ct — story

Ques­tion

8 months ago Lance, a friend I have known since I was 6 years old who now makes mega bucks as a pay per click inter­net mar­keter lent me $25 000, inter­est free, so I could pay off my motor­cy­cle, credit card debt, med­ical bills, credit repair pro­gram with Lex­ing­ton law. The loan has helped me out so much that I actu­ally feel I have a new lease in life. I am pay­ing Lance back at a rate of $350 a month. In the mean­time, he has asked me for a big favor of me, namely to spend every week­end: cook­ing din­ner for him and his girl­friend, take his girl­freind shop­ping at uji­mayas (an Asian Gro­cery Store), drive him and wait up to 30 min­utes while he drops off mate­r­ial for his Pay per click inter­net mar­ket­ing stu­dents while I wait in the car and the last thing that is push­ing me to resent­ment is lis­ten­ing 3 to 5 hours a week to his rela­tion­ship prob­lems with his girl­friend. I recently got a job to train as a man­ager at Sta­ples. While I am appre­cia­tive of his loan­ing me the money, I don’t feel com­fort­able being his dump your prob­lems on me guy every week­end. Nor­mally I would tell Lance and not hes­i­tate to say, I feel you are tak­ing advan­tage of our friend­ship because I owe him so much money. Does accept­ing a loan oblig­ate me to do this for me every week? I think he is exploit­ing our friend­ship the fact I owe him money.

Answer

The next time you want to bor­row money to fix your credit, bet­ter go through a credit union or bank, it is highly unlikely the loans officier will expect you to babysit his girl­friend or boy friend and be demand­ing you lis­ten to his or hers mar­i­tal prob­lems. There is some­thing I heard a wise per­son say, Never bor­row or lend money to a friend. A bank will make you sign a con­tract to agree to the terms of the con­tract, yes the bank will charge you inter­est. But how much is Lance gain­ing from not pay­ing money to see a life coach at rate of 5 hours a week since it sound like his girl­friend is so unhappy and is not adapt­ing well to liv­ing in North Amer­ica? Friends are a totally dif­fer­ent story. I am sur­prised you have not called the sui­ci­dal hot­line your­self to con­sider slit­ting your wrist? Just kid­ding. You really got your­self in a pickle here.

What is the best course of action to save the relationship?

You have put your­self in a posi­tion that Lance is not wrong to expect all these big favors from you. At the same time since he is doing so well finan­cially and can afford to take his girl­friend out on dates to restau­rants, he can’t expect, how­ever for you to com­pro­mise your­self the way you have. He is totally cross­ing the line. Ask­ing you to be his dump his prob­lems on for 5 hours per week is not rea­son­able. It is time if you can to see if you can to hire a somatic ther­a­pist your­self and get daily check ins with your coach. You want to main­tain your san­ity and live to your next birthday!