Hello! I came across this forum earlier while looking for some advice on what to do with a situation that is giving me a great deal of concern about my best friend, an ISTP woman who is 20 years old. I'm an ENFP woman who is 22. My ex-boyfriend got me interested in typology a few years back, but another friend's boyfriend has really gotten me to delve into it even deeper over the past few months. Anyway, over the past year I've seen my ISTP best friend turn into someone I barely recognize. This post may be long so my apologies and thanks to anyone who takes the time to read it through and respond! Here is some background info: Although she is 2 years younger than me, we were in the same grade because she skipped a couple grades in early elementary. We've been friends since middle school. When she was 14, she started dating a boy we went to school with. They dated until they were both 17. Not even 2 months later, she met another guy at work. They started dating the month after that. He was 22 at the time and had a 2 year old daughter with an ex-girlfriend. They dated until the beginning of last summer when she began missing her ex. They started hanging out again secretly, and she eventually broke up with the second boyfriend and went immediately back to the first at the end of last summer. They were happy for quite a few months, but she did struggle with missing the ex she had just broken up with for a couple weeks. Around March of this year, she met another guy at work (the ex with the child no longer works at her place of employment. In fact, he finished college and had a different job while they were still dating.). She had a bit of a crush on this new guy and started sneaking around to hang out with him just as she had done with her first ex boyfriend the previous summer. By the end of April, she had broken up with the first boyfriend for the second time. The new guy wanted to be exclusive right away, but she told him while she wanted to be with him, she didn't want to be tied down so soon after getting out of 2 major relationships. One day out of the blue, a guy we graduated with, one she had never even talked to, IM'ed her on Facebook. She chatted with him for a bit, and he ended up asking her out. She told me she had no real interest in him, but she went anyway and ended up making out with him. Then a couple weeks after that, yet another guy from work told her he had an interest. She went to his house, got drunk, and proceeded to make out and play strip poker with him. In the meantime, she went out once or twice with a friend's roommate, a guy she had a crush on for awhile. Right after that, she decided to tell the guy from work she had originally started seeing a few months earlier that she was ready to be exclusive. They became a couple immediately. Eventually he became clingy and controlling in exactly the same way her ex with the child had been. This was about 2 months ago. A couple weeks after that, she ended up moving in with him and his family after her parents kicked her out. She's a hard-working girl, a pre-med student and a part-time job. However her parents have always pushed her extremely hard, and no matter what she's never been good enough. Hence the reason, so they claim, for kicking her out. Around the same time she moved in with boyfriend 3 a few months ago, a female friend/co-worker introduced her to her brother's friend who she was immediately attracted to. They've partied together a couple times and made out, but nothing else has happened yet that I know of. She's planning on asking her parents to move back in soon and break up with boyfriend 3. She says she's miserable. Here, however, is the most troubling part. About a month ago, she began hooking up with her manager. It's already against company policy since he's her boss. They could both lose their jobs if they were to get caught. Yet, they've even made out in his office. It gets worse, though. He's in is early 30s, at least 11 years older than she. He's also married with 2 young children. He works the midnight shift, so she goes to his house during the day while his wife is at work and his kids at school. She claims they just make out, do a little touching, and talk. They've not had intercourse she claims. She's sent him pictures of herself in lingerie. They only e-mail because he knows his wife would never get suspicious of that. She told me today when we finally talked about everything in detail, that, in her words, "I know it's wrong, but I just try to put it out of my head. I don't think about it." I asked her to forget about what other people might say or think in this moment. I said, "If you truly think and believe that what you're doing isn't good for you, yet you continue to do it anyway, isn't that self-destructive?" She didn't answer but quickly changed the subject. I am genuinely worried for my friend, and I'd appreciate any advice you have. I know ISTPs tend to live in the moment and hate feeling to constrained by rules, but causing harm to oneself and/or others is never a sign of any healthy personality type. Thanks again for reading my novel!
