hi
@Lane . i’m in agreement with everything i’ve read in this thread so i hope i get those feelings across well. it is kind and i can understand your doing this kind of thing for a friend as you described above and as others have commented on. but having lived through what i consider similar experiences i am seeing another side and this post has stayed on my mind for more than an hour now rather than letting me go back to sleep.
You can easily see i’m thinking about a negative side to this that might be answering your question above so please also consider this: that i’m a person who regularly says i am not in touch with my own feelings so you may need a grain of salt for this.
then there is also the very valid point that i don’t know you or your friend or much at all about the situation so maybe where do i come off presenting something bad for something that actually is good?
then there is also the point that in the experiences i consider similar, they may have been unique to my family (when i was growing up) or to me only or to those recipients of kindness that added the unfortunate negative ingredient.
all this said, i do have reservations that i think should be considered in the situation you are mentioning. they pertain to stays of friends and or relatives where each one lasted longer than planned, expected and ultimately desired. they all ended up in an ended friendship. (here again, some of these situations involved my father so he could be the common denominator in the negativity of these situations)
i remember so well when my cousin who’s stay lasted i think a few months longer than the expected couple weeks, said f you to my father when we sat down to talk with him about thinking about moving out. the relationship remained hostile after that even after he finally moved out.
there was a close friend of my sister in school who had a bad abusive foster home situation going on and she literally needed to get out now and not fall back into a system that would only put her in another potentially bad situation and take her away from the one good friend she really had (my sister). her stay lasted years and this did involve my father, but it quickly ruined the friendship between my sister and her.
then there was a coworker of my father’s and that stay was just very straining on everyone in the house. that friendship broke up too.
i really feel as if i have to mention this to you so please forgive me. i know you are showing some great kindness for someone who really needs it. i don’t know how to even express this adequately and if this is happening tomorrow, i doubt that there is much time for me to express sufficiently how my reservations might apply to your situation or to discover that they don’t.
and like i’ve said, your situation is completely unique and may have none of the ingredients that spoiled those i have experienced. so this could simply be a false alarm on my part so please do consider my comments as being just an alarm and don’t forget (i doubt you will) that you actually are doing a nice thing and that nice does have a way of leading to more nice.
i do think it is a very nice and kind thing to help out a friend in this way. and maybe my bad experiences can serve to just be things to consider only if they need consideration. i really do hope that this does work out well. it certainly does have potential for it. i don’t want the good side of your situation lost by my own experiences. if ever you would like to talk further on this you know i’m always around and i really do believe good can come of this situation too.