[Forestchild]

So, I have a situation. I have a good friend, who is spiritually minded and I am skeptically minded

He sends me videos and despite there being all kindness and goodwill messages, I listen and my guard is up.

I come from a religious background and I feel like I have seen my share of those who say one thing and appear as one thing and are infact mistaken, misleading or worse, wolves in sheep's clothing. I have been stung before.

My friend says he gets dsyregulated by my lack of trust and has to go away and centre himself. He accepts things with an open and trusting heart. I guess, I believe there should be middle ground. But it's difficult. I feel like I am raining of his parade, a thorn in his side sometimes.

He says I trust no one and I wonder, how do you know if you trust someone? I theoretically believe I trust people or trust some people to an extent, how can you know without testing it? What is too guarded and too trusting look like? I feel like I listen to everyone and their views with an open but critical mind.

I feel like my friend and I have conflicting gut feelings about things. I am critical and often am the voice of dissent but I hate being that and I don't like how it affects our friendship but at the same time I can't pretend to have different views .

[Molinit]

You can handle this one of two ways:

- Spam everything that comes from their email address - this is assuming they aren't demanding to discuss your thoughts on the material being forwarded to you.

- If your friend is demanding conversations about the religious material, let them know you will no longer be accepting the forwarding of such information, and that if they can't accept you have different feelings about the material, you are sorry but will not be able to go forward with the friendship.

You can tell them that you are willing to be friends as long as it doesn't involve the viewing and discussion of those items, and that you accept that others feel differently than you do about religious matters. But if they cannot accept your feelings or are trying to bully you into digesting religious material, you will have to end the friendship.

You can liken it to being punched in the face. Nobody would call someone who punches them in the face repeatedly a friend, and you would stop being friends with that person if that was happening. Look at the religious material like you being punched in the face by this person.

[Discombobulated]

It sounds like you feel he might be trying to change your views by sending you these videos? That to me isn’t a very respectful thing to do. Friends should respect each other’s different views, as long as there’s no harmful effects from them of course.

I have a good friend who is religious and I’m not, it’s never been an issue for us. She talks about going to church but in a matter of fact way. She doesn’t send me messages to try to change or challenge my perspective and I don’t criticise or challenge her beliefs either. I wouldn’t like the situation you describe, it doesn’t sound respectful to me.

[Rive.]

Your 'friend' is not very accepting, nor very respectful of you. And frankly quite judgmental.

It seems he is only willing to entertain the connection with you, as long as you fall into his own views. This is quite manipulative.

A 'good friend' would be respectful of divergent views and would not try to force or coerce their views onto another. This is pretty controlling, actually.