to listen to him without negative input. And with your unbiased help he can figure it out.
He’s 23, not 16. The grooming thing would only apply if he were underage. He can definitely still be taken advantage of, though.
I myself am normally pretty liberal about age gaps, but there’s definitely some red flags here. If I were you, I’d try to meet this woman ASAP and try to get a “read” on her.
I wish people would learn the difference between grooming and a age gap