Dear Prudence: Resuming Friendship With a Thief

[minoanmiss]

About two years ago, my partner and I discovered one of our best friends had been breaking into our house (via a door we occasionally forgot to lock), stealing a prescription medication, and replacing it with an over-the-counter drug that looked very similar. This went on for months until we caught her on a home camera. I confronted her in the most compassionate way I could and made it clear that our friendship was over. We run in similar social and professional circles, and we are always cordial when we bump into each other.

We have texted occasionally, and lately any text exchange (usually started by her) ends with her telling us how much she misses our friendship. We have since offered her forgiveness, but I know that our confrontation triggered a mental health downward spiral for her. She has been open about this on social media. I have always felt a bit guilty about this, even though I know it is not my fault. It seems like she is getting help, although she seems far from well. Truthfully, I miss our friendship and am considering rekindling it. My partner has no interest in this, but I am sure he would not mind if I socialized with her. The trouble is that we used to almost exclusively hang out at my house, and neither of us feels comfortable having her in the house again. Should I even try to pick up the pieces of a once-valued friendship? Did she truly go too far breaching our trust for a friendship to be possible? If so, where should I begin?
—Bouncing Back From Burglary

Check with your partner first to make sure he really wouldn’t mind if you started seeing her again. If he’s truly OK with it, you two might want to agree upon a few ground rules first. Not having her over to the house strikes me as a reasonable one. Has she ever offered a meaningful apology to your partner? You say she’s been open about her struggles on social media and seeking help and that you’ve offered her forgiveness, but if she’s never directly apologized to your partner for stealing his medication and endangering his health, it’s worth raising the issue with him. Would he be interested in hearing an apology from her? Would he prefer she just leave him alone? Does he want you to invite her to group events if you two reconcile, or does he want to make sure they’re never in the same room together?

Once you have a strong sense of what he needs in this situation, you can proceed with caution. You don’t need to go back to the old friendship you two had before. You can build something new together on a different foundation, one that can acknowledge the past without remaining stuck in it. Meet up at a coffee shop or at her house, or take a walk together. It’s possible to hold a new kind of boundary without holding her past behavior over her head in perpetuity.

Comments

[julian]

I have no comment on the advice, because it's pretty good, but this makes me wonder, again:

Do letters get edited much? Is this one of them? Because there's no mention of its being the partner's meds in the original letter, but Pru definitely seems to think it's the partner's meds.

[conuly]

I've definitely seen letters that appear on two or more advice columns where one or more of the columns omitted information that was in the rest of them.

[castiron]

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

Am I ready to come up with a calm and reasoned response to this letter? ... no.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

Now, I'm assuming this wasn't a medication that was essential to your or your partner's physical or mental health, because if it was then why are you even considering...no.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

I'm sorry, I just can't get past this. That's up there with saying "oh, X says they're allergic to this food but it won't hurt them to eat my Yummy Family Recipe with this food."

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

Was it your med or your partner's? If it was your med, well, you're allowed to forgive your friend, though lock up your prescriptions if you do allow them in your house. But seriously?

YOUR FRIEND WAS STEALING A PRESCRIPTION MED AND REPLACING IT WITH ANOTHER DRUG.

Your friend stole your or your partner's medication and replaced it with something cheaper. This means you're spending that money on prescriptions without receiving the benefit. You might have thought "huh, this med isn't working, better try another" when it might have been just fine if you'd been taking what you thought you were taking rather than an OTC substitute. If the prescription med was essential for keeping you/partner alive, or if you/partner had had an allergy to the OTC med, your friend could have killed you/partner.

No, I don't think you should forgive your friend. I think that messing with other people's meds falls into the "someone else gets to forgive them, not me" category.

[ambyr]

This. If it were just stealing the med I could see a path to forgiveness (though I’d want a lot more assurance than LW provides about friend’s recovery journey), but replacing it with something else is just . . . someone could have died, LW. Do you understand that? Does your friend?

[ashbet]

Yeah, as someone with multiple serious, disabling medical issues, I am just aghast.

(I also can’t take certain common OTC meds safely, so if they were substituting it with something as “innocuous” as ibuprofen, that would still be dangerous TO ME.)

If they were the LW’s meds, it’s their decision to make. If they were the partner’s meds, I think the partner should have the final word on whether this person is part of their lives again.

