The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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I watched as my brother married a woman that I thought was a bad idea. I tried to have a talk with him "are you really sure about this?"
They have three kids together. She spends them into financial problems constantly. She has driven drunk to pick up her kids.
Their marriage seems to be barely holding together. I think if divorce wasn't a complete financial non-starter she would have already tried to initiate it. She might do so anyways since she is financially illiterate.
In general I regret not being more forceful that "this is a bad idea". Plenty of marriages that look like good ideas don't even work out. I've never heard of a marriage that looked like a terrible idea turn out to be great. Marriage is hard and failure is more likely than success.
Do you think her prospects for finding a partner will improve if she becomes a single mother of 40 with a decade of stress spent trying to save a struggling marriage? If you believe that is likely to happen and you said nothing, can you count yourself as a friend of this woman?
My younger sister was engaged to a man while she was in medical school. She was doing her residency when he suddenly broke things off with her. Refused to even talk with her. Wedding was cancelled, people had to be told, some things returned. Some non-refundable deposits lost. Thank goodness it was called off though. The social embarrassment seems so minor compared to the suffering that might have taken place had she married that d-bag. He and his new girlfriend had a child about 8 months after he called off the wedding with my sister.
Here are some potential outcomes:
I think you are likely to lose her as a friend as soon as this whole situation started. But I feel the best chances of retaining her as a friend and her not being miserable are the ones where you say something.
Obviously not directly related to OP, but I'm familiar with one instance where this happened. A close family member, single at the time, dropped "you could do better". Still together a fairly happy decade later, notwithstanding the usual ups and downs inherent in any marriage. Said family member is still close, and still single.
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