Sympathy for the Crashout Friend/Relative

We all have/had that friend who was either grappling with anger issues, mental health challenges of their own, or just has a temperamental spirit.

Maybe this isn’t even a friend but a relative who deeply cares about you. Of course, not particularly a problem unless you travel into environments where a level head is necessary for survival.

Come to think of it, that’s almost every day in some capacity. So let’s reform that concept to: it’s often not problematic to YOU, the individual, in an everyday capacity.

But what happens when you get into a relationship?

They are happy for you, ecstatic that you are in a good place with someone interested.

And in typical fashion, things happen. Relationships fall apart or hit roadblocks and hurdles. You have no one to talk to, so they become your confidant. You’re too loose-lipped; you convey sentiments that are either too raw and real or a tad bit of exaggeration. The truth is irrelevant; you’re in pain, they feel that pain too, or have been through similar situations. You feel supported.

The case where that partner returns, they raise hell. They remember the nights you cried on their couch, they remember the sessions spilling your guts, and they remember the phone calls.

Because we are over it, we expect them to be. But their emotions are too strong, and they have the potential to crater what we have built or are rebuilding.

On my platform, whether it is about love, about politics, about race, about religion, writing, etc. I always try and be as tender as possible while pushing against the cultural paradigm that yells “every person for themselves.” I rebuke such ideologies.

The Crashout Loved One gets a bad rap, called unstable, toxic, and all of the things we deem someone impeding another’s happiness, thanks to poor emotional regulation, are branded.

But what if the fault isn’t only with the perpetually angry one?

The Case Against The Crash-Out

The expectation is that at a certain point, we as people reach a state where our emotions are able to be regulated.

Temper tantrums are for toddlers, and melt-downs such as that get increasingly more problematic as an individual ages into adulthood.

Whether it’s toxic gossip or even the threat of physical violence, the Crashout Loved One places themselves and others in unsafe and unstable terrain, just being expressive.

The other side of this dilemma is that the Crashout Loved-One may also be displaying unhealthy understandings of boundaries.

Adults make decisions, adults make mistakes. The well-being of a relative or best friend, yes, can be aided by the community around them, but at a certain point, barring impairment, injury, mental health status, and what have you, people need the space and grace to make their own decisions.

To not only show disagreement, but go about in a manner that is both unproductive and, at times, heinous, just because something doesn’t go the way of a loved one, shows serious moral impairment and poor emotional regulation.

This is the paradigm that our culture stands in at this present moment. We have access to all of these concepts and terms about psychology, mental health, spirituality, and new age healing practices that focus on healing and fixing the self. This transfers into our culture that already has conditioned us to believe that where you are in life is a testament to your own mental resolve and work ethic.

There is truth in all of this; we do need to take some accountability in how we interact with the world and not be dependent on others to do the same.

But let me offer this counter perspective. For you, for me, for anyone who has that person in the back of their mind while reading this.

Sympathy for the Crash-Out Loved One

This isn’t your first rodeo; you have seen how this individual operates. You know the corners that their mind goes to when bad things happen.

And you still bring your tears to them. In some cases, they are all you have to hear your pain. In others, you had more level-headed alternatives who would have heard your cries and given you level-headed advice.

But you didn’t go to them, why?

The Crash-Out’s rage is cathartic and comforting. They represent the avatar of the emotions you are too scared to access or don’t want to tap into, because you know the cost. The Crashout cannot access logic and reason; he/she/they are hearing your pleas and standing with you in your pain. You don’t go to the others because, in this moment, in this tender space, advice and constructive criticism feel like denigration and attack. You want someone deep down to make your pain feel real and justified with no strings attached.

Our Crash-out friends are taken advantage of. When the morning comes, or the week after, when things have boiled down and you and that person are back together or at least on talking terms, you have moved on, but our loved ones haven’t.

We as people, in our incompetence in keeping and maintaining boundaries, erect walls when our prince and princess charmings return and expect our loved ones to follow. Their anger isn’t useful anymore; it’s unproductive and dangerous to our future.

And when things fail again, they will be the first in your call history.

The Crashout friend takes many forms.

The woman who is constantly hearing about the cheating of her best friend’s significant other.

The man who holds misogynistic views, whom you call upon to feel seen and validated.

And when things move on, they carry that experience and your story as a weapon in the arsenal, only to become confused when they are shut out, abandoned, or afforded dismissive sayings.

“Well I’m over it now, so you should be too.”

It isn’t that simple, it never was, even if we’d like it to be.

The Anecdotes Write Themselves

I remember hearing about a young man in love with an older woman. They broke up 10 times and reconnected not too long after. He told his mother about every fight, every entanglement, every instance where there was dysfunction. He even told his mother that he believed his significant other had a spending problem. The man himself was moderately successful for his age, so his mother was, of course, worried. As you can imagine, the two’s interactions never went well.

I remember hearing of a woman whose husband had cheated on her twice during their relationship. Every instance, she bore her heart out to her Crash-Out Loved one, her best friend. When they reconnected and went to therapy, she wasn’t as dogmatic about her partner’s growth, so her friend continued to stew and stew. The Crash-Out got so bad, physical violence occurred at the couple’s wedding. As we can imagine, the two women don’t speak anymore.

There’s something about the Hulk that seems to galvanize us. The rage, the power, the transformation, with access to an alter-ego that would leave none the wiser.

We never talk about the damage, the rubble, the money that needs to be spent to fund the cleaning. The job was done, the villain is vanquished, we get to return to civility, but the community and Bruce Banner still toil with what has occurred.

Our Crash-Out Loved Ones are similar, may they be overbearing mothers, best friends who know no boundaries, misogynists looking for another sad story to add to their arsenal, or victims of relationship tragedies that never healed. We run to them to feel heard, to feel seen, and then we desperately want them to return to their side of the world with minimal disturbance of our own.

This isn’t focusing the burden on you or me, the individual to discern, as opposed to convicting our loved ones of self-awareness. Many truths aren’t so binary.

What I am saying and articulating is that yes, we do have to acknowledge that a person still has agency to pick, decide, do, or heal themselves.

But we also must look and understand what we do and expect from those whose emotional irregularities can be a tool for feeling validated. And how, at times are behaviors are just as damaging, in a manipulative sense.