[azurelunatic]

And even if a person isn't sensitive to ibuprofen, depending on how often and what dose the prescription medication was intended to be taken ... that could add up to a problem.

[jadelennox]

yeah. If it was LW's medication then it's LW's call, but if it was partner's or another household member's medication, then the partner has every right to think of the ex-friend as someone who committed as (possibly extremely dangerous!) assault.

[movingfinger]

I'm wondering how "open" the thief is being on social media about the circumstances allegedly triggering the mental health downward spiral, because "I am suffering a mental health downward spiral" is going to net them a lot of sympathy and support, while "I stole Friend's prescription medication and replaced it with a similar-looking OTC generic version of a different medication" is probably not going to get the hugs and positive vibes the thief is receiving.

There is no need to resume contact with this person, and if anyone asks you why, tell them, so that they do not become victims also.

[lilysea]

Argh!

1. Could have resulted in serious health consequences for the person whose med was being substituted - some meds if you stop them abruptly can cause EPILEPTIC SEIZURES - very dangerous if it happens in the shower or while driving!

2. Could have resulted in legal consequences for the person whose meds they were if the meds were traced back to them and the Police didn't believe they'd been stolen (selling your meds to someone else is a serious crime)

This is more likely to be a danger if the person whose meds they were was one or more of
poor, Black, Latinix, Native American, LGBT - all groups that Police and legal systems believe less and treat less well and convict with less evidence.

[cereta]

Even if the meds are something like Pepcid or Norco, if those abruptly stop working, that's going to be a Thing. There will be tests, and attempts with new meds, or the doctor will just stop prescribing them.

Also, depending on what kind of meds they are, the doctor might be giving regular drug tests. And while they do look for other drugs, the main goal of those tests is to look for the prescribed drug, and thus to be sure the patient is taking them (and not selling them). Whoever the person prescribed the meds is, they could have faced real consequences.

I admit my perspective is skewed (finding out a "friend" was knowingly causing me pain is more than I could stand.

[lilysea]

Yeah, I would not be forgiving the person who stole/replaced the meds

and to be honest I would be seriously considering pressing charges against the person who stole/replaced the meds

[cereta]

If nothing else, I would need to file a police report to ask for more per the terms of my pain contract, and I might need to do so to explain the absence of the med, or the significantly lower levels in my system.

[conuly]

Okay, so obviously ex-friend is going through a thing which includes prescription drug abuse. LW's confrontation did not trigger the downward mental health spiral, this person was already spiraling and had escalated to stealing from friends, and in a "clever" way which is even more dangerous than just taking the medication in the first place!

Can you be friends with somebody who has done this thing to you? I don't know! That's a personal choice everybody has to make on their own. But I would advise LW not to do it, honestly, until ex-friend is a little more stable and also has expressed sincere remorse over her actions.

And under no circumstances would I let her into the house again, or around unattended purses etc.

[harpers_child]

I'm coming from a position of having several extended family members who have problems with pills. Do not let this person in your house. If you want to see this person at a coffee shop or whatever to support them while they are getting their shit back together, do so. Do Not Let This Person Back Into Your House.

If in several months / years when this person has completed a recovery program and is sticking to it you want to let them back into your house, take all your prescriptions and lock them up in something like a fire safety box that you hide in an out of the way area like the back of a closet behind the holiday wrapping paper or in the sideboard where the china currently in use usually resides (or remove to a secondary location like someone else's house), yes all of them. This person has a history of stealing meds and trying to cover it up, therefore you can never ever ever trust them around your meds again. (It sucks. Let me tell you what getting the house ready for family holiday parties looks like.) It does not matter how long the person has been in recovery for. You have to lock up your meds every time they come over.

Also maybe check in with a therapist on why you want this person, who has stolen from you and fucked with your medication, back into your life.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that covered everything that I was thinking.

[ethelmay]

Yup. I was once at a dry New Year's Eve party thrown by a family member who invited all their friends in recovery. I had, I think, something stuck in a tooth and looked in the medicine cabinet to see if there was any dental floss. It was completely empty save for a taped-up sign saying "ARE YOU KIDDING?"

Another time a more distant family member who was known to have trouble with prescription meds was in our house and spent a suspiciously long time in the bathroom with the water running. My husband whispered, "What is she doing?" and I whispered back, "Going through the medicine chest." -- "Is there anything in there?" -- "Maybe some expired ringworm ointment." We managed to stop laughing before she came out.

[minoanmiss]

takes notes