Dear Nikol,
I live in an apartment building with only one neighbor’s apartment abutting mine. The neighbors on that side are a mother and daughter team – the mother being in her 60s and the daughter being in her late 20s. As neighbors, we’re nice and get along well, but are not particularly close. The walls are a little thin, and sometimes my roommates and I can hear conversation on the other side of the wall when things get loud, e.g. when the mother and daughter are having an argument.
For a couple months, the daughter (I’ll call her “Bethany”) had a boyfriend (“Mark”) who would frequently stay over at their place, and seemed fairly nice – he bragged about owning a gun, but in our section of Los Angeles, that’s less rare than you’d think. He’d say hello on the way to the parking lot, and never seemed to be terse or in a fight with Bethany when we’d see them together.
However, through the walls, we heard a different story – without trying to eavesdrop, we couldn’t help but hear snippets of what sounded a lot like abuse, violence, and screaming. And there was once a big shouting match between Bethany and her mother in which it almost sounded like Bethany’s mom was accusing Mark of being abusive.
Anyway, all of a sudden over a month ago, Mark seemed to be out of their lives. He never stayed over, we never saw his truck outside, and there were a lot fewer arguments on the other side of the wall.
But then a week ago, something happened: we came home to shattered glass as if someone in Bethany’s house had been in a fight (maybe Bethany and her mother). Then two days later, Mark was back. His truck was parked in Bethany’s spot for days. He was coming in and out, so he clearly had the keys, and it seemed he and Bethany were an item again.
Well, this weekend I ran into Bethany outside of her house, and she informed me that she was now engaged to Mark, and furthermore, she wanted to have a wedding reception in our apartment building, with me playing the role of the “minister,” and helping with the ceremony! I stammered that I might be able to help, but of course I don’t want to bless a marriage that has a strong chance of already being abusive. I don’t even want to talk to Mark when I see him walk past to Bethany’s place.
Yet all of this is based largely on inadvertent eavesdropping, and there’s a part of me that feels like it’s not my business to judge something I know very little, if anything, about. What should I do? An aside from the wedding, how should I handle it when Bethany gets so excited about her upcoming marriage to someone who is potentially a monster?
– Helpless in Highland Park
Dear Helpless,
You mean to tell me not everyone in Los Angeles is, like, a white toothed, slick haired star wearing $400 sweatpants to eat at Spago? Impossible. You must be living in Los Angeles, Kentucky. My advice to you is that you move to Los Angeles, CA. You’d like it here. (I think that’s going to be my advice to everyone about everything from now on. “What’s good at this restaurant?” “Move to Los Angeles”).
Okay, so it sounds like this living situation isn’t going to get any better, which is a real bummer. Who knows how legit the engagement really is, anyway. Seems they’re on again off again. However, he will keep coming back, and your walls aren’t getting any thicker. I’m not suggesting you move to a new place, because that’s not practical, but it sounds like it’s time to become a much more distant neighbor.
You see, even if you said something to this girl about the things you’ve heard, you already said that you two aren’t friends. It’s safe to assume that her mother or her friends have told her that jerk isn’t good for her. You are her neighbor. Not really your place to say anything.
However, she has chosen to involve you in her dreamy ceremony in your yard, and that’s where it is your place to draw the line. What you need to do is determine which is more important to you; avoiding conflict, making her happy, or sticking to your morals. If you wish to avoid conflict or you really want to make her happy, you still need to set boundaries in your participation. It’s a good indication that she doesn’t have a lot of supporters of the nuptials if she’s asking you to conduct the ceremony.
If you decide you need to stick to your morals, you’ll need to just tell her that you can’t do it. Do the right thing and make up some excuse. Like, you are allergic to weddings or you’d love to but you don’t have any openings until 2024. Or you could tell her you’ll do it but then duck out at the last minute, maybe in some tennis shoes. There’s a movie about that.
Whatever choice you make, my final bit of advice to you is that next time you can hear her getting tossed around by this guy, please call the police. Domestic violence is very serious, and if you consider the worst that can happen, I think you’ll understand that the only right thing to do is to call the authorities.
– Nikol
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