“Sunset – Golden Mile”: what to do if you don’t like your friend’s partner

Some have already experienced similar situations.

Hannah, who did not want to give her last name, told BBC News she broke up with her long-term friend Georgia – not her real name – because of a partner.

Hannah says Georgia “used to date not-so-nice people” and had left London with a new partner who “proposed to her very quickly, I think within a year or so”.

It seemed Georgia was “under his spell” – and then, at a pre-wedding party, Hannah says Georgia’s fiancé made sexual comments about her. “He came up to me and started telling me all the things he wanted to do to me in very detailed and explicit terms.”

She says the experience was “very uncomfortable” and “came out of nowhere.”

When Hannah told Georgia about it a few days later, Georgia “tried to downplay it and said things like ‘he does this to all his friends’ and I tried to explain to her that he was saying really inappropriate things,” Hannah says.

Relationship expert and counselor Anna Williamson, who works as a dating expert on Channel 4’s Celebs Go Dating, says it can be difficult to try to support a friend if you’re worried about their partner.

It’s important not to judge them or tell them what to do, says Williamson. Judging your friend can cause you to act defensively, but finding the right balance between support and judgment is a “real challenge.”

“We need to be very careful to compartmentalize our own emotions and not project them onto a friend because she might not recognize that she is in a toxic relationship,” she told the BBC. “They may have feelings of shame and mask them.”

She advises starting a conversation with a friend by saying something like, “I really care about you, but I want to know how you’re doing because I’ve noticed that you seem really stressed lately.”

Williamson adds that it’s important to “stick to the facts” and only discuss things you’ve observed. She recommends avoiding phrases like “I really don’t like him,” “I think he’s toxic,” or “I think he’s abusive.”

If you still want to see your friend but don’t want to be around her partner, Williamson says this can be handled delicately.

“I would say something like, ‘I care about you a lot, but I need some distance from your partner because I’m not comfortable with their behavior, but I really want to spend time with you.'”

It’s also important to make sure you have support around you, because caring for someone else all the time can be exhausting, she says.

Yasmin Shaheen-Zaffar, a relationship and trauma counselor, says that while watching the reality show, she notices that some of the tension comes from cast members talking behind each other’s backs and then being confronted about it later.

“Avoid gossiping and talking about your friend or her partner to other people, as this could cause hysteria,” Shaheen-Zaffar told the BBC. She says it’s important to “stay safe” because anything you say “could be taken out of context or used against you.”

What should you do if you disagree with the opinions or values ​​of a friend’s partner?

In “Sunset – Golden Mile”, Chrishell and Emma argue over Blake’s political views.

Blake would appear in the ninth season, but her scenes were cut after another storyline involving Emma was deemed more relevant. It’s unclear if any of the scenes featured disagreements between Blake and Chrishell, but Emma denied that Blake expressed “political views” in front of Chrishell.

Shaheen-Zaffar says that ultimately, you “have to respect people’s individual decisions” and “try to maintain decency” if you still want this friend to be a part of your life. “I think we’ve gotten into a culture where if someone doesn’t agree with what we think, we don’t like them,” she says.

This isn’t the advice she says she would give if someone was openly “prejudiced,” but rather if they simply had opinions you disagreed with. “It takes a lot of personal development and depth to understand and accept the opinions of others,” she adds.

Dealing with conflicting opinions from a friend’s partner depends on whether they are “aligned with your values,” she says.

Sometimes the actions of a friend’s partner can cross certain lines – and this can end friendships completely.

After what happened with Georgia’s partner, Hannah came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t be able to see her friend again if she chose to stay with him.

“I told him, ‘I love you, the door is always open, but I can’t have him in my life’ – he was not a good, healthy presence and I was very uncomfortable and scared,” Hannah adds.

She says she and Georgia haven’t spoken since and that the end of their friendship “hurt a lot.” She and Georgia “had been friends for a long time and had a lot of fun together” — although, ultimately, she wouldn’t have done anything differently in retrospect, she says.